The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Scam — From George W. Bush & "The Big 3" To Toyota, Honda, & Japan | CleanTechnica
A little more perspective on H2. As we have suspected, it was all a scam to keep us burning fossil fuels.
On February 6th of 2003, George W Bush gave a speech in which he touted the benefits of a hydrogen economy. Far from being farsighted or progressive, it may well have been one of the worst examples of greenwashing in our lifetime. The gist of the speech was that we should avoid raising fuel economy standards and deploying clean technologies such as electric cars and renewable energy and instead pursue a transition from fossil fuels to a hydrogen economy.
What was unstated, was that hydrogen was (and is to this day) manufactured using fossil fuels, and that building infrastructure for a hydrogen economy would literally take decades and cost trillions of dollars. In effect, what was really being implied was,
let’s not do anything that would diminish the profits of the fossil fuel companies in the short or medium term (as CAFE standards or deployment of renewable energy might) and let’s get behind something that would not truly be possible or practical in our lifetime (or any other lifetime).
The need to have a massive and costly buildout of infrastructure remains one of the most glaring problems of a supposed transition to a hydrogen economy. The cost of a single hydrogen fueling station is likely to be over $2 million. This is in contrast to the relatively modest $50,000 cost of deploying a high-speed battery-electric car charging station. Another factor here is the reality of putting into place an all-new infrastructure from scratch versus building off of an already existing electrical infrastructure that exists in every developed nation.
Lost in all of the optimism and the panacea of a new hydrogen age is the cold fact that hydrogen in not something that exists in nature, and to this day is created using natural gas. In fact, the separation of hydrogen (the so-called reforming of natural gas) requires combustion. This immediately refutes the very notion that hydrogen is a clean energy source — in addition to being a secondary energy source, it also requires the burning of fossil fuel for its very creation. The end result of a hydrogen economy would be the use of large amounts of energy and the release of carbon dioxide.
In addition, the transport of hydrogen requires it to be liquefied, meaning it would have to be in turn refrigerated to a temperature of negative 253°C so that it could be stored in tanks during its transport. This process too would require the use of a significant amount of energy and the release of carbon dioxide.
Hopefully the "Electrify America" initiative will resist H2.
