I'll just rephrase my usual argument, here and on youtube.
Currently hydrogen is planned as a reducing gas and heating gas in industry, for long haul trucking, marine and aviation. This will require vast quantities of hydrogen, quite regardless of potential use in seasonal storage, domestic heating and consumer cars where there are arguably alternatives (nuclear or vast overprovisioning vs seasonal storage, heatpumps vs domestic hydrogen heating, EV vs hydrogen cars).
What are the alternatives at net zero for industry, long haul trucking, marine and aviation?
- Synthetic fuel? Not actually an alternative, needs hydrogen to begin with ... but will be likely way more expensive than transporting/storing/using hydrogen directly.
- Carbon capture offsetting with continued fossil fuel use? Atrociously expensive.
- biofuel? Just for aviation/marine use would require more arable land and irrigation than we have on the planet (salt water crops are a boondoggle). Closed bioreactors could work, but atrociously expensive again.
Hydrogen is truly horrible, every alternative at net zero is worse.
Every realistic net zero alternative has more problems to overcome than hydrogen, not less. This is why hydrogen is going ahead regardless of all the nay saying, because the nay sayers aren't coming with real alternatives and 2050 is too close to listen to them.