The Energy Solutions We Actually Need — Hydrogen and Geothermal

Hydrogen

While electric vehicles get most of the headlines, EVs are questionable “green” solutions, at best. Advancements in hydrogen and geothermal energy are creating more promising and impactful alternative energy strategies.

In Germany large-scale production of green hydrogen (a clean substance using electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen) has commenced. Hydrogen not only has the potential to replace fossil fuels, but it is also a clean substance made from a variety of primary energy sources, including water.

The United States government is subsidizing green energy, which includes green hydrogen. This will likely accelerate production and may prove not only more powerful but green hydrogen can potentially overwhelm other current and over-subsidized alternative energy solutions. Hydrogen represents an actual alternative energy solution.

Geothermal

Another potential new alternative energy is geothermal — using the Earth’s heat to generate, capture, and distribute energy. Geothermal works by circulating water through hot rock deep beneath the Earth’s surface. This heat energy is converted to steam powering electricity-generating turbines.

Geothermal innovations are showing that in addition to the direct generation of heat and converting this into electricity, geothermal power plants are capable of metering energy up and down as needed and storing energy over the course of several days — effectively acting as a large long-lasting battery.

This means that geothermal plants can act as an essential energy source when wind and solar production falters. But it can solve one of the most vexing problems for networks of alternative energy — energy storage in a cost-efficient and long-lasting system. This is potentially an even more significant breakthrough leapfrogging other attempts at battery technology advancements.

Battery technology has been bogged down and breakthroughs have been limited, at best. Geothermal energy storage can be a powerful augmentation to the energy storage solution to an alternative energy network.

Hydrogen and geothermal energy have the potential to provide clean sources of consistent and powerful energy. These could be the solutions we really need.