The hydrogen economy may well offer a way out of our energy insecurity. You would be aware that work continues here private companies and CSIRO.

This research is at the mercy of the market for funds, at least in the main, certainly receiving less than nuclear or coal. As always in Australia the take up by industry is slow and it is common for an overseas to see the possibilities and take the risk. Certainly RMI and others have done so. This may well satisfy the ideology of the current paradigm of economics but may be too slow if the time scale suggested by climatologists with its ‘tipping point’ in the near future. (the feedback of various processes will make any human intervention useless.)

The community, read government could (should?) encourage more than they presently do the measures improving energy efficiency and the nega watts of Lovins, as a way of delaying warming and the necessary discussion. Is it paranoia to point out that alternatives do not figure in the Nuclear debate? At State level this does occurs at slow pace, funded of course by the Commonwealth since the states have no power of taxation just targeted cost recovery.

But Hydrogen? Years away says the industry, too costly, too dangerous though I don’t remember them addressing the Twenty Hydrogen Myths that Lovins of RMI details.
An industry which Briefing Paper 8 www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm claims all the costs of nuclear are internalised. Funny the Brits are saddled with at least 30 pounds per person to pay just for the past clean up let alone decommissioning or further spill costs.

Truth in this as with so much else is hard to establish by any not in the field of energy research. Programmes such as Four Corners www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1568867.html
and its repetition by Clive Hamilton when he named what he considers the Mafia referred to in Four Corners programme. It might seem that the climate lobby has continued as Government policy though of course one is not allowed to refer to such.

Come on!! The myth of the "hydrogen economy" has been invented by ruthless investment companies to extract the last penny from the mum and dad investors as they fight the reality of the end of the fossil fuelled era (or should that read "error")My belief is that at present, most hydrogen is made from natural gas. Being itself a fossil fuel, it's price will rise along side that of oil to a point where it's conversion to hydrogen is unrealistic. The splitting of hydrogen from water is extremely energy intensive. Perhaps a cheaper way can be found, but lets not forget that hydrogen is an energy carrier NOT an energy provider and it carries a lot less energy than does oil. At present, if my extensive studies are correct (and I'm only human) it takes 4 energy units to extract 1 energy unit of hydrogen. Oil used to be the other way around but may now be closer to 1 to 3 and worsening. The big issue here is that people desperately need to hold onto their greedy little lifestyles. They don't want to see an end to economic growth, they don't want to have to give up their McMansions, foreign cars and fancy toys, so they cling just as desperately to any dream that appears to offer the false illusion of "the same lifestyle, different power source." Sorry folks, the party is over. Oil could reach $200 a barrel by mid next year and continue ever upwards. Even if a new energy source was halfway effective as oil, it will take at least 15 to 20 years to bring it on tap. By then, World wars will most likely to have reduced the population to a point whereby oil might just be viable again. Remember the Chinese curse..."May you live in interesting times." We do, and hydrogen isn't going to be our saviour.

The article glosses over the substantial energy penalties in generating, storing, distributing and using hydrogen. Generally speaking it is more efficient to use electricity straight from say a wind farm, than to electrolyse water, dry and compress the hydrogen gas, move it in cryogenic tanks or high maintenance pipes to an expensive and fragile fuel cell application. At present most hydrogen comes with CO2 byproduct and various ways to avoid this may prove uneconomic. Ironically the fact that Bush Jnr urged the US Dept Energy to help hydrogen development has brought much of this to light. It now seems hydrogen is best suited to niche applications such as energy storage at remote sites. The answer to energy problems lie elsewhere.

Coral is having a lend of us.

When you think of Hydrogen as a fuel, think MST problems.

M = Manufacturing problem. The energy to produce hydrogen is more than you can get out of it. There are better alternative manufactured liquid fuels. Petrol itself could be easily manufactured at nuclear or geothermal power stations and is the most cost effective transpoert fuel option when oil runs dry.

S = Storage problem. The H2 molecules are so tiny you have to spend extraordinary amounts of time and money to build high tech containers. There is some research that stores Hydrogen in metals and other chemistries but this research will typically take 100 years or more for fruition to mass markets. We'll be extinct by then.

T = Transport problem. You can't use pipelines to move Hydrogen under ultra high pressures. Trucks would be too hazardous carrying such high pressure loads.

A Hydrogen economy is an oil corporation red herring to keep us from developing viable alternatives to their life blood - OIL, Black Gold, Texas Tea. They extract grants and concessions for touting it, do nothing and laugh all the way to the bank.
They sit on their most important piece of technology, Laser Drilling, one of the main tools for Geothermal power development and research. They spin out of date blurbs on laser drilling technology (http://www.mines.edu/laser/FAQ.htm) but it never sees the light of day when it comes to developing geothermal alternatives.

If Australia wants clean, green geothermal power we need to develop laser drilling technology independently and the only way we can afford that cost is to ramp up value-added Uranium exports.

Others have beaten me to it on the point that Hydrogen is only a way of storing energy, so I'll just add, again, that the reason we're not using
much sun, wind, wave, tide or geothermal power is that they vary from being rather expensive (wind) to grossly expensive (solar photovoltaic).

Dr Bell should do some research before (or rather instead of) publishing such nonsense.

Sylvia.

I too wanted to take a poke at the hydrogen energy spin, too late. What about a response from Dr Bell answering for at least the MST issues?
Hydrogen may deserve have an increased role in very particular situations, but it seems literally impossible that it will be the backbone of any nations energy systems