Well, any plan for green energy has major holes in it. If it was easy someone would have already done it. The EU is taking this very seriously however as part of their climate plans.
The big problem with the hydrogen economy is not the conversion of the gas plants, it is having enough wind to generate the hydrogen in the first place. You need excess wind capacity to make hydrogen, and no private venture will invest into wind turbines that aren’t needed. Without a strong government hand shaping this market it will not happen.
In Des Moines more than 80% of all power comes from renewable sources. Despite that my power costs are good. Iowa has a lot of land relative to people, but still there are a lot of power that other states are throwing away. (Texas as someone else mentioned is also doing well)
Having their own grid has some serious downsides as they found out last February but the upside is that they get to run things so that their installed base of renewable power is larger than the backlog of projects waiting for approval which is the case most of the country is in.
Moving quickly to renewable energy with only a few downsides sounds like a great tradeoff. Especially if they're downsides that consumers can work around.
The big problem with the hydrogen economy is not the conversion of the gas plants, it is having enough wind to generate the hydrogen in the first place. You need excess wind capacity to make hydrogen, and no private venture will invest into wind turbines that aren’t needed. Without a strong government hand shaping this market it will not happen.
If you are looking for a skeptical take, here’s a good one: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/06/new-eu-hydrogen-policy-...