Diesel & petrol alternatives? Your thoughts please

Good point, it has proved to be the 1st & only Frank, my one was much easier to spot. I guess some folk attract em🤷🏻‍♂️

Financially an electric local runabout would be a total waste of time for us. Just checked and it is our Yaris 22nd birthday today. It can't have much longer sadly. We both use it and in a normal year it has typically done 1,500 miles during the 35 weeks that we are home and retired. No idea about last year as we did not go away (just checked about 1,200 last 12 months through our not eating out every week and Welsh Travel restrictions. 

Some of us, after four years on this thread, are now getting our previous posts quoted back at us. I'm glad to see progress on here! 

There are all sorts of developments in the proverbial pipe line but change is the main one and it might be hard for some to accept but it will happen.

Could well be. Blue Hydrogen seem a much better option for HGVs, buses, trains etc. It could even be the way forward for Motorhomes and tow cars.

Its also being mixed with Natural Gas to reduce carbon emissions in the same way more ethanol is being mixed with petrol. (E5 going to E10).

Err, I obviously need to do some research because my initial thought was-great but now, adding natural gas which is a fossil fuel to Hydrogen that produces moisture in exhaust seems counter intuitive☹️🤔

Sorry, what i meant is hydrogen is already, (in some areas) being introduced to the natural gas supply that is piped to your home. The Nett effect is a reduction in carbon emissions from boilers, fires, etc.

Its being introduced at a level that can be safely burnt by all existing appliances, If it was to be introduced at a higher concentration then modifications to burners would be required similar to when natural gas replaced town / coal gas in the sixty's. 

Sorry for the confusion.

Edit

https://hynet.co.uk/

Clearly a perspective from a producer, but informative non the less.

Time will tell. How often do hear that the grid was at full capacity on cold winter nights. Have they built some new power stations that we have not been told about?

Good to be sceptical Rocky. Blue Hydrogen is hydrogen produced using the Methane Steam reformation process (which on its own is grey hydrogen), and adds carbon capture and storage to it (to make it blue). So far it's a concept being pushed by the oil companies as a "green" energy solution. But is uses natural gas and energy to produce, and more energy to provide the capture and storage solution. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production#Environmental_impact

Green hydrogen (hydrogen made from renewable electricty by electrolysis) is truly zero carbon, but is about 30% efficient from source to wheel compared to 70% with battery electric  for the same driven distance, so is kind of expensive. 

https://www.volkswagenag.com/content/dam/online-kommunikation/brands/corporate/world/presence/stories/2019/08/wasserstoff-oder-batterie/Website_Wasserstoff_vs_Batterie_Vergleich_EN_1163.png

Essentially - you pay a very large amount for the perceived convenience of hydrogen as a fuel. 

There is a great podcast here on the subject, (Fully charged) hosted by Robbert Llewelyn, (Kryton from Red dwarf, and Scrapheap) 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/27lByvU1GoYEKpQSuJ1cTu?si=369709347e324630

Hydrogen is one of the options being examined by the railway companies. The one drawback in use is storage , as to make it viable is the very High pressure it has to be stored at to give any sort of miles per fill up , as the same with the bulk storage tanks ,

UK peak consumption has dropped over time, the high point was in 2005 and we are down over 10% since then. 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/322874/electricity-consumption-from-all-electricity-suppliers-in-the-united-kingdom/

They have built new power stations since that time - mostly wind turines, but mainly, our consumption has dropped significantly.