Hydrogen over hyped?

Just like our tagline over on the right says, this is a zero-hype look at hydrogen power. Seems someone else has noticed the huge amount of breathless reporting going on where hydrogen will soon solve all of our problems. Not yet, not even soon. Canada and Europe both have a lot of activity going on in the hydrogen arena, let's not even mention China where they are literally staking their future on it, but today, here and now, the practical results are more photo opportunities than actual commercial fact.

There are a lot of widely divergent groups piling on the bandwagon right now, each with their own view of why we need hydrogen cars now or next week at the latest. The problem with that is, as pointed out in the linked article, it takes more power to make hydrogen than it delivers. We're going backwards. Some start to talk of greenhouse gases, some get into environmental claims, others envision freedom from oil imports, the list gets long of why we should or why we must but everyone glosses over where we are. There's a lot of energy in a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel and changing the whole world to hydrogen is quite a ways off. Let's make sure we look carefully at every claim before proclaiming the problem solved. That sort of talk soon deteriorates into accusations of greedy companies withholding inventions and not caring about the environment, etc., etc.

Hydrogen has a bright future and it may be applications other than cars where it will work best, the Millenium Cell hydrogen battery is an example. We're moving and we're making progress but no amount of legislation and proclaimation will turn hype into reality. Let's remember that.