Letter William Thomson: A storage solution for wind-produced electricity is necessary. I do not believe batteries provide the answer (they have their own environmental consequences). We should be developing hydrogen as a source of fuel for a number of reasons. First, we have a hard job persuading people to change their habits radically in the short space of time we have left before reaching the climate’s tipping point. Development of hydrogen would help us ease people into a low-emission economy more promptly by encouragement rather than sanction. Secondly, the infrastructure is there if we put our minds to the engineering required to change homes from burning gas. Thirdly, there is the potential to avoid the unemployment that the switch from a carbon-based economy might cause. Lastly, the production of hydrogen could be powered by wind when it is available, thus storing the energy in a manageable, relatively environmentally friendly form. It is already being done on a small scale on Orkney, where excess wind-produced electricity is used to produce hydrogen which is stored. So, renewable energy sources have the potential to be as secure and plentiful as we could
Herald 10th Dec 2018 read more »