Romancing the Hydrogen Highway

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While the Sparrow was down I decided to study up on the Hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is a very leaky gas. I know this because every time I tried to learn about the hydrogen economy, the facts immediately leaked out of my head. It was such a complicated subject with so many different contigencies that I realized nobody is really going to understand what's at stake especially since the information put before the public was largely in favor of the Hydrogen Highway being proposed by Schwarzeneggar. Bush is also in support of the hydrogen economy as the answer to our problems with global warming and oil depletion, but the hydrogen economy is just not viable as a clean transportation solution unless there is lots of extra electricity produced from renewable energy sources to make hydrogen, as there is in Iceland.

It took 6 weeks to read up on the subject (taking notes to retain the information) and the better part of a day to write this piece, but it was worth it. The piece got a lot of attention. I received some 30 letters mostly encouraging and many offering their own ideas, with only 1 arguing in favor of the hydrogen highway and 1 not in support of the electric car as a solution because of his own experiences with the short range. The two letters to the editor that were printed were very supportive. I even got a letter from Joseph Romm himself saying "great article". (He wrote the book I referenced).

The article can be read online. There is a misprint. It should be 10,000 gallons not 1,000 gallons to fuel 800 cars.