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[–] 1 point 12 hours ago (3 children)

True, but with a constant 100% plus generation from renewable, there obviously wouldn't be any fossil fuel burned to generate electricity. Here we are already at 80% of our total yearly electricity generated by renewables.
When that reaches 100%, it can be done by utilizing surplus at peaks to generate hydrogen, exactly to completely prevent any use of fossil fuels.

I don’t see the whole worlds energy consumption going purely green within the next 100 years.

100 years is a very long time, back in the 70's it was considered a lofty goal to achieve even 10%, and now we are at 80!!
I don't think you have historical perspective.
Personally I think within another decade we will surpass 100% here, and have the ability to export a lot of surplus renewable energy.
I was also mostly thinking about civilized countries, not so much for instance USA.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 hours ago* (2 children)

    "here" is nice and good, but "here" is not global. This is not about a local incident. It's easy to have "too much green energy" in one place, just build a single wind turbine and don't connect it to a grid. But using that excess power to produce an inefficient expensive fuel in one part of the world doesn't solve the global energy- and emmission- problem. It's cheaper and more efficient to transport energy all over the world and shut down local fossil fuel power plants than to produce hydrogen, ship that all over the world and burn that.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 hours ago (1 child)

    It's not as easy to ship electricity around as you might think. Electricity attenuates over distance, and when green sources are far from population centers, that effect is higher. To use electricity, you have to be physically tied to the power grid, or carry batteries. Those are heavy and require a bunch of heavy metals sourced from questionable places.

    Hydrogen is more portable and transferable than electricity. It can be used for off-grid purposes, like vehicles and wherever you'd use propane now. And its efficiency compared to electricity doesn't really matter if you're producing it using waste voltage from surplus.

    Both have their places. Converting away from fossil fuels isnt going to have a monolithic solution.

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