Apparently there is a lot of hydrogen in coal which can be extracted and the carbon can then be burried underground at a far lesser cost than the electrolisis of water.It is however extremely volitile and destructive if ignited in an uncontrolled situation.

I think our energy problems will have to be solved through a diversity of means however this is what irks the oil companies since their monopoly will be broken and even worse for Govt if the individual becomes independant through solar energy,since it becomes very difficult to tax.

Our Federal Govt for example is the only Govt on this planet that will not guarantee a tax free regieme for the ethanol industry beyond 2011.No one is going to invest in an industry that will be taxed and their competitors won't be.Brazil is leading the world in ethanol production and it is important since combined with petrol it is cleaner,environmentally sustainable and safe fuel.In the short term we should be looking at ethanol production as a means of extending the life time of existing petroleum fuels.

Australia could be pioneers of a lot of new energy initiatives.

Until we start demanding a better solution than our current Government has offered in the guise of Nuclear energy supplies, we continue to use of energy that harms the environment or continue to ignore the fundamental new technology to make them a cleaner energy.

The interest of our majority foreign owned mining companies in Australia, seem to be keen to direct government policy and review at Australia's 46% of the worlds Uranium deposits and using the ditches left behind to store the spent fuel after the international source has used it to benefit their countries environment.

It has been suggested that there is only 24 years worth of supply of Uranium and existing energy supplies have a longer life, almost triple of Uranium. So to look at Uranium is not as viable as the review it has warranted from our Government.

The Liberal governments review has come into question when it has appointed the chairman of the Nuclear committee into Uranium is associated as a director of a company board that make the deals for Uranium to be sold and supplied around the world.

Calls for his removal have fallen on the government deaf ears and Senate majorities seem to be driving over any debate or democracy.

"For electricity, you only have to enrich uranium to 3 or 4 per cent: for weapons to 90 per cent" -- wrong, of course. For electricity, natural uranium will serve; enrichment is not necessary at all.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
Boron: fire without exhaust gas:
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/Paper_for_11th_CHC.html

Fusion - Why the EU, Japan, USA, China , South Korea, Russia and a few others are building a full size fusion plant in France. Because the potential there is much more than other technologies for large scale energy production (potential in environmental and resource benefits). And is Australia involved in any way? No.

That is what disappoints me most is that the Australian government lacks vision.

I am all for economics dictating the energy direction be it coal, nuclear, renewables, what ever. Leave that to the market place. But research where there are no guaranteed returns but great potential, government has to lead/subsidise the research. Companies are rarely going to head that way.

Hydrogen - another global experiment upon the atmosphere? We still have not completed the fossil-fuel one, commenced about one and a half centuries ago. The full results of that won't be available for another few centuries to come.

Indications for the fossil-fuel experiment currently under way are that the next few generations will be carrying the can. Carrying it very heavily indeed; all because we have been running it so enthusiastically in the absence of safeguards.

Will we be starting another one, in which every man, woman, and their dog will be snooping around the planet's surface in hydrogen-fuelled transport? If so, then a hell of a lot of hydrogen gas is going to be transferred from one place to the other - just shifting the stuff, apart from its manufacture.

There doesn't need to be a high percentage of aching joints in pipelines and fuelling systems to leak one hell of a lot of hydrogen into the atmosphere - and it sure will go up. What is it going to do up high before departing altogether - how will it interact with the mix of incoming solar radiation and neighbourly high-flying particles? We don't damn-well know! And we won't fully know in our time. Maybe it will impose even worse problems on future generations than those indicated by our current atmospheric experiment. Of course everything might be OK. Maybe.

The difference between a medical remedy and a poison relies heavily on dosage. And this planet is burdened with a very heavy dose of human numbers, their depredations and their wastes. It is being poisoned. Humans overdosing on energy, of any description, will only exacerbate things. Possibly the worst energy choice that humans could make would be to use the inadequately demonstrated ability in economics, safety, storage, of nuclear energy systems to generate hydrogen for universal energy storage.

It is high time to look at our overall systems' dependence upon growth, and contemplate achieveable and reasonable alternatives before conducting further experiments pushing our species into awkward corners.

Get a grip Collinsett.Hydrogen burns with oxygen to form H20,or commonly known as water.It is the cleanest energy on this planet.If we can harness it's volitility,we will solve the world's pollution problems.