Hydrogen Infrastructure

I’m not totally against hydrogen. The sun is full of it. But it just doesn’t make sense to me as a fuel. According to Larry Burns of General Motors the development work on fuel cells is now to the point where it’s commercially viable except for the fact there is no hydrogen refueling infrastructure and no one has said anything about producing enough hydrogen to do anything.

BMW echoed the message on a commercial featuring the Hydrogen 7. They said that the car is ready for the world when the world is ready for it, presumably about the refueling issue. It only emits water vapor. Well that’s still about the only thing that anyone will talk about.

There’s a great article in the April 2008 issue of Fast Company (it’s like a car magazine) that talks about Iceland’s progress with hydrogen and energy in general, and how they’re exporting their know-how. That’s all fine and good but it appears to me that Iceland has three things going for it that the US and many other countries don’t have. Lots of installed geothermal energy sources, a very small population, and relatively small geographic area.

In a place where there is essentially energy from the ground to generate power, efficiency isn’t a deal breaker. But in just about every other part of the world, can someone explain to me where we are going to get the energy to make the hydrogen?

Maybe industry is doing this to show how impractical the idea is while getting green kudos from an uninformed public? Or maybe I’m uninformed and cynical. Time will tell.