>>For hydrogen to replace coal, oil and gas would require immense quantities of hydrogen, needing huge quantities of reliable electricity to generate it.<<
Not sure that is a correct statement with all due respect. Take a look. A few years ago, a radio station owner was diagnosed with cancer and was researching a way to kill the cancer and not healthy cells...brilliant mind this guy had.
Ended up discovering that if you injected copper sulfide into a hot dog weenie, placed the weenie in the path of high frequency radio waves, the area injected with the copper sulfide would heat up..leaving the remainder of the weenie..unaffected.
I say that to say this. The radio station owner inadvertently discovered a way to agitate hydrogen and oxygen molecules by injecting these same high frequency radio waves on to a beaker of saltwater, thus releasing the hydrogen.
Two universities picked up his research at the end of his life and thereafter...verified the results.
Imagine ocean water being turned to fuel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlML5ZFbwqA
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/canWaterBurn.php
https://www.livescience.com/1861-remarkable-discovery-scientists-burn-saltwater.html
The two non-video links that you provided were from articles from 2007. The video was not posted on Youtube until 2018 but the actual video was from 2007 as well. Do ya think that maybe if this was something that had promise for producing hydrogen more efficiently than other methods that maybe something might have happened since that time?
Ocean water is going to be turned into lithium for LiFePO4 cells bank on it.
There is on avg 10kg of metallic lithium in a 80kWh pack. The Saudis have a way to get lithium metal from water at $5 per kg of Lithium in energy costs with the byproducts worth more than the lithium itself. Check out the science in my other post.
I also have solar panels my leased model S was getting the equivalent of 27 cents per gallon in fuel costs buying back off peak power. Texas is a netmeter State I could have got those kWh back in a net meter agreement at zero cost but I’d rather sell peak power during the day directly to ERCOT and then buy back whole sale power at night for the TDU charge plus whole sale rate which I can get at for 3.2 to 3.6 cents almost every night.
Even without ocean lithium there is so much in the shale well flow back brines that the USA will never run out. UT Austin is already commercializing their tech to do just this.