Bikewer said:
It seems most of the current research into hydrogen involves extracting it from petroleum and natural gas, rather than from renewable sources like wind-driven electricity.
Most of the research I've seen has involved fuel cells and storage - in other words, how to turn hydrogen into electricity without combustion, and how to carry around that hydrogen. These are absolute prerequisites to any widespread use of hydrogen fuel, they're tough problems, and we've got a long way to go on them. The reason you're not seeing research on producing hydrogen from wind-driven electricity is we ALREADY know how to do that. Hydrogen electrolysis is an old, well-understood technology. But since none of those technologies can contribute enough electricity to make significant impact on existing electrical grids (where no conversion is necessary), of COURSE they aren't going to be able to act as primary sources of hydrogen - they simply don't produce enough energy, and won't anytime soon.
But you're also missing something in this picture: IF we can get a hydrogen economy jumpstarted, then once the infrastructure is in place, once cars are running on hydrogen, and we've got a distribution system in place, then it becomes very easy to introduce alternative hydrogen production methods into the system. Let's say you've got a plot of land that's great for wind farms, but it's in some sparsely populated area, and the wind is irregular. Try to patch that into the electricity grid, and you're faced with the problem that you still need natural gas plants with capacity for full production because the wind isn't always blowing. So it's not very efficient, and the economic incentive goes down. Patch those into an EXISTING hydrogen economy, then you can produce hydrogen, build up a storage reserve so weather fluctuations don't matter, and sell the hydrogen at a steady clip. Much more efficient, and therefore much more likely to be economically viable. And it also doesn't matter if it's wind-driven, solar-driven, tide-driven, geothermal, you name it: if a hydrogen infrastructure is in place, then any alternative production method can easily be dropped into the production process. But to get that infrastructure in place, we need the fuel cell and storage technologies, AND we need guaranteed volume production which currently ONLY oil can possibly provide sufficient energy for.
I don't know if a hydrogen economy will work. There are serious challenges, and no guarantees we can overcome them. But if it CAN be done, then the way we're working on it (fuel cell and storage/transport first) is in fact the correct way to go about it.
