Hydrogen pipe dreams
A few months back I posted about how hydrogen fuel cell cars actually are significantly less fuel-efficient than current gasoline-powered cars due to the fact that producing hydrogen fuel is itself a horribly inefficient process given the present methods. Ed Ring, editor of EcoWorld, recently published an article titled “The Hydrogen Hoax” explaining his belief that hydrogen research should take a back seat to further development and implementation of technologies which are commercially viable today: clean diesel cars, serial hybrid cars, and battery powered cars.
Will scientists figure out someday how to store hydrogen in practical, economical ways? Will they ever figure out how to build cheap, safe and durable fuel cells? The answer to these questions is yes, but probably not before they figure out how to develop ultra-capacitors or cheap batteries with extremely high energy densities.
It’s a short editorial, give it a read if you get a minute.
