[thx-2718]

I think they may have used Africa as an example not as the only place.

Solar can be exported, for example, as pure hydrogen or potentially as hydrogen in ammonia, or possibly other easier to transport material (I'm not a chemist).

Places that receive high amounts of sunlight like Australia would also work for this.

As opposed to already tying energy needs to contested regions.

[robbomacrae]

Interesting idea. I went and got chatGPT4 to help me do some back of napkin math and it looks like hydrogen won't be able to compete with coal which is probably between $50-$100 per MWh for Poland. Even assuming the electricity (the biggest cost factor in electrolysis) is free through some carbon credit initiative, the cost of producing 1 MWh of fuel cells is still over $100 and the cost of converting that back to electricity is $17. The cost of shipping is hard to estimate but could potentially be quite small - $1 per MWh.

Now if we could somehow raise the price of coal to account for its externalities.. by stipulating minimum taxes on coal and imposing tariffs on any countries that don't implement those... then we might have a chance.

But I think wind energy (producing or importing) is probably Poland's best bet for getting off of coal.

[pjc50]

Hmm.. 1MWh of H2 is about 30kg, https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/20004-cost-electrolytic... claims $5/kg, which puts it at about $150. Seems reasonable.

I suspect doing it through economics alone isn't going to happen, instead some version of the Large Combustion Plant Directive will simply ban coal generation in Poland.