Fuel Cells

I’m less negative about fuel cells than I was a year ago. The major application seems to be cars, which is a good thing because transportation is one of the two major sources of greenhouse gasses in this country. But producing hydrogen requires large amounts of energy from the other major source - electric power plants. Of course, power plants rely on domestic coal, whereas we get some of our petroleum from countries that we should no be relying on.

We could get hydrogen from natural gas, as the Japanese are doing for fuel-cell-powered home electricity. In fact, powering homes seems to be a more promising application than cars because introducing a new mass-production mass consumption power source should be simpler in a stable vs a moving application.Fuel cells are attractive for homes because they don’t need the sun to shine or the wind to blow.

Overall, I see hydrogen production as a major barrier to wide application of fuel cells. Some research should be devoted to this aspect of the problem.