"The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future. ... This fact, he shows, cannot be changed with improvements in technology. Rather, the one-quarter efficiency is based on necessary processes of a hydrogen economy and the properties of hydrogen itself, e.g. its low density and extremely low boiling point, which increase the energy cost of compression or liquefaction and the investment costs of storage." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

The efficiency of nature (i.e., photosynthesis) is something like 0.5% (the best number I saw was 6%) so I'm not sure we should really use it as the gold standard. Still, coal burning has a thermodynamic efficiency of only 30%, so I'm not convinced that hydrogen is necessarily a dead-end. And nuclear fusion is likely the holy grail of energy production, so the more practice we get with isolating, storing, and transporting hydrogen, the readier we'll be for the future. - Victor Ganata

I don't necessarily share opinions on H2 future in energy (in particular I tend to stay with opinion that H2 is bounded to nuclear lobby) but I _do_ like that questions of sustainable energy are raised, discussed and, most importantly, gradually implemented into real life. Fossil fuels must die. - Отборнейший бред

Well, like I said, there's nuclear fusion. That's pretty damn efficient. Unfortunately, the closest natural example is about 93 million miles away. - Victor Ganata

Of course. The universe is governed by the laws of thermodynamics, after all. But thermodynamic efficiency is a measurable quantity. I'm not convinced 25% is all that bad. Solar is only about 10% efficient, and that's still a viable source of energy. - Victor Ganata

@aswang: solar is 10% effective when converting solar (unusable) to electricity (usable). 25% hydrogen efficiency is for converting electricity (already usable) back to electricity via hydrogen. Hence, they only say that paying 75% of energy for its transportation is a bit too high - Count Caturday

But but, http://www.youtube.com/watch... - ◄ani625Ξ ಠ_ಠ

Usability is still relative. You can use solar to (partially) power your house, but you can't use it run a car. Hydrogen could theoretically do both. I probably have to find more solid sources for the %. I don't know if they factored it into the 10% but the manufacture and transport of solar panels still consumes already-usable energy. I do think that in of itself hydrogen isn't the end-all-be-all, but the techs hydrogen depends on certainly look like necessary steps to getting to fusion. - Victor Ganata

All this really means is that a hydrogen economy based on electrolysis doesn't make sense. What about one based on nuclear power plants that emit protons as a by-product of reaction? - Gabe

@gabe: well, they can indeed build a paraffin distillery to get hydrogen from the protons stuck in the shields. I'm afraid that it's not feasible due to high neutron ratio in the mixture. Possibly harder to differentiate between them than between U235 and U238 - Count Caturday

this article nails it. - MikeAmundsen

Direct sunlight-to-H2 conversion would make sense. But H2 is notoriously inconvenient to store. Probably CH4 or alcohol will be better choices for energy storage, for fuel cells or not. - 9000

ITER should be the answer - Count Caturday

really? I am not too concerned about the technological challenges faced by NiF, HiPER, ITER, et al., but I am about the economic ones (e.g. the ones rebutted in http://fire.pppl.gov/iter_na...) Anyone have pointers to a clear cost-per-kWHe breakdown...? - Karim

scarily, the one I have been hitting refresh on is Randell Mills' Blacklight Power (http://www.blacklightpower.com/) I know to some people, that is like admitting you are going to wait for The Great Pumpkin, but... uh... those guys just signed a commercial deal with a commercial power utility. Last week. - Karim

This article isn't thinking very 4th dimensionally. Why transport it at all? Honda is using solar cells and what not to synthesize hydrogen right at fill stations for the FCX car. That's the way to do it. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

+1 to Alex. Localized production sounds like a great idea. Though I do wonder about the economy and scalability of on-premises hydrogen synthesis, since it would be necessary to fit out *every* filling station. Might it be that, in the long run, centralized processing and distribution actually sees greater efficiency and/or lower unit cost? Is their an economist in the house? - Derrick Burns

Solar, solar, solar, solar, solar, solar, solar. Why in the world would we obsessively focus on anything else? The PHOTONS ARE FREE for crying out loud. It's our local star glaring out at us, "please plug in extension cord here!" And we get to use a wireless extension cord, at that! What's not to obsess about? We can bicker about storage and transport after that. Step one: Get The Whole Damned Grid plugged into the sun. - michael silverton

See, this is much simpler once you divorce yourself from the idea of your car as primary transportation. Electric buses, electric trains, bicycles, walking, and short-range-EV's are all possible right now and only the short range EV requires any sort of power storage. If we made such a move sooner rather than later, we might have plenty of time to figure out what to for airplanes and the remaining uses of the car. - Wirehead

Wirehead: buses, trains, bikes, and walking are all great in dense urban areas, but vast numbers of us don't live in dense urban areas. And even in urban areas you need some way to get your kid from school to hockey practice. - Gabe

SON: So remind me why the polar ice caps melted again? DAD: We had to get you to hockey practice. ;-) - Karim

@gabe what's wrong with kid practicing his hockey in school? - Отборнейший бред

My understanding was that the difficulty of extracting hydrogen, which is by no means ease compared to say a standard oil drill and conversion process, was around the same as deep sea drilling for oil...and the tech is really only in its infancy. Never say never on improvements, many of the things we take for granted today were thought impossible only 25 years ago. I'd back Hydrogen, simply because there's so much of it, and it has practical uses - Duncan Riley

Hmm. On-site solar-powered electrolysis. Sounds like a plan. And if you really want to store it for easy transport, there's always lithium hydride. - Victor Ganata

silpol: Here in the US, hockey rinks are not usually conveniently located in schools. If my kid wants to play hockey, I'll either have to drive her 2 miles from her school to our local rink, or drive her 8 miles to the nearest school with its own rink. - Gabe

Part of our challenge is trying to plug another energy source into an existing paradigm. There is no reason why most people should be commuting to a J.O.B. five days a week. We could instantly cut energy costs 20% by switching to a four day work week. We could do much better if most people either worked from home or we worked where we lived instead of living in bedroom communities and commuting ridiculous distances in traffic to places of employment. - Gail Gardner

Internet Strategist: I would hardly say that "most" jobs can be done without commuting. What about a teacher, a waitress, a garbage man, a mechanic, a custodian, a construction worker, a surgeon, or a car salesman? At best you could say "most office jobs". - Gabe

Gabe: heh, I'm not entirely sure you could take call as a surgeon if you didn't live near the hospital you worked at, although I guess there is remote/robotic surgery. - Victor Ganata

The issue is how FAR people are commuting, not the commuting itself. If we returned to communities most of those jobs would be very close to home - not some ridiculous distance away. - Gail Gardner