Best technology for coal electricity capture costs $10/watt (close to new on budget nuclear plants), and only captures 65% of emissions. A better “free” climate strategy would be to put them in “backup peaker” mode for renewables and run them at far less than 35% of year.
DAC can work only if price of carbon is $300/ton ($3/gallon gasoline). Still, 100% renewables is cheapest path to avoiding those taxes, but afterwards, DAC can hope to pay for itself.
Electrolysis of Hydrogen is green if renewables power it. It is almost as automatable as battery storage. It is transportable/exportable energy that is cheaper to transport than building electric wires, even by truck. A fuel cell is a hydrogen to electricity converter that is twice as efficient in obtaining power from fuel than an ICE engine. Other than fuel, hydrogen has many critical chemical applications.
Hydrogen electrolysis is the key technology. Just make it, and figure out how to sell it later. Biden’s IRA was ok for hydrogen. China is doing better as usual. Truck sized electrolysis systems makes electrolysis portable too, and could be used to chase seasonal surplus renewables. The key to 100% renewable power is having enough power every day, and so on most days have surpluses. Hydrogen is path to monetizing that surplus, in addition to displacing some energy use with backup/resilience exportable energy.
Thank you very much for this intro!