Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...

[nctnico]

I'm quite sceptical you can produce enough road fuel (let's just assume this is for passenger cars for now) from just agricultural waste.

I ran some numbers based on yield per area information from Poet-DSM. Based on their numbers and just taking the amount of farm land, countries where farming is widespread should have enough agricultural waste to get to 50% to 75% of the fuel needed based on current consumption.

@Someone: the claims in that book are horribly outdated. Nowadays nobody involved in bio-fuel development is suggesting to grow crops to make bio-fuel or burn agricultural waste / plant based material (wood) for electricity production.

[Someone]

I'm quite sceptical you can produce enough road fuel (let's just assume this is for passenger cars for now) from just agricultural waste.

I ran some numbers based on yield per area information from Poet-DSM. Based on their numbers and just taking the amount of farm land, countries where farming is widespread should have enough agricultural waste to get to 50% to 75% of the fuel needed based on current consumption.

@Someone: the claims in that book are horribly outdated. Nowadays nobody involved in bio-fuel development is suggesting to grow crops to make bio-fuel.

The numbers in that book start with specific/replacement crops as you say, waste from another crop is never going to exceed the bio-fuel production of a dedicated crop (or people would just grow that instead). Its the land area use that is telling, the figures in W/m2. Agricultural waste energy production is too low to support the current energy demands.

Worldwide agricultural land use? About 50x10^12 m2 (world bank)
Energy output of pure biofuel crop in excellent conditions? 1 W/m2
Nice round number 50 TW
400 PWh annually

Worldwide transport fuel use? 110 exajoules (IEA) 30 PWh

sounds doable if you cut it that way, except thats for high efficiency (sugarcane) crops on excellent (limited) land. The link I provided was for the first page of a chapter which does have an explicit heading and paragraphs addressing your point of only using waste:
https://www.withouthotair.com/cD/page_286.shtml
When you start scrounging in the agricultural byproducts, there isnt much left. Most farmers are already pretty good at reducing their operating expenses and reusing any "waste". Trying to pull more than 10% of the agricultural output out of thin air (without reducing something else) sounds pretty extraordinary. Show us how it adds up! Because the reference you poo-poo says it doesn't.

But hey you'll just keep throwing out unreferenced unworked and unjustiified opinions as if they are fact that disprove others well researched and considered work. That might work on the lazy, but it wont work here.

[tom66]

That's a good point about using biofuels in general.  I was a big 'fan' of algae a while ago but the numbers don't add up.

A 1m^2 solar cell at 30% efficiency might generate about 1kWh per day,  whereas photosynthesis has an efficiency of at most 5%.  So you need a much larger collector area to make it work. You also need a way to recycle the 'waste' that the algae produce - most biofuel algae produce more than the desired fuel which requires a further distillation process.

More land take, more equivalent CO2 emissions if the land has other useful purposes already.  Solar farms can be built on top of existing meadows without harming the meadow too much, as long as the panels have a bit of space between them.  Wind turbines have even better kWh per m^2 equivalent, and have almost zero impact on the land surrounding them.

There may be something in it for specialist applications that can't move away from hydrocarbons but I don't see it being a major energy source.  Although I think synthetic fuels produced from electricity and CO2 will ultimately win out here, e.g. Fischer-Tropsch producing jet fuels (and shorter flights will eventually be pure electric or at least hybrid electric.)

[nctnico]

I'm quite sceptical you can produce enough road fuel (let's just assume this is for passenger cars for now) from just agricultural waste.

I ran some numbers based on yield per area information from Poet-DSM. Based on their numbers and just taking the amount of farm land, countries where farming is widespread should have enough agricultural waste to get to 50% to 75% of the fuel needed based on current consumption.

@Someone: the claims in that book are horribly outdated. Nowadays nobody involved in bio-fuel development is suggesting to grow crops to make bio-fuel.

The numbers in that book start with specific/replacement crops as you say, waste from another crop is never going to exceed the bio-fuel production of a dedicated crop (or people would just grow that instead). Its the land area use that is telling, the figures in W/m2. Agricultural waste energy production is too low to support the current energy demands.

But hey you'll just keep throwing out unreferenced unworked and unjustiified opinions as if they are fact that disprove others well researched and considered work. That might work on the lazy, but it wont work here.

If you cared to do some actual research you'd be better informed. Go look at yield number from Poet-DSM and other companies that actually process agricultural waste into bio-fuels. These companies have numbers that come from running industrial scale factories instead of assumptions. In addition to that, there is a wealth of up-to-date information on ethanolproducer.com .

I was a big 'fan' of algae a while ago but the numbers don't add up.

Algae looked very good for a while but it seems scaling up to industrial production is far more difficult than expected. It looks like the idea of using algae has been largely abandoned (for now).

[Someone]

I'm quite sceptical you can produce enough road fuel (let's just assume this is for passenger cars for now) from just agricultural waste.

I ran some numbers based on yield per area information from Poet-DSM. Based on their numbers and just taking the amount of farm land, countries where farming is widespread should have enough agricultural waste to get to 50% to 75% of the fuel needed based on current consumption.

@Someone: the claims in that book are horribly outdated. Nowadays nobody involved in bio-fuel development is suggesting to grow crops to make bio-fuel.

The numbers in that book start with specific/replacement crops as you say, waste from another crop is never going to exceed the bio-fuel production of a dedicated crop (or people would just grow that instead). Its the land area use that is telling, the figures in W/m2. Agricultural waste energy production is too low to support the current energy demands.

The link I provided was for the first page of a chapter which does have an explicit heading and paragraphs addressing your point of only using waste:
https://www.withouthotair.com/cD/page_286.shtml

But hey you'll just keep throwing out unreferenced unworked and unjustiified opinions as if they are fact that disprove others well researched and considered work. That might work on the lazy, but it wont work here.

If you cared to do some actual research you'd be better informed. Go look at yield number from Poet-DSM and other companies that actually process agricultural waste into bio-fuels. These companies have numbers that come from running industrial scale factories instead of assumptions. In addition to that, there is a wealth of up-to-date information on ethanolproducer.com

Oh look replying to figures that can be checked and referenced with... more unreferenced and unworked opinion.

Even if the ambitious claims of "sustainable" yield for Poet-DSM has zero impact on the existing cropping its 130PWh should those claimed rates (from rich US corn land, also a crop with significant input fertiliser) prove possible in 100% of all agricultural land worldwide. Against world oil use of 80PWh. Most of the world's agricultural land is not as productive as the US corn industry, its hard to believe bio-fuels will ever be more than a small part of the future energy mix. tom66 puts it really simply:

A 1m^2 solar cell at 30% efficiency might generate about 1kWh per day,  whereas photosynthesis has an efficiency of at most 5%.  So you need a much larger collector area to make it work.

Synthetic hydrocarbons and hydrogen are more likely as they can "store" the predicted excess electricity from the land efficient solar/wind generators.

[tom66]

Other thing about synfuels is using them ... they're not exactly efficient in the whole system.

Hydrogen production and use roundtrip efficiency is about 50% in most optimal case.  (70% electrolyser best case, 70% state-of-the-art fuel cell, zero loss of hydrogen, zero cost of cryogenics.)

Synfuels are worse if just combusted - production efficiency around 60% and combustion of nat gas in an ICE (e.g. some cars can run on nat gas) or CCGT (30-40% each) would get somewhere around 20-30% round trip efficiency.

There will be a part for either in the future but their high costs compared to using the energy to charge a battery and drive a motor (60-70% round trip efficiency) will be a lot harder to compete with.  Consequentially they will be only used in applications where the cost of electrification is too high or manifestly impractical (e.g. aircraft on long haul routes.)  I expect to that end we will still see ICE cars for sale long into the future but they will be progressively taxed out of existence or will only be permitted if they can run on a synfuel.  Or maybe this is where hydrogen will find itself.

Long haul trucking has been mentioned as an area where EVs are impractical.  I'd like to see overhead catenaries become more common (there's a line under test in Germany.)  These vehicles use diesel or batteries to power their route when off the cable.   Would be interesting to know how much of the highway network you'd need to cover in these lines to cover all use cases - the majority of trucks I suspect cover some distance on highway and if the overhead line can charge a battery up at over 250kW for instance then you might only need a ten miles of line for some sections followed by long gaps.  Probably position the lines close to existing power infrastructure.  Working out how to bill the customer will also be interesting.  Electric meter in the truck?

[Miyuki]

Long haul trucking has been mentioned as an area where EVs are impractical.  I'd like to see overhead catenaries become more common (there's a line under test in Germany.)  These vehicles use diesel or batteries to power their route when off the cable.   Would be interesting to know how much of the highway network you'd need to cover in these lines to cover all use cases - the majority of trucks I suspect cover some distance on highway and if the overhead line can charge a battery up at over 250kW for instance then you might only need a ten miles of line for some sections followed by long gaps.  Probably position the lines close to existing power infrastructure.  Working out how to bill the customer will also be interesting.  Electric meter in the truck?

I do not know how reliable are current german highway overhead lines.
But I know for city (trolley)buses the system is very fragile and needs huge maintenance. Especially when it has crosssections and switches (or how they call it when you split lines).
Both lines and centenary damage are common.
I expect short straight charging lines will be more reliable. As those complicated areas are what cause most issues. Bumpy roads are also a big problem for them.

Yeah power stealing sounds like a possible issue

[nctnico]

Other thing about synfuels is using them ... they're not exactly efficient in the whole system.

Hydrogen production and use roundtrip efficiency is about 50% in most optimal case.  (70% electrolyser best case, 70% state-of-the-art fuel cell, zero loss of hydrogen, zero cost of cryogenics.)

Synfuels are worse if just combusted - production efficiency around 60% and combustion of nat gas in an ICE (e.g. some cars can run on nat gas) or CCGT (30-40% each) would get somewhere around 20-30% round trip efficiency.

There will be a part for either in the future but their high costs compared to using the energy to charge a battery and drive a motor (60-70% round trip efficiency) will be a lot harder to compete with.

Don't fall into the trap of looking at efficiencies alone. In the end the only thing that counts is the price you pay as a consumer.

What synthetic / bio fuels inherently solve are storage and transport. When I look at my electricity bill (excluding taxes) it turns out that about 50% of the costs are transport costs. So a decrease in generating efficiency of 10% would translate to only 5% more expensive electricity (and vice versa).

Long haul trucking has been mentioned as an area where EVs are impractical.  I'd like to see overhead catenaries become more common (there's a line under test in Germany.)  These vehicles use diesel or batteries to power their route when off the cable.   Would be interesting to know how much of the highway network you'd need to cover in these lines to cover all use cases - the majority of trucks I suspect cover some distance on highway and if the overhead line can charge a battery up at over 250kW for instance then you might only need a ten miles of line for some sections followed by long gaps.  Probably position the lines close to existing power infrastructure.  Working out how to bill the customer will also be interesting.  Electric meter in the truck?

I do not know how reliable are current german highway overhead lines.
But I know for city (trolley)buses the system is very fragile and needs huge maintenance. Especially when it has crosssections and switches (or how they call it when you split lines).

I have passed under the overhead lines test track in Germany a couple of times. It is not like a trolleybus system. More like the system you see on a train. I doubt it is unreliable since the mechanical principle is very simple (just like it is with a train). I doubt though the system as it is currently installed in Germany is capable of doing serious charging. Imagine 100+ trucks (the stretch is 5km long!) charging 1MW each. Even big railway stations can't deliver that much power; trains have to take turns pulling out.

[tom66]

Re catenary power, the 25kV AC lines that power most trains can easily provide 500kW to a train as that is what is required to cruise at 125mph. If you scaled that up, you might be able to get several MW.  These are typically powered every few miles by small substations located along the line, connected to 275kV+ infrastructure.

How much power does a truck need?  We can estimate it from the Volvo electric trucks, e.g. Volvo FH has up to 300km range in 4x2 axle configuration with 560kWh battery so crudely 1.86kWh/km and at 90kph that's 167kW.

So to charge the battery and maintain cruise you would need 250kW+ per truck,  assuming that net power is averaged for hills.  Length of a truck is 16.5m and safe following distance at 90kph is 70m, so a 1km section of overhead line is supporting an average of 11 trucks.  That would be ~2.5MW ... it doesn't sound extraordinarily high for 25kV line (100A @ 25kV, so 3-4x conductors would probably be ok.)

Some intelligence would be needed in the case of traffic jams or slowdowns.  How do you communicate an overall power limit of 3MW for example ... maybe load on the line should be determined by voltage sag, or by vehicle speed.  Would it be better to regen energy back into the grid or into the truck's battery?
 
I also wonder if ~25kV HVDC would be better than AC - most trains use onboard 50Hz transformers which add some weight.

Edit: maths error, power of ten, d'oh

[nctnico]

Trucks in that area of Germany usually drive bumper to bumper. Not 70 meters apart. Often you can't even squeeze your car in between to take an exit!

[tom66]

That's not even possible with some of the newer trucks, the radar unit won't let you as it'll just trigger the braking system or reduce acceleration.

I guess if too many trucks drive close together then an overall power limit would be hit which could result in them slowing down so it would (kind of) self regulate.

It does frustrate me. Tailgating gets you nowhere faster and endangers other users of the road - I know Germany is one of the few countries that actually prosecutes drivers who do that so... more power to the Polizei on dealing with that.

[gnuarm]

But no matter how hard they try, they won't get the carbon emission down to zero.  This is why hybrids are pointless.  They are a solution to a problem we no longer have (non-CO2 pollutants) with the introduction of BEVs.

Tell me when US and EU (not saying about China and India) will have zero carbon electricity 
It won't be in this or even next decade

You don't understand.  All electricity doesn't need to be zero carbon.  Many people have their own solar chargers, others buy energy from solar or wind farms.  Yeah, that's a thing.

They are to bridge the gap, and with some bio/syn fuels to be used even then for cases when BEV won't offer the required range, because there always will be some minor cases where you will need more flexibility

"Bridging the gap" is meaningless.  There's no gap to bridge.  There's no logic in this statement.

Plus another rare example, but sadly real. How would a massive amount of people run from disaster (like a natural one or a war), you will end up with plenty of people stuck at 100-200 km. Current cheap EVs have these ranges plus will be a big portion of people do not have them fully charged.

Silly argument.  If you have a disaster that stops charging of cars, you also stop pumping gas.  In the US, Florida is the poster child for mass evacuations.  Big hurricane comes north and everyone hits the highways.  Gas and electricity aren't the big problems.  Cars are.  Too many cars, not enough roads! 

BEVs are great city cars and I will agree they shall be even mandatory in city centers (even as I'm libertarian) but with the current technology level, energy mix and state of society are not a silver bullet.

No one is telling you what to drive.  But in 15 to 20 years, if you are driving an ICE, you will be hunting for the remaining few gas stations open since 98% of cars on the road will be BEVs.  Gas will be $20 a gallon.  It really is that simple.  Watch and see.  Not many people are going to buy an ICE because they are worried about an earthquake or war. 

I hope I am still around then.  Because every time I hear a fire belching gas burner roar by I'll feel good knowing how dearly they are paying for the privilege. 

[gnuarm]

The BEV is the only technology CURRENTLY available where it is viable that they could be powered from emissions neutral energy.  There is no other technology.  Not hydrogen, not biofuels, not synfuels...  It just does not exist.

I don't follow.  Why can various manufactured fuels use only renewable energy?  Biofuels use some form of crops, but that carbon was just absorbed from the air, so releasing it again does no harm.  Hydrogen involves no carbon at all if you don't use hydrocarbons as your hydrogen source.  That can be water. 

Are you just making the point that these are not currently commercially practical?

[tom66]

I don't follow.  Why can various manufactured fuels use only renewable energy?  Biofuels use some form of crops, but that carbon was just absorbed from the air, so releasing it again does no harm.  Hydrogen involves no carbon at all if you don't use hydrocarbons as your hydrogen source.  That can be water. 

Are you just making the point that these are not currently commercially practical?

More or less.

Biofuels have land use offsets.  If you chop down parts of the Amazon rainforest to make bioethanol, then you released more carbon over ten years than you did just burning fossil fuels.  In the longer term biofuels can be carbon neutral, especially if they are produced on land that's otherwise not that useful.  There are still concerns about offsetting food, which is more essential than energy.  But I have doubts that in any case we could get enough biofuel production to replace all fossil fuels, without turning the earth into a dust bowl again.  Also algae biofuels, the former love of the likes of Exxon, seem to be making little progress.

Hydrogen is almost exclusively produced from steam reforming of natural gas and the emissions profile of a hydrogen car powered from said "blue hydrogen" is worse than a diesel/petrol car.  There are lots of additional costs with hydrogen for vehicles, the high gas pressures requiring cryo storage and pumping, the high cost of fuel cells, the low overall efficiency, and the relatively high cost of the fuel itself, despite subsidies.

Synfuels are just not produced at a large enough scale for practicality yet - and there is a lot to work out to get the process efficient and scaled up.  I would say synfuels are probably the most promising technology for applications where electrification is impractical, for instance aircraft, portable generation, etc. 

So of the technologies available I don't see passenger cars going anywhere but battery powered EVs.  There will be a greater proportion of hybrids in the future, and plug in hybrids will still be popular.  Hydrogen won't be any more of a technology demo.  For trucks and trains, it's harder to say, hydrogen could make some sense there but electrification is also quite likely.  For aircraft, maybe hydrogen will be investigated, but due to latency in the industry I expect the dominant technology will either be synfuel or biofuel for quite some time.

[NiHaoMike]

In the longer term biofuels can be carbon neutral, especially if they are produced on land that's otherwise not that useful.  There are still concerns about offsetting food, which is more essential than energy.  But I have doubts that in any case we could get enough biofuel production to replace all fossil fuels, without turning the earth into a dust bowl again.  Also algae biofuels, the former love of the likes of Exxon, seem to be making little progress.

The majority of front and back yards are not used for growing food. Turning that into revenue streams for the owners would be a great thing.

Exactly what problems are algae based biofuels running into?

[gnuarm]

I don't follow.  Why can various manufactured fuels use only renewable energy?  Biofuels use some form of crops, but that carbon was just absorbed from the air, so releasing it again does no harm.  Hydrogen involves no carbon at all if you don't use hydrocarbons as your hydrogen source.  That can be water. 

Are you just making the point that these are not currently commercially practical?

More or less.

Biofuels have land use offsets.  If you chop down parts of the Amazon rainforest to make bioethanol, then you released more carbon over ten years than you did just burning fossil fuels.  In the longer term biofuels can be carbon neutral, especially if they are produced on land that's otherwise not that useful.  There are still concerns about offsetting food, which is more essential than energy.  But I have doubts that in any case we could get enough biofuel production to replace all fossil fuels, without turning the earth into a dust bowl again.  Also algae biofuels, the former love of the likes of Exxon, seem to be making little progress.

You are thinking of crops like corn which do use arable farm land.  My understanding is most biofuel research is in crops that would use land that is not good farm land and so would not compete with food crops.  You have to keep in mind that for fuel, the crops have to be very, very inexpensive. 

Hydrogen is almost exclusively produced from steam reforming of natural gas and the emissions profile of a hydrogen car powered from said "blue hydrogen" is worse than a diesel/petrol car.  There are lots of additional costs with hydrogen for vehicles, the high gas pressures requiring cryo storage and pumping, the high cost of fuel cells, the low overall efficiency, and the relatively high cost of the fuel itself, despite subsidies.

There is nothing that says hydrogen must be produced this way.  If the renewable energy is inexpensive enough, electrolysis of water becomes economical. 

I don't disagree that hydrogen has a dismal future as an automotive fuel, but it's not because hydrogen can't be carbon free.

Synfuels are just not produced at a large enough scale for practicality yet - and there is a lot to work out to get the process efficient and scaled up.  I would say synfuels are probably the most promising technology for applications where electrification is impractical, for instance aircraft, portable generation, etc. 

You can say similar things about BEVs.  There aren't enough chargers for long trips, there aren't enough chargers for apartments and condos, batteries cost too much, range is too short...  the list goes on. 

Yes, we have to convert many forms of transportation to eliminate the carbon and it's being worked on.  Nothing happens overnight... except sleep. 

So of the technologies available I don't see passenger cars going anywhere but battery powered EVs.  There will be a greater proportion of hybrids in the future, and plug in hybrids will still be popular.  Hydrogen won't be any more of a technology demo.  For trucks and trains, it's harder to say, hydrogen could make some sense there but electrification is also quite likely.  For aircraft, maybe hydrogen will be investigated, but due to latency in the industry I expect the dominant technology will either be synfuel or biofuel for quite some time.

I don't disagree.  I run into hydrogen advocates on Quora who just can't grasp that hydrogen is still a long way off, even if there are many cars on the roads today.  Having prototypes is not remotely the same as having paths through all the road blocks. 

The real problem for hydrogen is the simple fact that BEVs are here, today and are only improving.  Hydrogen will require multiple billions of dollars to be invested in infrastructure in addition to research.  With the clear path forward for BEVs, I think that investment will not be forthcoming.  Now that BEVs are becoming entrenched, there are no significant problems for hydrogen cars to solve.

[nctnico]

There are still huge problems for BEVs to solve. Raw materials is one of them. But also cost of charging infrastructure. In the end there is really is no use to try and figure out what the definitive solution will be right now. There are too many wheels in motion. Remember: BEVs came and went before! A large part of the popularity of BEVs is based on hype.

Looking at the future I see a lot of movement to make hydrogen the new oil. What is the use of converting hydrogen to electricity only to store it in a heavy battery that gets lugged along in a car? Also from a raw materials POV running a car on hydrogen makes a lot of sense. The amount of platinum needed for the fuel cell starts to approach the amounts that are presently used in catalytic converters. Bottom line: it makes no sense to discard cars on hydrogen at this moment.

[Cerebus]

The majority of front and back yards are not used for growing food. Turning that into revenue streams for the owners would be a great thing.

That's really high on the "Hasn't got a clue" scale. Practicalities aside, people have those yards to do things in. Sit and watch the world go by, have a quiet drink or smoke at the end of a long hot day, somewhere for the pets and kids to play, somewhere to do some exercise, somewhere to eat, somewhere to have a party, a BBQ, some people deliberately plant wildlife friendly plants in the (probably forlorn) hope of preserving enough biodiversity to stop local ecosystems collapsing, or just some pretty flowers, perhaps a few fresh herbs for the kitchen. Suggesting that people would welcome an additional tiny revenue stream by replacing all that and more with a likely monoculture of fuel plants at the cost of quality of life is, well, farcical.

[nctnico]

Having attempted to grow all kinds of stuff in my back yard (check on quite few items Cerebus has listed and more -no drugs though- ), I know first hand that it is extremely hard to get to some kind of production level quantities of anything. So far potatoes have been most succesful. Farming is a profession not to be taken lightly. You need a fairly large piece of land and machines to get to a sufficiently large scale.

Where I live they designed a neigbourhood specifically for people to have food crops in their garden (with some promotion as well). Recently I overheard a conversation from someone who lives in that neighbourhood: it turns out the whole 'growing food' thing is a massive flop. It takes too much time to do it right. Some even hire people to take care of the garden or just rent it out so others can use the land 

[tom66]

There's good reason we moved from a society where ~50% of people were employed in agriculture to one now where less than 1% are: mechanisation, the Haber process and a significant level of scientific rigor.   I have an enormous amount of respect for farmers.  But, yeah, it's not something you do at home.  Not on any reasonable scale, unless you're prepared to work 12 hours a day doing it.

[gnuarm]

There are still huge problems for BEVs to solve. Raw materials is one of them. But also cost of charging infrastructure. In the end there is really is no use to try and figure out what the definitive solution will be right now. There are too many wheels in motion. Remember: BEVs came and went before! A large part of the popularity of BEVs is based on hype.

I find your comments amusing.  We are not discussing BEV popularity, we are discussing BEV practicality and use.  Clearly BEVs are practical and are being bought literally as fast as they can be make.  That's why Tesla dropped all their lower priced versions, upping the minimum price by nearly 50%. 

BEVs are not a fad.   lol

Looking at the future I see a lot of movement to make hydrogen the new oil. What is the use of converting hydrogen to electricity only to store it in a heavy battery that gets lugged along in a car? Also from a raw materials POV running a car on hydrogen makes a lot of sense. The amount of platinum needed for the fuel cell starts to approach the amounts that are presently used in catalytic converters. Bottom line: it makes no sense to discard cars on hydrogen at this moment.

How can you see movement in the future?  Petroleum is an energy source.  Hydrogen is an intermediary, like electricity, a means of transporting and using the energy from other sources.  So it can't be compared to petroleum.

Your analogy of hydrogen being an intermediary on the way to powering a BEV is complete nonsense.  Hydrogen ultimately will be produced from electricity.  So obviously it makes no sense to turn electrical power into hydrogen, which is turned back into electricity to charge BEVs or anything else.  Electricity is easy to transport and is a primary energy, readily changed into nearly any other form of energy.  Hydrogen has no role in the energy processes, unless there is an end that is satisfied more easily by hydrogen than electricity, such as various construction efforts or ocean or air transportation. 

If we ever get the will power to actually stop using gas, petroleum and coal we may find a need for such an energy supply as hydrogen.  But it will only be to fill in the cracks, where electricity is not practical.

[nctnico]

Maybe you should read the news a bit more in-depth. There are hydrogen storage and production projects in various states allover the world in order to supply energy across the globe. This is one close at home for me: https://www.shell.com/media/news-and-media-releases/2022/shell-to-start-building-europes-largest-renewable-hydrogen-plant.html

And you are wrong about oil being an energy source. It isn't; it is stored solar energy.

And you are also wrong about electricity being a primary energy form. It is a handy intermediary form for local use but storage and/or transport over long distances is expensive.

Nuclear energy is the closest we can get to a primary energy source on earth.

[NiHaoMike]

That's really high on the "Hasn't got a clue" scale. Practicalities aside, people have those yards to do things in. Sit and watch the world go by, have a quiet drink or smoke at the end of a long hot day, somewhere for the pets and kids to play, somewhere to do some exercise, somewhere to eat, somewhere to have a party, a BBQ, some people deliberately plant wildlife friendly plants in the (probably forlorn) hope of preserving enough biodiversity to stop local ecosystems collapsing, or just some pretty flowers, perhaps a few fresh herbs for the kitchen. Suggesting that people would welcome an additional tiny revenue stream by replacing all that and more with a likely monoculture of fuel plants at the cost of quality of life is, well, farcical.

Using the yards for biofuel production doesn't have to interfere with the uses you listed.

Hydrogen is an intermediary, like electricity, a means of transporting and using the energy from other sources.  So it can't be compared to petroleum.

Your analogy of hydrogen being an intermediary on the way to powering a BEV is complete nonsense.  Hydrogen ultimately will be produced from electricity.

There are processes that make hydrogen from sunlight without making electricity first. Not sure how they will ultimately compare to electrolysis powered by PV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Photobiological_water_splitting

[Cerebus]

A large part of the popularity of BEVs is based on hype.

There speaks a man who hasn't driven one, or at least lived with one for a while. The popularity, among those who have driven them, is that they are good to drive. I'm a petrol head of long standing, having driven a range of cars and motorbikes, for the cars mostly "performance" cars including some serious exotica and I like driving EVs. My PHEV gets driven almost exclusively in EV mode where it only has 66kW/88bhp available to drag its 1735 kg kerb weight around, but it doesn't feel like "only" 38kW/51bhp per tonne, it feels more responsive and tractable than the 130bhp/tonne sports car it replaced and that I liked so much, and couldn't find anything comparable in performance or handling, that I've stuck to driving for the last 22 years.

Then you add not having to listen to a petrol or diesel engine drone at you all the time, or the vibrations from the same, and it's a different world. Quiet, fast, calm, what's not to like.

[Cerebus]

Using the yards for biofuel production doesn't have to interfere with the uses you listed.

Have you tried playing football (any of the four kinds) in a cornfield, wheatfield, or in the middle of any other crop? Or, cricket, tennis, badminton, croquet, boule, even table tennis.