Public awareness around energy transition is a challenge. Awareness of it's impacts, needs and benefits, helps with adoption of new and revived energy systems. Adoption of the latest technology is a complex challenge that effects every stage of developing an effective technological structure for energy transition that is just.

The lobby of fossil fuels is rampant in creating bottle necks for successful development of alternative energy systems that can ease transition; such as the hydrogen economy. 

Another piece of fairly meaningless Green babble. As usual the fossil fuel lobby is blamed for the failure of alternative energy systems. This avoids having to accept that the demands of the Green lobby won’t actually work, especially in the demanded time scales.

It is typical for the Green lobby to make demands but not offer any solutions ‘Just Stop Oil’ ‘Insulate Britain’. How? What is the cost? What resources are required? What is the EROEI? There is the rather mistaken view that there are infinite resources available for ‘Green’ things. Green jobs, especially well paid ones, are somehow a benefit and not a burden on the consumer.

Hydrogen vehicles have been around for decades:

1959 Allis Chalmers Fuel cell tractor. It worked, they plowed a field or two with it.

https://www.si.edu/object/allis-chalmers-fuel-cell-tractor:nmah_687671

2002 Mercedes Benz A class fuel cell. It was designed with a sandwich floor to make space for batteries and fuel cells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_F-Cell

2005 BMW Hydrogen 7. It worked, production and storage of liquid hydrogen was too energy intensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7

Were these all stopped by the fossil fuel lobby or by technical difficulties and costs?

The next big thing is heat pumps. These are probably a good idea if designed into a new build or installed as a replacement in a relatively modern well insulated building. Retrofitting old buildings will cause more problems and costs than any gains. The German Green Party is trying install a heat pump in it’s party headquarters in Berlin. They started in 2019 and after spending EUR 5 million they still have no heat.

https://notrickszone.com/2023/06/13/green-party-headquarters-heat-pump-debacle-5-million-euros-cost-still-no-heat/

You may well cry ‘Climate Denier Website’ but I have also looked at the original German, Der Spiegel is behind a paywall.

https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/erhebliche-probleme-gruene-kaempfen-seit-jahren-mit-waermepumpen-einbau-in-parteizentrale_id_195957333.html

The Green movement is trying to push this onto  the public when they can’t make it work themselves.

Ok, so what is the solution to reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses? We can't just keep saying "that technical solution won't work, and that technical solution won't work". We're engineers, we're the ones who are supposed to have the skills to come up with technical solutions.

Thank you Andy, a very valid response and one the IET should be considering, not the woolly drivel that started this thread. My response as an engineer:

The initial solution is to focus on Nuclear and Hydro. These are long lived dispatchable energy sources with low greenhouse gas emissions (some may argue about emissions and other environmental impacts from large reservoirs). There is a lot of development work being carried out on small modular reactors to reduce build time and complexity. With some used fuel reprocessing this will keep the lights on for a few hundred years until nuclear fusion works.

The electricity grid infrastructure needs to be reinforced, especially on the local level if building heating is to be electric. This could be a simple as splitting the street distribution cables and feeding them from both ends. Being able to place nuclear power plants near the consumer will ease the expansion/reinforcement of the national grid. Some high energy consumption companies are already looking at their own SMRs to supply electricity and process heat.

Urban transport is best dealt with by trams, light rail and trolly busses. Rural transport and agriculture is more problematic and will probably remain with fossil fuels. Electric vehicles have their place, especially in reducing pollution in urban areas but the weight problem has to be addressed (although this is also a problem with a lot of current ICE vehicles). Higher weight causes more road damage (to something around w⁴) as well as more particle emissions. Can this be handled by legislation? How much additional weight is due to safety or emission control requirements and how much is due to bling?

Long haul air and sea travel is also a problem for the future once the low hanging fruit has been dealt with.

There will be fossil fuels available for a long time to come. The petrochemical industry will still need oil and gas feeds for lubricating oils, plastics for insulation (electrical and thermal), paints and protective coatings, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers etc. The now waste petrol and diesel from this production can still be used as a fuel when necessary.

Hydrogen seems very inefficient. Production by electrolysis or steam reformation and carbon capture are both wasteful.  Carbon capture and sequestration also seems to consume more fuel than is sensible. I do know the technology is in it’s early stages but it may be more sensible to capture the CO2 and then use it in greenhouses to promote plant growth as is being done in the pilot project at KEZO near where I live (waste heat from the refuse incinerator is also used to heat the greenhouses).

I don’t see a significant place for low energy density sources such a solar PV and wind, the EROEI is just not good enough and a rapid installation rate will increase CO2 levels until the eventual payback. If you believe some of the quoted figure for Transient Climate Response (TCR) and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) this will be a problem.

This brings up the next problem: Over what timescale do we have to reduce emissions? There is a significant difference between the science based parts of the IPCC and NASA and the political headlines of Greenpeace, WWF, ER, Stop Oil, etc. If they are saying the ‘Science is Settled’ it is dogma not science. If they are talking uncertainties, error bands, model deficiencies then it is probably science. This time scale is important. If we have to reach ‘Net Zero’, whatever that really means, by 2050 there will be a lot of finite resources unnecessarily wasted. If we have to reach it by 2100 then a lot of the problems can be dealt with by natural obsolescence/end of lifespan. Gradually replace the old badly insulated housing stock, run fossil fueled things until they are worn out to maximize the recovery of embedded energy. All the models are running much warmer than reality and most of the disaster headlines are based on the unrealistic RPC 8.5 scenario rather than the more realistic Business as Usual RPC 6 or the Doing a Bit Better RPC 4.5 scenarios.

My response to the OP was to suggest that the problem should be looked at in the same way as a Capital Expenditure Request (CER).

The oil and gas companies have a huge amount of engineering and project management expertise. I suspect that they could (and maybe already have) produce a rough version of this CER. This would allow them to see what can be realistically carried out to reduce the demand for their products and when they should stop investing in development of oil and gas fields.

I know you tend to be more woke/green than me. What would your proposals be? As Simon suggested maybe we should submit a proposal 

A path to functional solution is a whole lot of this won't work and that won't work.

Reducing fossil fuel emission should be a collection of solutions starting from cutting down private jet travel, use of biodegradable waste, alternative transportation options (restructuring cities and towns to allow cycling path for instance), avoiding cutting down trees(Amazon) and improving forests cover (the world over tbh), carbon tax (not Carbon capture and offset nonsense) and a word no one likes, degrowth. Development of infrastructure for alternative energy sources so that its adopted easier. These are all solutions that can be implemented without new technological development but can certainly be helped along by engineers.

Roger, kindly move off my thread, will you? I am absolutely uninterested in whatever long-winded basic explanation you've given after stating my comment as woolly drivel, which is your second attempt at being disrespectful. 

Woke isn't in any way synonymous with Green, lol. As I cannot be as unprofessional and disrespectful as you, I will not be stating anything else. 

Roger, kindly move off my thread, will you? I am absolutely uninterested in whatever long-winded basic explanation you've given after stating my comment as woolly drivel, which is your second attempt at being disrespectful. 

Woke isn't in any way synonymous with Green, lol. As I cannot be as unprofessional and disrespectful as you, I will not be stating anything else.