Trump administration cancels $4 billion in subsidies for big oil.

Photo above - "The Hydrogen is Boomin' . . . " Big oil reacts to news that Trump has cancelled subsidies for their Hydrogen refinery . . .

Everyone who thinks Exxon should get taxpayer money instead of paying for their own drilling and refining, please raise your hand. Okay, just a couple of guys wearing bolo ties and Stetsons, at some Houston skyscraper.

Does the result change if I add that the money was going to help Exxon build a hydrogen plant? You know, in case we ever pivot from EVs to hydrogen powered Porsches and F150's? Exxon would like to be ready. Does that make you more enthusiastic about writing checks to Exxon?

Personally, I don’t think pressurized, liquified, or any other form of hydrogen is going to send EV cars to an early grave. But I don’t have a crystal ball. And that’s exactly why I DON’T want taxpayer money used to fund Exxon's hydrogen lab experiment. In case you don’t remember, this is EXACTLY how we ended up shoveling billions of dollars at Tesla and made Elon Musk the planet’s richest sperm donor.

Of course, the climate change movement is likely to be furious that Exxon’s hydrogen gravy train is screeching to a halt. Hydrogen is going to save the planet, don’tcha know? Evidently we were all misled about EV cars . . . weren’t THEY supposed to save the planet? Oh wait . . . someone forgot to tell us we’d still need thousands of power plants – solar, wind, nuclear, tidal, geothermal – to recharge our cars. So driving around with 1,000 pounds of lithium and rare earth metals in the trunk isn’t all that planet-friendly. Even if you don't mind that vast swaths of solar panels have obliterated cornfields and prairies.

Someone has been telling paper pushers in DC that hydrogen is going to fix all that. All we need to do is build as many hydrogen plants as fast we can, which will use solar or geothermal or wind power to turn water into hydrogen (and oxygen). Then we pump it into trucks to be delivered. Or lay thousands of miles of underground pipe, to get it to corner filling stations. Don’t laugh. This could possibly work.

All kidding aside, I concede that hydrogen might conceivably replace the Jet-A fuel (kerosene) for topping off a 747. A full tank is 60,000 gallons. Just one flight! And we’re not going to see battery powered jumbo jets anytime soon. But if United Airlines and Pratt and Whitney think hydrogen jet fuel is so great, shouldn’t they pay for the refineries themselves?

Okay, I’m going to the peanut gallery another chance here. Can someone please start ranting that if the US government doesn’t give billions and trillions in tax dollars to corporate America, then China will win the hydrogen race? And nobody wants that, right?

All of this hydrogen hoo-ha could soon be moot, however. Hydrogen is going to be back eclipsed because fusion energy is coming. And after that someone will discover a way to capture dark energy from the gazillions of neutrinos zapping the earth every second.

I say we should make corporate America pay for their own lab experiments. It’s how the world got Model-T cars, airplanes, computers, smart phones, and Flamin’ Hot ® Cheetos. If China wants to build a hydrogen factory in Wuhan next to the lab that leaked Covid 19 and killed millions, I won’t stand in their way. I’d rather have a catastrophic explosion near some “wet market” 8,000 miles from me, than in Houston.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Trump administration cancels $3.7B in clean energy projects, including at Exxon's Baytown