What Happened to the Hydrogen Highway?
We were supposed to be riding on a broad hydrogen highway by now, but instead it looks more like a local road that got bypassed by the interstate. The momentum appears to be behind battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids for at least the near future, though some pundits hold out hope for hydrogen as a long-term solution.
Hydrogen had a powerful headwind in the 1990s and early 200s, but the rapid improvement in battery technology—and growing commitments to build charging stations for electric cars—has dimmed its luster. Hydrogen also remains expensive at approximately $8 per a gallon equivalent.
The National Hydrogen Association denies that there are winners and losers in the alternative fuels debate, and it wants you to know that fuel cells are not only a complementary technology to batteries (hydrogen cars have electric motors, after all) but the colorless, odorless gas—the lightest element in the universe—is unsurpassed in what it offers in reducing greenhouse emissions and getting us over our addiction to foreign oil.
“Only by using hydrogen can we cut greenhouse gases 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2100, which is what the experts say we need to do,” says NHA Vice President Patrick Serfass, pointing to research NHA commissioned that shows batteries getting us only to 60 percent below 1990 levels (and plug-in hybrids barely improving over those 1990 levels). NHA also claims that fuel-cell cars have an advantage in foreign oil dependency, local air pollution and what it calls “societal costs.”
Dr. C.E. “Sandy” Thomas, president of Virginia-based H2Gen Innovations, says that the lifecycle of using hydrogen made from natural gas (the most widespread technology) reduces greenhouse emissions 40 to 50 percent compared to the internal-combustion status quo. He also asserted that switching to battery and plug-in hybrid cars (if the electricity comes from coal) will lead to “almost no reduction of global warming gas,” a point many battery advocates would dispute.
Serfass also says that we could build an effective national hydrogen highway for $9 billion, with 6,500 stations. For $10 to $15 billion, we’d have a station every 25 miles on U.S. interstates, and one within 10 miles of every major city. But that still means people would be asked to drive far more than they do now for a fill-up.
Right now, though, we have only 65 hydrogen stations in the U.S., compared to 160,000 gas stations. The hydrogen highway isn’t ready for traffic yet, but it remains a lovely vision.
One big skeptic is Joseph Romm, the former Energy Department official who wrote The Hype About Hydrogen. He asserts, “For all the buzz about future highways filled with hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars, the technological–and envirnmental–high ground will belong to gasoline-electric hybrids for decades to come.”
Here’s what hydrogen refueling looks like:
Jim Motavalli is the author of Forward Drive: The Race to Build Clean Cars for the Future, among other books. He has been covering the environmental side of the auto industry for more than a decade, and writes regularly on those topics for the New York Times.
BNET User Analysis