The economic trash can called 'hydrogen' remains open for business. Many problems requiring breakthroughs in basic science, and no solutions amenable to mass-production. Stop kicking this dead horse and let the market decide.

This would be comical if it wasn't as serious. Hydrogen is a CARRIER FUEL, not a PRIMARY FUEL. There is a world of difference between PRIMARY FUELS and CARRIER FUELS. Primary fuels are the basic starting materials for the energy business. Crude oil, coal and natural gas are examples of PRIMARY FUELS. Carrier fuels are just ways of delivering the energy to the consumer. Electricity is an important CARRIER FUEL. For the sake of this discussion, it would be meaningful to differentiate between oil (primary fuel) and gasoline (carrier fuel).

Right now, it seems like all the discussion is about the CARRIER FUELS: Ethanol and gasoline, diesel and biodiesel, HYDROGEN, butanol, etc. In reality, the CARRIER FUEL does not really matter. For example, many people seem convinced that eventually we will make the shift to renewable hydrogen - living happily ever after in the land of perpetual motion and no pollution. The fact of the matter is that 90% of today's hydrogen comes from non-renewable sources.

Likewise, in most people's minds, gasoline is just another word for refined crude oil. But it is possible to convert renewable feedstocks into gasoline, using biomass-to-liquid (BTL) technology. The German company Choren (http://www.choren.com/en/) is a good example of that.

The debate about the best CARRIER FUEL is of some importance, but to break the addiction to crude, you need an alternative PRIMARY FUEL, regardless of what CARRIER FUEL you end up using. It should be obvious that neither ethanol nor hydrogen is a replacement for crude, since you cannot replace a PRIMARY FUEL with a CARRIER FUEL. The bottom line is this: what is the best PRIMARY FUEL to replace crude?

It should be obvious that FOOD is a terrible PRIMARY FUEL. Would you burn popcorn to keep your house warm? Of course not. There are cheaper and better fuels for warming the house than popcorn, in spite of the fact that popcorn is renewable, locally produced, etc. etc.

The ideal PRIMARY FUEL would be cheap, plentiful and locally available. Call me unimaginative, but I can think of no better PRIMARY FUEL than waste: widely available, cheap (sometimes you can get paid for accepting it) and, in large part, renewable (40% of US landfill waste is PAPER).

How much waste do we have? According to DOE and USDA, we have enough to replace a third of our petroleum use (http://feedstockreview.ornl.gov/pdf/billion_ton_vision.pdf). So here we are, getting excited about the "promise" of replacing 1% of our oil use with food (corn ethanol) when we could be doing 33% with a feedstock that is essentially FREE.

What about the other two-thirds? If it depends on the market, we are stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Beyond that, we need an energy crop. Now, the ideal energy crop would be something that grows fast, requires little maintenance/labor and can be harvested mechanically. It should also not require more land than there is available.

The answer, I believe, is ALGAE. Research by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (part of DOE) showed that one could produce about 625 barrels per day of biodiesel on one square mile of pond in the southwestern US (http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf). Since biodiesel has roughly the same energy content per gallon as crude oil, 32,000 square miles (about the size of the state of South Carolina) of ponds could produce all the crude oil the US currently consumes. While that is a lot of land, it is less than 5% than the total US cropland. Difficult, but possible.

Now, again, that research was geared towards a specific CARRIER FUEL (biodiesel). The result from the research does not have to be limited to biodiesel, though. Using BTL technology, the algae can be converted to pretty much the exact same gasoline (and diesel) we are using today. The benefits of doing that is obvious: no need to replace the entire fleet of existing vehicles. No need to replace/supplement the fuel supply system. Just a quiet conversion than nobody would even notice.

Lastly, I want to point out that I am not saying that gasoline (and diesel) will remain the CARRIER FUEL of choice forever. But the challenger should be able to beat the reigning champion without outside help, in the ring known as the marketplace. The internal combustion engine did not need government help to replace the horse: it replaced the horse because it was a better technology. In much the same way the CARRIER FUEL of the future should be able to prove itself superior, without being forced down anyone's throat.

JMartin,
Yes, it is quite possible that electricity would make up a part of the remaining 2/3rds. PHEVs is one way to test the waters in that direction. My main concern with large scale solar, wind and wave would be the fact that you cannot easily match demand peaks with production peaks. Hence the requirement for large storage facilities.

The advantage of BTL from waste (WTL anyone?) over wind/solar/wave would be:
1. A fuel that can be stored relatively cheaply until it is needed.
2. The environmental benefits of recycling the intrinsic energy from the waste.
3. The environmental benefits of taking waste and converting it to non-polluting products.
4. The potential to take biohazardous waste (such as medical waste, sewage sludge) and producing sterile products.
5. Potential to recover fertilizer from the wastes in a form that is not hazardous to handle, unlike for example sewage sludge.

For reference:

$215 million is what the US spends in Iraq in a day, maybe two.

The zinc-air system has all the advantages that hydrogen claims to have plus none of the storage problems. Its biggest disadvantage is that it can't be extracted from fossil fuels. The committee has people from 3 oil companies and 1 coal company.

Sorry, Wintermane, I should include the reference for that quote: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1559637048/sr=8-1/qid=1150938681/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4646689-0855215?%5Fencoding=UTF8

An Engineer...LOL! You are a joke man. Gasoline is refined man...they don't pump the stuff out of an oil well. It's produced. It's not a primary energy carrier. Worse yet...with today's dirtier and dirtier crude oils...you need more and more hydrogen in the refining process to produce gasoline. So that really makes gasoline sort of a tertiary fuel as it requires massive amounts of hydrogen. The hydrogen currently produced just for oil refining is sufficient to fuel over 100 million fuel cell vehicles and the hydrogen being used in refining is moving towards doubling in the next few years with the shift dirtier crudes.

Hydrogen economy: because there's a sucker born every minute.

Oh realy? They why are they ahead of schedual on ALL aspects of the h2 goals? Every single one is ahead of schedual some are already DONE.

There are only 4 things that matter.

1 Can you make enough.

2 Can you move enough.

3 Can you make it cheap enough.

4 Can you cram enough onto the vehicle.

1 Yes
2 yes
3 far ahead of plans ALREADY h2 production is cheaper then gas in some places.
4 With plug in hybrid h2 cars.. yes. With others.. varies a totaly h2 fueled ice car sure cant store enough yet cheaply.


Oh and on the issue of bio fuels.. they still pollute they still requite emmissions control equaipment on the car and that can still get messed up and needs to be monitored anfd repaired..

As for explosion danger.. they already tested it and h2 is already safer then gasoline and getting safer.

When I want to know how solar is doing.. I dont go to the sites that hate solar and I dont listen to the people who want solar to fail. Whe I want to know how nuke is doing again I dont go to such sites.

H2 is doing fine and its backed by a huge number of powerful people and a zillion bucks.

Do I love h2... why? its a freaking molecule for crying out loud! Who givea a flying ardvarrk? What I care about is alot of very useful prgress is being made and no matter if it all works out or not its VERY good for the future. I dont actauly give a rats ass if it becomee uber fuel or not it will be rather damn handy and cool. The futue might be a little less farty cars and a bit more whirrrr cars... THAT I care about.

I dont give a rats ass if its virgin blood as long as I can afford it and my car is nice and the world doesnt go the heck in a handbag I realy dont give a damn.

Here is a simple fact. Gasoline didnt win because it was cheap it also didnt win because it was safe and it sure didnt win because it was easy. It won because alot of rich people forced it to.

The safe system is in force today. The rich are backing h2 and bio. And yes they have the power to force it to work.

Yup when bush pushed alot of stuff changed rapidly. In 1 year the cost of making h2 from methane a renwable gas went down 40%. The ability to make h2 from various low weight hydrocarbons has greatly improved. The ability to make it directly from electricity has also improved as they have found catalysts to boost the process.

Now yes in 150 years or so battery power alone will do the job. But not now. Most batteries cant take more then a 20-25% discharge without shortenting thier working life greatly and that means even todays uber batteries have a real operational range of 40 miles. They tout long range.. but jide how you pay for it they tout fast recharge but again hide the downsides. It simply isnt there yet and wont be for awhile.