South Korea plans a pivot to hydrogen. Should we care? Well, South Korea, with a population of 52 million, is the tenth largest economy in the world, has the fifth largest steel industry in the world, is a major producer of electronics, automobiles (# 5 in world) and batteries (#2), and the home to huge international corporations with world class technological abilities. The country has little in the way of natural resources (it has coal reserves but imports 99% of its coal consumption, and that’s it. In November 2021, the cabinet approved a hydrogen target for 2050, with intermediate goals. Basically, the government wants to replace coal consumption with renewables (the government controls the electric company) and replace oil imports with hydrogen and encourage big industrial users of energy to turn to hydrogen. (Korea has a big steel industry, a main target for conversion.) News stories say that the […]