The article I mentioned was in progress is this one:
In answer to your questions Point by point:
1. The heat generated when we burn green hydrogen can never be more than the heat that would have been generated by the solar energy just heatng the planet, if neither we nor nature used it.
2. Yes hydrogen being carbon free, it's fine to burn it, though we wouldn't want to be just burning it away for nothing. The only exhaust products that come from burning it are water and oxygen, and widespread use of this would actually have benefits by filtrating and circulating both air and water.
3. I don't really have an objection to heatpumps, they work well in certain applications, but we should be aware they do grab the energy from somewhere else, to create the nice environment a house might get by it, and that energy if it was from say, deeper in the Earth, is effectively funneling that energy to the surface and emitting it to the air, that obviously has to add to the temperature of the environment. We have to include that energy as mathematically negative, it is something in the Earth that we took, which has to have ultimately irreversible effect, at least on temperature.
If we could make heatpumps from materials created entirely from sunlight, say by activating hydrogen in some way then wow, bring it on, that would be really cool, but I have a feeling in practice we will find it easy enough to just solar power appropriate simple air con and heating systems
4. The distribution of the energy of the sun dictates we collect it on a distributed basis. The biggest communities would be the ones needing the most energy, like airports and factories, but even then they would probably need to ship in hydrogen to top up. An airport for example probably would not have enough real estate around it to supply all the fuel to all the planes that might pass through it.
The story linked above shows the basis of a community refueling point, this would be a tap straight off the tank, offered to vehicles. If we had one full 65L tank at 700 bar, and offered this to a compressed hydrogen powered car, it could provide the car with workable refuel, though maybe not filling it up, we could to if we added more bottles, refuelling less often.
The ideal scenario would be if hydrogen could be liquidised in a domestic installation, this would really supercharge the whole hydrogen industry. I think we will see that very soon, I think the development of this has been deliberately nobbled until now.
5. Indeed there is a town in UK already being set up to be heated by hydrogen fired boliers. I don't see why it wouldn't also be good for cookers, for those folk that prefer cooking by gas. Again efficiency is not so important, in the case of hydrogen created from sunlight.
6. Might be a good idea to add something that gives hydrogen an odour, if it was to be used for cooking :). But the burning of methane is never good, it produces CO2.
7. Wind and hydro are mathematically negative, we lose something from Earth when we take them, though we haven't seen exactly what might be lost yet, it has to have a cost to the environment. If we draw an energy flow diagram of a wind turbine, it has energy going in from the wind, an amount of energy lost as heat, and an amount of energy coming out that we put to use. The heat energy lost is something adding to temperature that would not exist if we didn't take the power out of the wind. So strictly speaking we have to say it is a mathematically negative, technnically destructive method of generating energy, though it isn't as bad obviously as fossil fuels use. Personally I think use of them will naturally fade out when the benefits of domestic and community solar hydroogen become apparent, we just wont need wind and hydropower any longer.
8. Not my idea to think of money as energy, it's just an observation, notice KWhrs are exchangeable for money in markets, but thanks for the compliment, we appreciate the same things, I think, so the compliment goes to you too.
