I have had many posts on the soaring consumer electricity costs suffered by the residents of those jurisdictions that have proceeded furthest down the road to all-renewable power.

These are places like Germany, the UK, and California, where consumer electricity prices are double to triple the U.S. average.

But is that difference the result of their race to convert to wind and solar electricity generation, or does it stem instead from “bad luck,” or something else? Even as electricity prices in many of these places soar, advocates of wind and solar generation continue to claim that those resources are cheaper than the hydrocarbon alternatives.

Do they have a point?

In the fantasy of the zero-emissions electricity future, there will either be regular devastating blackouts, or something must back up the intermittent wind and solar generation. In New York we call that imaginary something the “DEFR” (Dispatchable Emissions Free Resource).

But what is it? Nuclear has been blocked for decades, especially in the blue jurisdictions that are most aggressively pursuing the wind/solar future. Batteries are technologically not up to the job, and also wildly too expensive. That leaves hydrogen. Anybody with another idea, kindly speak up.

I’ve had several posts discussing the question of whether hydrogen could do this job.

Now comes along an August 18 article in a peer-reviewed journal called Energy Science & Engineering, with the title “A review of challenges with using the natural gas system for hydrogen.”