It's true that nature requires that energy must come from somewhere (there's no free lunch). However thermodynamics also tells us that there are two types of energy. The two types are entropy and enthalpy. Enthalpy is useful work while entropy is wasted energy or heat. The "name of the game" with energy generation is to minimize entropy and maximize enthalpy.

One of my pet hates is using electricity for heating. Using electricity to heat a house is like using gold to line a septic tank. Because gold does not corrode, is easy to work and nontoxic, an idiot could argue that gold is a good material for building a septic tank. The same sort of stupidity applies towards electricity. Electricity is very convenient for converting into heat. However electricity is a form of pure enthalpy that required a lot of entropy to generate. A natural gas power plant's thermal efficiency maybe only 50% with much of the original energy going up the cooling tower was waste heat.

The beauty of this high temperature hydrogen generation scheme is that less enthalpy is being used to make the hydrogen. Ultimately less waste heat goes up the cooling tower. This is a good thing. Using nuclear energy to produce hydrogen is a good idea provided a distribution system can be worked out (a big problem).

By the way, natural gas is used to heat my home and for cooking. Almost all of my electrical lighting is based upon super efficient florescent devices (can't beat quantum efficiency). My home's electrical consumption is always significantly below the baseline value.

Gary