There is an obsession with carbon, element 6 on the periodic table. It's one of the most common elements on earth, and is 18.5% of the human body, second only to oxygen. Unfortunately, when carbon is combined with oxygen CO2 is the result and that molecule, which makes up .00421 of the earth's atmosphere, is said to be causing an immediate rise in global temperatures and must somehow be removed and stored deep into the earth, perhaps forever.
The most common and reliable source of energy is currently the combustion of fossil fuels that produce electricity, power transportation and industry and heat homes and businesses. This process also creates gaseous CO2, ultimately causing the melting glaciers, rising seas, wild fires, torrential rains, floods and other tragedies laid at the feet of global warming.
This entire scenario is written by research institutions of western academia. Government efforts in exploring the situation are through contractual alliances with research institutions. Scientists employed by business and industry have been occupied with other, commercial, research often with the aim of more efficient destruction of ideological opponents.
The latest effort to arrest the baking of the planet has been federal awards of funds to research the development of hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels because its combustion produces no CO2. The US Department of Energy, created by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 and headed today by former Democratic Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, has authorized the establishment of seven Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs across the country with about $1 billion for each one. Grand Forks, North Dakota will be the site of the Upper Midwest effort, centered at the University of North Dakota's Energy & Environmental Research Center. The federal funding will enable UND to hire more employees, administrators and faculty, build bigger and better facilities, and carry on vital research.
No doubt some of that research will be devoted to safely handling extremely inflammable hydrogen. Films remain, if not actual memories, of the incineration of the German zeppelin Hindenburg at Lakehurst, NJ in 1937. The incident set back the use of hydrogen in transportation, maybe forever.
President Biden and former law professor Granholm must believe that a $7 billion "investment" with no promise of a practical return, is a wise move. The research institutions involved agree. UND already has its EERC, currently a 15 acre on-campus facility with over a quarter of a million square feet of labs, offices, etc. The supervision of their disbursement of millions of dollars isn't mentioned.
In the free market, entreprenurial, economic environment that is supposedly the United States, we'd like to think that if the development of hydrogen as a fuel and its displacement of fossil fuels was of great importance, an existential thing, private companies would be scrambling into the fray, confident that they would be able to solve the problem and reap the rewards. That hasn't been the case. Basic, or even advanced research, especially in areas that may not be financially fruitful, is no longer done by the private sector. They don't need to. Research institutions are standing in line for federal funds financing research that, if it produces practical results, will be used by profitable private entities. Considering the post-modern accounting system used by the federal government it would be interesting to know exactly how the $7 billion figure came to be. The country is about half-way to a socialist scientific community in the wrappings of education.
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My best man's father, James Thomas, a Lakehurst resident, was tending a line for the Hindenburg when she burned. The descent was slow and he was easily able to run away from the crash area. He was a teenager at the time. A few years later he was in the army fighting the Germans.
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