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(Chemical) hydrogen will be available much sooner than fusion. We should see a lot of hydrogen related infrastructure being deployed soon.

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This is sarcasm right? Hydrogen isn't a source of energy its a storage mechanism that has to be produced using fossil fuels or electricity, and you don't get more energy out of it than it takes to produce it.

Yes, but you can create it during one part of the year and store it for other parts of the year. It is going to be a viable replacement for fossil fuels for northern climates long before nuclear fusion happens.

Storing half a year's worth of hydrogen? That seems... improbable to be viable any time soon.

One option is to combine it with other elements providing long-term stable fuel stores.

Carbon is one such atom.

https://old.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/22gryt/seawater_pow...

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/22k71x/us_navy...

Fischer-Tropsh (creating synthetic analogues of petrol, kerosene/jet fuel, or diesel), or Sabatier process (creating alcohol) are two options.

Yes, it's a net energy sink. You're trading cheap surplus electricity for high-density, long-term storable, stable, dispatchable thermal fuel.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/06/16/hydrogen-storage-in-s...

You can store hydrogen in underground salt caverns. We could store years' worth of energy demand.

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