The world appears to be betting on hydrogen being the future of energy:

U.K.: $664 million
EU: $550 billion

China, Japan and South Korea have also committed to huge amounts of spending on the gas https://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

The enthusiasm about hydrogen has a simple reason. Whether it’s burned to create heat or used in a fuel cell the only exhaust it emits is:

Clean water http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

The worldwide race to dominate the various niches of a market is projected by some banks to be worth trillions of dollars by 2050.

But several hydrogen bubbles have been popped before:

1980
2000 http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

There are daunting disadvantages:

It doesn’t appear in its pure form on earth
Expensive
Hard to transport and store
Must be compressed to 700 times atmospheric pressure or refrigerated at -253C
Likes to explode http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

To get hydrogen, an electric current is run through water to split the oxygen and hydrogen atoms apart.

That takes energy, which really ought to be green http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

One application currently gets a lot of hype: hydrogen-powered vehicles.

But on almost every count, vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells lose against their “clean energy” rivals — electric cars running on batteries http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

For a start, hydrogen cars are only half as efficient:

If an electric car converts 86% of the energy originally harnessed by a wind turbine into moving the vehicle forward, the hydrogen car has access to only about 45% http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

Compared to an electric car, a car with a hydrogen fuel cell:

Has more moving parts
More expensive to maintain
Can’t be “reloaded” at home

That’s bad news for Toyota, Hyundai and Honda, who have placed the biggest bets on hydrogen in transportation http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

Hydrogen also doesn’t make sense for trains: It eliminates the need to electrify the track, but locks in a more complex, less efficient solution.

It’s only long-haul flights or oceanic shipping where hydrogen starts to make sense http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

The solution to climate change is to power everything with electricity from renewable sources.

But that’s the problem: We simply can’t run everything on electricity. And we won’t ever have enough sun and wind to keep the lights on all the time, everywhere http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

Here’s where hydrogen becomes useful.

It could be the fuel that picks up the slack whenever the clean power grids of the future can’t keep up http://trib.al/WqkEVDF 

It could look something like this:

Electrolyze hydrogen when we have excess sun or wind
Store it underground near our power grids, where it can be used during lulls in direct electricity generation

Hydrogen then makes decarbonization possible http://trib.al/WqkEVDF