Re: SC38

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/15/zubrin.htm

The Hydrogen Hoax

...............The sources of hydrogen are abundant. The more you have of something relative to demand for that, the cheaper it’s going to be, the less expensive it’ll be for the consumer.... Hydrogen power is also clean to use. Cars that will run on hydrogen fuel produce only water, not exhaust fumes.... One of the greatest results of using hydrogen power, of course, will be energy independence for this nation.... If we develop hydrogen power to its full potential, we can reduce our demand for oil by over 11 million barrels per day by the year 2040...........

It certainly sounds great. Hydrogen, after all, is “the most common element in the universe,” as Secretary Abraham pointed out. Since it is so plentiful, surely President Bush must be right when he promises it will be cheap. And when you use it, the waste product will be nothing but water—“environmental pollution will no longer be a concern.” Hydrogen will be abundant, cheap, and clean. Why settle for anything less?

Unfortunately, it’s all pure bunk. To get serious about energy policy, America needs to abandon, once and for all, the false promise of the hydrogen age.

The New Energy Charlatans

The idea of hydrogen as the fuel of the future dates back to Jules Verne, and by the 1930s was a staple of science fiction. With the advent of nuclear energy after World War II, technologists expected that atomic power would provide electricity “too cheap to meter”—electricity that could be used to produce pure hydrogen at low cost, which could then be used as a fuel. By the 1970s, however, it was apparent that nuclear energy, while potentially competitive with conventional power, did not usher in a new golden age of cheap electricity. Still, researchers devoted to the idea of the “hydrogen economy” soldiered on, and with increased public concern about carbon dioxide emissions in the 1990s and about America’s dependence on foreign oil after 9/11, the pro-hydrogen crowd seized a new opportunity to make their pitch. Incredibly, the Bush administration swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. As a result, over the past six years, billions of dollars have been dished out to national labs, auto companies, fuel-cell firms, and other beneficiaries of government largesse on hydrogen show projects that have NO PRACTICAL APLICATION.

The problem with this expenditure is not simply the waste; the government throws away vaster sums on any number of other useless programs all the time. Rather, the real issue is that the myth of the hydrogen economy has masked the administration’s total failure to address the nation’s vulnerability to energy blackmail. In consequence, despite the obvious relationship between oil dependence and the war with Islamist terrorism, no competent policy for achieving energy security has been put forth. If we are to achieve any progress on this most critical issue, the myth of the hydrogen economy needs to be debunked. It is bad science, bad economics, and bad public policy............

Check out the rest of this article to learn just why we won't be seeing a hydrogen economy, or hydrogen energy en masse, any time soon.