Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: New (Flow) Battery Design Could Help Solar and Wind Energy Power the Grid [View all]wtmusic
(39,166 posts)A hydrogen infrastructure will cost half a trillion dollars. Who will pay? Though oil companies want one (they have lots of filling stations and won't have much to sell in them), they won't take the risk when no one's buying the vehicles. No one will buy the vehicles without the stations. Classic chicken/egg, it's all oil company hype.
I have my own filling station - easy, convenient, clean, cheap.

I swear, some people enjoy changing oil and paying more than $.04 mile - wouldn't dream of bursting their bubble. But I've been watching detractors' arguments fall to technology for five years (one thing it won't do: climb a 20% grade in the winter for 30 miles with the heater on, while towing a boat. Really sucks at that.
). The same thing happened with hybrids ten years ago, and EVs are doing better at the two-year mark than hybrids were.
From Joe Romm, the author of The Hype About Hydrogen:
"As Ive said for a decade now, hydrogen fuel cells are not going to be a significant, cost-effective CO2 reducer. In a 2005 journal article, The car and fuel of the future, I noted that:
Using fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen from zero-carbon sources such as renewable power or nuclear energy has a cost of avoided carbon dioxide of more than $600 a metric ton, which is more than a factor of ten higher than most other strategies being considered today
.
A 2013 study by independent research and advisory firm Lux Research finds that despite billions in research and development spent in the past decade, The dream of a hydrogen economy envisioned for decades by politicians, economists, and environmentalists is no nearer, with hydrogen fuel cells turning a modest $3 billion market of about 5.9 GW in 2030.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/05/1422411/study-hobbled-by-high-cost-hydrogen-fuel-cells-will-be-a-modest-3-billion-market-in-2030/
Fuel cells are light years behind EVs:
"Cost reduction over a ramp-up period of about 20 years is needed in order for PEM fuel cells to compete with current market technologies, including gasoline internal combustion engines."
Meyers, Jeremy P. "Getting Back Into Gear: Fuel Cell Development After the Hype".
The Electrochemical Society Interface, Winter 2008, pp. 3639, accessed August 7, 2011
Hydrogen is messy, expensive, and dangerous, and when you include cooling to 33K or compression to 800 bar energy efficiency is pathetic.