The now eagerly promoted hydrogen economy gives us the opportunity to make a point about the current fossil fuel market. Because people are not yet used to Hydrogen as a ‘commodity’ and its origine is easy to imagine it lays out our argument about the so called ‘carboncredit’ system in a way that is easy to grasp, so here goes nothing :
We read a tweet that says “Path to emission-free Hydrogen at 1$/kg “. This seems a normal expression of the value of one Kilo of hydrogen in the market. But there is a glaring assumption we don’t see as necessary, namely that the cost of hydrogen is expressed in USD. Why would you do that? You may say “well you have to trade the hydrogen how else would you do that”. Well, to begin, we all know banks can print USD at will, so what the above implies is, and this is wat people seem to be oblivious of, that All hydrogen is owned by banks.
Your response is “No man, the Hydrogen is sold for USD which are used to generate it!”. This may certainly seem that way, but imagine for a moment a world in which there was only hydrogen as energy carrier. In that world we would make solar panels with hydrogen, we would drive trucks with panels on hydrogen, we would melt nickel and make hydrolizers using hydrogen, we would make electric cables with hydrogen. That world is not difficult to imagine, it is a world where you replace fossil fuels with hydrogen, so much like the world we live in today.
How then would you pay for Hydrogen, if what you needed to create the Hydrogen was only Hydrogen? The only way you could pay for hydrogen in USD is if someone somehow sold Hydrogen for USD. But why would you need USD? You would not! The Hydrogen producer could simply own a Hydrogen storage facility, from where you can distribute the gas to whoever needs it. It could also create a Hydrogen current, the “H2”, and lend it out to whoever wanted to start a business or needed something build. Then those people could allocate their H2 credit to producers and subcontractors who would deliver goods and services for them. Those subcontractors could not do it with USD, because they could not buy Hydrogen for USD!
For those with a quick mind you will now have understood that energy (carried in H2 or raw) is its own currency. It is hyper ‘liquid’, everyone has a use for it. This makes it easier to see that we now live in a world where credit is mainly Carbon credit. Our money is a way to allocate fossil fuels to producers of goods and services. It makes it easy to see that to keep accounting Wind and Solar energy in USD is a bit of a fraudulent activity that banks want to do, but that the owner of the solar or wind or hydrogen plant should NOT want to do. This is because it draws those energy sources into a system that can set an arbitrary price for fossil fuels, a system in which the USA can always print money, so always can have everything for free!
What this post also hopes to demonstrate is that banks are not impartial when it comes to moving away from fossil fuels. They are existentially linked to fossil fuel cashflow. They have gotten the exclusive right to sell it and they want to keep doing it! They make you want USD by showing you it buys the world, and it does not want you to understand that its underlying value is based on centrally distributed energy carriers or sources. That is why wind farms have to be highly financialized and far away out to sea, not close to you where you can understand that if you owned the turbines, your electricity would be free and yours to sell.
This post should create an itch of understanding, something that escapes most people, who simply think “money buys everything”. They are wrong, energy buys everything because everything is made with energy. Money is something that is monoplized by a banking system as a smart move, and we need to wake up to how that monopoly obstructs our attempt to have a happy future!
We sometimes hear “The energy sector is only X% of the economy”, the above should also help you understand that the energy sector is 100% of any economy. Even in ancient times : no farmers, no economy!