this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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I'm unsure if hydrogen really can be considered green. Sure it could be generated using renewable energy but isn't it likely, that renewable energy availability isn't high enough for producing the necessary amount of hydrogen for these kinds of applications?
If availability isn't high enough, we have to make sure it is in one way or another. And since there is money to make - more will try to come up with a solution to the problem.
In my opinion, it is the same with any other topic, where we to less of something - make the demand higher and people will get creative and try to earn money out of it.
The thing is, in this kind of setting cheap always wins over sustainable. So if we need lots of Hydrogen and burning fossiles is the way to get it cheaply, we'll burn more fossiles
Sure, if it is the cheapest, people will go that route and there will always be people that do things like this, you can't stop that. But as always, there will come restrictions and regulations - like in europe with fossil fuel cars.
I guess that's all to say, I wish they used the environmental money to electrify the line instead since that is a proven alternative. This way it seems a bit like greenwashing to me.
Fair enough. Maybe they look to innovate train transportation even further. For example i know that in certain places, they still use coal trains, because they haven't rebuild the line to have electricity. This could give a boost to switch some old coal trains to hydrogen. Without the power lines, your much faster and more flexible in building train lines.