hydrogen economy

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars Arrive: Chevrolet, Honda and BMW are road testing hydrogen powered cars with consumers now.  Hydrogen fuel cells provide electricity to run the cars.  While hydrogen mostly comes from fossil fuels at present, there are plans to change over to renewable sources of the clean fuel.  When burned, hydrogen produces only water as a byproduct.

In case anyone was wondering if a hydrogen economy could actually replace all the oil, gas and coal we use on a global scale and do so economically - here is an article that shows it can. (www.voxsolaris.com/news/issue1.html) The proposal is to use solar concentrators as the primary energy input and to use ammonia as the hydrogen carrier.

New company eliminates the need for precious metal catalysts in hydrogen electrolysis and makes it 85% efficient while producing ten times more than any other. The company has also invented a technique, using nano technology, to increase the catalytic surface area of each electrode, giving them 2,000 times more surface area than its predecessors.

"(...). The aim is to provide non-polluting energy from hydrogen fuel cells for household uses as well as for mobility. Hayek, 79, believes that Switzerland has an opportunity to develop alternative energy sources because the country does not have car manufacturing or petroleum production industries with a vested interest in supporting existing technologies. “I want to do everything within my powers to accelerate the development of alternative and renewable energy,” Hebdo magazine reported Hayek saying. “In Switzerland, like elsewhere in the world, we are going far too slowly.” (...)