I was under the impression that once hydrogen was established (initially from natural gas methane) it would be split from water in a nuclear reactor.
Not in a reactor, cos that's bad. In an overpressure in a pressure vessel or containment building kind of bad, which lead to one of the explosions at Fukushima.
But nuclear power stations are most efficient running at high output. So great for supplying a steady 1GW or so per reactor, 24x7x365 give or take some maintenance/refuellling. So that's where Economy 7 came in, ie creating off-peak load via electric water or storage heating as the UK went nuclear.
But thanks to Ed Milliband and John Prescott, electric heating was deemed bad and 'inefficient'. So UK households were encouraged to switch to gas central heating. And thanks to Ed, they'll need to be persuaded to switch to electric heating due to our Climate Change Act. Which means more demand for electricity, which also means less surplus energy to produce hydrogen via electrolysis. And switching away from methane reforming to create H2 would mean less CO2.
From doing a bit of reading about how CO2's produced commercially, I didn't realise how much gas/energy is required to make fertiliser.. And the consequences if the EU insists on that being decarbonised.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
