A step in the right direction:



Excited yet? Cheap to make hydrogen in a few years? But:



Bah! So not quite ready for every day use then. However, important work is important work.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14494972

Imagine the end of petrol stations where people can refuel their own cars with the hydrogen that their solar powered homes can generate. Free transport as long as you are willing to stay within a certain range. Though it will mean an end to fuel duty.

This is good news. There are things that are difficult to achieve, yes, but there are things that are important to achieve. A hydrogen economy is one of them, I feel.
Someone once said that the petrol engine saved the horse - the idea being that as horses were no longer required to be labour animals, their deal all round got better. People could more or less keep them as pets.
I wonder if the same will happen for the petrol engine - it'll become a hobby, a past time for people while hydrogen burners get on with the more mundane labours.

It will mean that oil can be used for areas which hydrogen would be impractical. It will be cleaner and reduce emissions of noxious gases and particles. It might make wars for cheap oil unnecessary. Which can only be a good thing.

And the start of another form of tax. You'll no doubt pay tax on the conversion process, on the usage of hydrogen and/or pay-per-mile. When fuel tax amounts to something like 90% (guess) of the price of fuel, do you think the Treasury will give that up?



Jay Leno on Top Gear. With his extensive collection of cars.

You are right it will be replace. A road toll would probably be the solution of choice more money for spys in the car. They will need something to pay for road maintenance anyway or some how.

Harmonics……..

Surely given we'll be buying liquid H2 somehow, the obvious mechanism is to say 'this is being used as a fuel, so we'll charge fuel duty on it'. Besides it's got to be much, much easier to continue to charge a tax everyone is already (begrudgingly) accepting of than it is to implement a new tax. People always hate new taxes much more than the taxes they paid before.

Jon

The thing is that with water and energy they could create hydrogen at home in home energy systems. Then people could be able to refuel their cars themselves. So without some tax or revenue then we could find the roads even more crowded as there would be no way to restrict demand. So it could be a tax on energy consumption which would be an indirect tax on the production of hydrogen. There would be no real way to collect tax on congestion without some new system.