http://www.mintpressnews.com/zero-emission-engine-getting-ready-prime-time/189028/
For once I agree with Elon Musk: hydrogen will always be the "fuel of the future".
Hydrogen may burn cleanly, but it's a long way from being produced cleanly:
Today, almost all the world's hydrogen is produced by "reforming" fossil fuels. "You can react any hydrocarbon source with steam and the products are carbon monoxide and hydrogen," explains Harold Schobert, professor of fuel science and director of the Energy Institute at Penn State. "Usually there's an easy way to convert the carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide, and then you can separate that, and you're left with fairly pure hydrogen."
Worldwide, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, some 48 percent of hydrogen is currently produced from natural gas, 30 percent from oil, and 18 percent from coal. The remaining four percent is produced from water.
Fossil-fuel reforming has definite advantages. The process is well-understood and relatively cheap. Yet producing hydogen this way still creates carbon dioxide emissions, contributes to global warming, and does nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
http://news.psu.edu/story/141828/2005/06/08/research/hydrogen-future-fuel
We shall have to build an astonishingly huge number of solar power stations or (heaven forbid!) nuclear power plants to make this work, and we'll still have the problem of what to do with the CO2. This is the key to our future?
Bottom line: If the world really wants to deal with "climate change", all comfort HVAC, the automobile, and most other forms of transport will have to be outlawed. And that just ain't going to happen.
So when you hear the word "hydrogen", think "Hindenberg":
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