The biggest trouble is generating it cleanly and if it's not cleanly generated then doing the next best thing and tapping an existing dirty source to create it.
Another problem is usage. A while back Toyota opened up their early work on the hydrogen fuel engine for the world to adopt. As is usually the case in human history the world refused to embrace utopia and started down the path of adopting battery-powered vehicles made with lithium and cobalt mined by kids in the Democratic Republic of Congo (editor: you want to calm it down a little there, James?)
For a short amount of time, it has been considered that battery power was the way we were heading and that hydrogen would be relegated to commercial plants powering forklifts and perhaps commercial fleet vehicles. The infrastructure for hydrogen just wasn't there.
However...
Over the last few weeks, I've seen my feed become swamped by hydrogen news. Maybe it's just because I've been talking about it and my phone is listening to me so it keeps putting news articles about it to me. (another rant for another time)
Maybe there actually is a movement going on in the hydrogen space and maybe we need to pay attention.
Articles I'm looking at:
First up is one that initially made me tense then slightly less so. I'm a nuclear energy fan. Always have been and always will be. Germany is choosing possibly the worst time to shut down their amazing nuclear plant network.
And moving to gas-fired plants. I know, right?
But if you read the German news (ten years of German in school paying off) then you'll see there's more to it.
Javier sums it up nicely...