Reply #15: Do a quick Google search on "hydrogen versus batteries".

[Gregorian]

It's easy to find the basic arguments on the first few hits. Where do we get the hydrogen? It takes a huge amount of electricity to create.

Hydrogen is simply a way to keep us using what we are already using. Petroleum. And much more of it. Especially if we start to produce hydrogen via the grid.

For example, there's this off of one of the design forums-

http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?p=82033
Just one post-

The Hydrogen fuel cell is not a viable solution in the long run. Let me separate the hype from the facts for you.

* The advocates of hydrogen say that pound per pound, it provides more energy than just about anything, but what they don't tell you is that hydrogen is such a light, low-density gas that a few pounds of it take up such a huge volume at atmospheric pressure that in order to have any usable density, it has to be compressed. Keep in mind, the Hindenburg was kept afloat with hydrogen; it's a lighter gas than even helium. Compressing hydrogen to a significantly usable density is very energy intensive, and even after compression, you have to transport far more of it to even get the equivalent amount of energy from a lesser quantity of other fuel.

* Hydrogen is conventionally obtained by electrolyzing water using electricity generated from some existing source of energy. The hydrogen then needs to be compressed to a usable density, which takes energy. Then, a lot of this stuff has to be transported, consuming yet more energy. All for what? for use in a fuel cell, where it is turned back into electricity. Each step along the way incurs a significant loss in energy.

In other words, hydrogen isn't a real fuel; we use other fuels to generate electricity to electrolyze water to get hydrogen. If it's not fuel, what is it? A very lousy battery.

Hydrogen is such a dead end that the European Fuel Cell symposium has decided that it will no longer accept entries, papers, nor talks on hydrogen fuel cells; no matter how efficient we make it, we simply can't make using electricity to electrolyze water to make hydrogen just to turn in back into electricity more efficent than simply using the electricity in the first place.

Here are some links you may want to read on this matter, re: the European Fuel Cell symposium rejecting Hydrogen:
http://www.thewatt.com/article-1210-nested-1-0.html

http://www.thewatt.com/article-1238-nested-1-0.html

The future is not about the hydrogen economy; it's about the electron economy, and the technology to grasp it is already within reach. Hydrogen is just a pipe dream and a red herring thrown in our way by the ones with the interests to protect. The oil companies want to convert their hydrocarbons into hydrogen + sequestered carbon, but not because it's a better technology; this is to keep us dependent on them no matter what fuel it is that we end up using.