DU: Beware the Hydrogen Economy Lies being pushed by the Fossil Fuel industry.

[jeff47]

8. Hydrogen leaks through EVERYTHING.

Hydrogen is so small that it leaks through every material that we could use to store it.

For example, the Space Shuttle's fuel tank was constantly topped off with new hydrogen until the Boosters ignited and it left the pad. Because if they did not top it off, they would have lost too much hydrogen for the main engines.

So if you're going to use hydrogen itself as the "energy source', you're going to be losing lots and lots and lots of it during transport and storage.

Your alternatives are to generate the hydrogen close to where it is consumed (breaking your Iceland model) or combine the hydrogen with some other atoms to get a molecule which is too big to leak.

The problems with the second one are it's really hard to be carbon neutral, and why burn only the hydrogen when you've got an entire hydrocarbon to burn?