Publications: Robin Gaster

Solar and wind are rapidly replacing coal, and many expect it will simply replace natural gas as well. But that’s a mistake: In fact, solar and wind for decades to come will depend on gas to fill variability gaps when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.

Wind and solar power will replace consistently dispatchable electricity from fossil fuels with variable and more unpredictable clean energy. Seasonal shifts and annual variations cannot be handled with batteries or other proposed storage solutions like hydrogen. Natural gas will have to bridge the gap for many decades.

Climate change is a global problem, with two polarized viewpoints making it difficult to find a solution.

Like any new technology, green hydrogen must meet three related challenges: production, distribution and adoption. But it faces far higher-than-advertised hurdles at every stage.

In order for blue hydrogen to decarbonize hard-to-reach sectors like aviation, heavy trucks, shipping, steel, and cement, blue hydrogen must slash costs and effectively capture and either store or use the carbon that’s generated.

Clean hydrogen is expensive to produce, difficult to transport, and a second- or third-best clean energy solution in almost all proposed markets. To help drive the global green transition, a realist approach to hydrogen policy must address all these practical challenges.

Instead of magical thinking that starts with a conclusion and works backward, we need a strategic framework that encourages smart decisions on priorities and maximizes the return on scarce political capital—a strategy that connects the economics, technology, and politics of the green transition.

The drivers that accelerated every transformative innovation since the industrial revolution won’t work for green tech.

The harsh reality is that until clean energy is as cheap and performs as well as dirty energy, the world will not adopt it at anything like the needed scale. So, governments must focus on developing clean energy sources at price and performance parity with dirty fuels — “P3.”

Trying to force adoption of clean energy with subsidies, regulations, and exhortations will fail. The only realistic way to spur the green transition is to develop clean technologies that can reach effective price and performance parity with dirty ones. Then markets will adopt them at scale.