Scottish islands produce 30% excess clean energy, turn it into hydrogen

Change happens in small steps. First, supply of clean energy. Then abundant supply. Then economic superiority. Then oil-powered tankers disappear.

If you try to put the last step first, the whole thing falls apart.

you realize of course, eventually the tanker will be fueled with hydrogen..?

> The idea of using clean energy to produce hydrogen to then ship it off with a crude oil powered tanker is just .. beyond me.

In that case it might blow your mind the fact that natural gas is shipped in crude oil powered tankers.

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

Well, is it really all that absurd to use an existing vessel with a working engine (which uses whatever kind of fuel, not really relevant) to transport some random kind of cargo?

In my opinion it's not absurd at all.

Would you advocate for only allowing transportation of renewable fuels with means of transportation that use renewable energy themselves? That'd mean throwing away quite a few newly built engines and many more old and perfectly working ones and building new ones ... that'd seem like a waste to me.

Making the shipping industry carbon neutral is of course part of the task .. but according to a quick web search worldwide shipping amounts to ~ 4.5 % of greenhouse gas emissions .. that's only a fraction and not the big chunk that ought to get all the attention.