We're in the 5th decade of taxpayer handouts to the hydrogen scam. MY random number generator says there will be 23,598 hydrogen fueling stations to be operational worldwide by 2020.

Sounds like they're trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

'Hey, don't worry about buying our hydrogen cars and not having anywhere to refuel them. In a few years there will be thousands of stations everywhere.'

Hydrogen is the perfect replacement fuel for petroleum.
H2 can be produced domestically with renewable energy, thereby phasing out petroleum importation and achieving energy independence. The intermittency problem of solar and wind energy can be solved by storing excess electricity in the form of H2 locally from electrolysis of water using electricity produced hundreds of miles or even thousands of miles away.

With recent advancements such as low-cost, no-platinum, electrolyzer and fuel cell, the gradual switch to H2 will make a lot of sense. Oil spills and oil pollution and air pollution will be things of the past. Millions of new jobs will be created domestically during the build up and for maintaining the H2 infrastructure and vehicles, as well as the renewable energy solar and wind infrastructures.

RP: your approach makes too much sense, specially for USA, China, India and EU, where crude oil have to be imported at great cost. Oil Cos, with their huge funds and influence, will do whatever is required to stop or delay that from happening.

Instead, we may see USA and China each importing 3+ m/barrels/day of not so clean oil extracted from Alberta tar sands by 2020/2025 or so.

The alternative would be to massively transform NG/SG and Coal into liquid fuel in those two very large markets. More corn and sugar cane based ethanol is not the answer.

5200 stations world wide will be only the beginning. HFCV's that do not have to leave town will benefit from intracity H2 fueling stations. BEV's are not good for long-distance driving, either. Fleet vehicles such as delivery vehicles, government vehicles, taxis, and second cars are all intracity vehicles and can all be FCV's or BEV's. Most households these days have two cars or more anyway. The gasoline-powered vehicles can be designated as the out-of-town vehicles.

Oil Cos, aka Big Oil, can be the problem or can take part in becoming the solution. They have the deep pocket and the know-how to make things happen. They should have enough self confidence in knowing that they will do very well in the future renewable energy economy. In fact, with their vast amount of influence in many democratic governments of the world, they can invest heavily in renewable energy developments and then help write the laws to ensure that their investments will pay off.

Big Oil are not a bunch of aliens from outer space. They are human beings whose future and the future of their progeny depend on environmental preservation and maintenance of social stability. The extreme violence and lawlessness south of the USA's border are not examples of social stability, and that came from economic deterioration due to massive job lost to technology, productivity gain, and globalism.

Environmental preservation will create jobs, local jobs that will reverse the current trend in social deterioration and social instability world wide. Professor Al Gore, where art thou and why thee has not preach these to the world?

Big Oil can transition to FCs, but not electric vehicles. The price of electricity is too low, and the number of alternative sources too great, to give them even a fraction of the margins they command today. To go electric is to cede their wealth and power, and they'll hold onto that at all costs.

Big Oil has promoted hydrogen FC vehicles because it keeps them in the running; it is no big jump to go from converting crude oil to gasoline to converting coal or NG to hydrogen. But any fool can make electricity, and the last thing Big Oil needs is real competition.

engineer poet-

yeah, any fool can make electricity, yet almost all of it is produced from fossil fuels. why is big coal so much better than big oil?

moreover, groups like erpi suggest the big interim future for electricity production is natural gas, no big oil connections there.

kelly-

it's not really a hydrogen scam, if a scam, its a fuel cell scam. however, let's remember, a lot of fuel cell research was derived out of NASA, just like a considerable bulk of lithium-ion battery research -- easily three decades -- which was also funded for decades by taxpayers as well.

it's not as if lithium batteries just suddenly came into being.

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re hydrogen, i'd say the future will definitely include fuel cells, whether a hydrogen fueling infrastructure is needed is another matter. bioreformers, for instance, might make such an infrastructure irrelevant. considering the work going on within the artificial photosynthesis community, such reformers could significantly reduce the need for any new infrastructure in the US.

obviously, such reformers probably aren't just around the corner, but neither is a super cheap 300 mile battery refueled almost primarily by sustainable resources and utilized by the majority of the fleet.

yes, batteries could make fuel cells and all liquid fuels irrelevant, but i doubt it. it would take one helluva battery breakthrough, for instance, to power a fully loaded jumbo jet with electricity.

@riven,
It's true what you've stated that: "the vast majority of H2 is currently-produced by off gas from cracking process or from CH4...", but that relects only the present.
Sadly, the present also presents us with huge economic crises in most parts of the world, deep budget deficits in the majority of governments world-wide, massive unemployment problem, increase in violence, lawlessness and social breakdown associated with long-term unemployment...environmental degradation from droughts, floods the result of climate change, oil spills, nuclear contamination etc.

I am presenting an alternative future using renewable energy and H2 as the main actors in order to simultaneously solve most if not all of current socio-economic-environmental crises...as the engine of job creation, economic growth, environmental preservation, and to reverse the trend in global warming...

The Stone Age did not end due to the shortage of stones, so why can we not end the fossil-fuel age NOW, leaving behind a lot of fossil fuel left for future generations to use as reserve energy souces?

any fool can make electricity, yet almost all of it is produced from fossil fuels.

why is big coal so much better than big oil?

There's real competition in the electric industry, and it's ours. Electric power can be generated by anyone with a PV panel or wind turbine. Nuclear power isn't competitive for making liquid fuels, but it's a carbon-free supply of electricity to the tune of roughly 10 TWH/yr per new reactor. It's much better to have many domestic suppliers and options for our motive energy than a hostile foreign cartel.