suster

I'm not being obtuse - I still don't understand why this is important. Is 'ability to transport a lot of energy on a train' really key? Renewables have a completely different model for how they are distributed and how their supply is constrained.

If your long-term goal is a maximum of renewables, there is a significant difference between nuclear and natural gas.

Nuclear generation can't react to changes in demand very fast and so doesn't play well with large amounts of wind generation. It's ok with solar, because you can predict night-time 8 hours in advance, which is optimal for ramping up nuclear generation.

Combined-cycle gas turbines, while they do use fossil fuels, are the most carbon-efficient way to get electricity from fossil fuels, and can quickly react to changes in demand.

So while I agree with the point about not getting rid of nuclear too fast, both nuclear and natural gas have their place in moving to mostly renewables. Natural gas could especially be important if it allows other fossil-fuel burning, eg for transport, to be replaced by electricity generated with non-zero but low carbon emissions.

I have seen this argument about energy density before, I still don't understand it. Why is the density of energy generation so important?

They export cheap wind-generated power to Norway when the wind is blowing, and import it back for a higher price when it isn't.

Norway has a lot of hydro which they used the revenues from North Sea oil to install. (Their geography and population density also helps.)

Firstly the US was not a petroleum exporter at the time of the Iraq wars.

Secondly, one take on the Iraq war was that it happened not to obtain fossil fuel resources, but rather to obtain control over them, and prevent them being exploited in a way which threatened the interests of US and/or Saudi oil.

Do you have an example of a specific scaling problem which applies to solar+hydrogen and probably can't easily be surmounted?

Or is your argument just "We're not doing it yet, therefore it can never be done"?

If a) steel is more essential to society than burning natural gas and b) steel production is carbon-intensive, then an across-the-board carbon tax has two effects.

1. In the short term it makes steel more expensive. But because steel is essential, we still use it, it just costs a little more. If you're building a clean energy power plant, or making a generator for a hospital, some of the tax revenues could go to you, to make those things still affordable.

2. In the longer term, there are now huge financial incentives to either reduce the carbon consumption of steel production, or to replace steel with something which uses less carbon. Which is what you want.

The set of people who visit a car forum is very different to the set of people who need to buy tires for their car.

If you want to increase awareness of your innovation, you might want to target exactly those people who aren't car hobbyists and don't visit car forums. Same if you are selling a product specifically designed to be easy to use for non-experts.