Column: Hydrogen cars should be a bigger part of California's battle against carbon emissions

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California should invest more money into nurturing the use of hydrogen vehicles, not just pouring funds into plug-in electric cars.

We’ve turned way off course from the “hydrogen highway” that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to chart for California two decades ago., just as California is pouring funds into plug-in electric cars.They argue that California — and the nation — shouldn’t be putting all its eggs in one basket: plug-in vehicles.

“Utilities won’t be able to generate enough power to charge all the battery vehicles,” says Terry Tamminen, who was Schwarzenegger’s environmental secretary. “Even if a third of all the cars had batteries, you’d crash the grid every night.”, up from 12% in 2021. In all, 346,000 ZEVs were sold last year — 2,600 of them fueled by hydrogen.

A hydrogen vehicle can be refilled at a service station in about the same time it takes to top off a gas tank. Only two in Sacramento — 62 in the state, including 22 in Los Angeles County and 12 in Orange County. There’s only one in San Diego County. Ten are in Santa Clara County, but just three in San Francisco.

By 2025, the state intends to have spent $500 million on publicly available chargers for electric vehicles.But the ultimate goal of hydrogen advocates is 1,000 stations. At any rate, when plug-in cars are recharged, the dominant way of generating the electricity is using natural gas.

 

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This is why it's a bad idea. Total US energy consumption can not be met with low carbon energy unless that consumption is reduced. H2 road transport and heating will not reduce it, so it will take longer or never to decarbonise energy. If you reduce car ownership that helps to.

Much of this needs to be corrected this is lobbying. 'Anyway, California doesn’t have enough grid capacity to recharge all the electric vehicles there will be once gas cars are phased out.' Not true. Even at 2030 levels, you're talking 5% of the total supply.

william_sw I agree with your hydrogen premise, but what is your interest in California climate activity all the way from London?

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