Hydrogen Is Far Away

It doesn't look as if we're going to be replacing the old gas guzzler with another fuel anytime soon, does it?

Hydrogen: the wave of the future, but how far down the road?
by Jean-Louis Santini
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States hopes to fill American roads with hydrogen-powered cars in two decades, but the clean fuel must be cheap and practical to make before it can replace oil, US experts say.

President George W. Bush unveiled a 1.2-billion-dollar initiative in 2003 to reverse US dependence on foreign oil and make hydrogen, which emits zero pollution, the fuel that drives the US economy.

"That was ambitious," said Timothy Wilkins, an attorney of the firm Bracewell & Giuliani LLP, based in Texas, who specializes in environmental and energy regulation.

"I think in a century hydrogen could fill a role like that, but not in 20 years," Wilkins told AFP, adding that the Bush administration was no longer as vocal about the plan as it used to be.

"To produce it like the gasoline scale, to get it in the vehicle fleet, fully integrated in the vehicle fleet and the infrastructure the fueling, stations ... it will take one century," he said.

While hydrogen has more energy power than oil, methanol and natural gas, its lightness makes it very difficult to stock and transport.

Universities, oil companies and automakers, as well as the US Energy Department, are investing in research to find better ways to produce hydrogen, most of which today is generated from non-renewable fossil fuels such as natural gas.

Pennsylvania State University researchers recently developed a method of producing hydrogen gas by combining electron-generating bacteria and a small electrical charge in a microbial fuel cell.