http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8410448.stm

Bobby Llewelyn got his yesterday, he was tweeting about it all day...

Electric cars are just not viable. The need for them will be too great for the Grid to handle, and much of that power will come from fossil fuels for some time to come.

They should put the money into more cleaner, viable, alternatives. Hydrogen fuel cell technology needs funding for starters.

+1
Hydrogen is the way forward.

I think it's a toss up which will come first - a hydrogen distribution system that makes H2 cars practical, or battery technology that will make electric cars practical (i.e. say 400 mile range and a charging time of less than 1 hour). I don't really mind where the power is generated as long as it's convenient.

Jon

Hydrogen is great. But isn't it's waste product - H2O - a worse greenhouse gas than CO2?

I was wondering that meself actually. Surely if we're pumping a load more H2O vapour into the atmos, we're going to get more clouds? That's bound to affect the climate one way or the other. Even MORE rain...

Course we won't be changing the amount of H2O in the biosystem at all - assuming we're cracking seawater to get the H2 in the first place but you might find we get smogs back in cities and the like.

Jon

I'm also certian that I heard somewhere that per output unit Hydrogen uses more fossil fuel in the production of it than electricity.

(If that makes sense).

It's not a very easy gas to get hold of.

Almost . You have to use electricity to 'crack' water to get the H2 and the electricity generation (with current tech) generates a lot of greenhouse gasses which could well be more than you're saving by using the resulting H2 as a fuel. The idea seems to be that we power the cracking plants with clean/renewable electricity generators, or maybe fusion power at a later point because then the whole system becomes effectively self-sustaining.

However with this situation I can't quite see why it's not better just to generate the electricity from green/renewable/fusion power then give it direct to people to power their vehicles, rather than go to the bother of cracking water to get hydrogen to then give to people. I think it's a fair bet we'll have sufficiently usable battery tech before we have working fusion power and/or a network of hydrogen refilling stations.


Incredibly plentiful but very 'sticky'.

Jon

It's about the rare earth metals, I think. Extracting them is messy and polluting. I think we should all point at hybrid drivers in future, as they're smug enough to think they're helping "save the planet" while supporting environmental disaster in places like China and India...

Like Sir Paul McCartney and his infamous Lexus which he had shipped in?

Hybrids are a massive red herring. They make you feel as if you are doing something when you really aren’t.

Anyway, here is Top Gear’s take on it.The closing comments are all you need to think about, really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTOyiKLARk

While H2O is a powerful greenhouse gas, it is totally different from CO2 in fundamental ways.

1. The effect is relatively localised.
2. It's temporary - if you stop pumping it into the air, then it rains away in a couple of days rather than hundreds of years for CO2
3. There's no need to pump it into the air in the first place. You can condense it easily as part of the heating / cooling system, and dispose of it safely down the drain.
4. The amount of free water on the planet is vast compared to the amount of free CO2. A few extra pints will not flood the oceans, where it will all inevitably end up.
5. H2 can be produced to near perfect purity, greatly reducing other toxic emissions compared to petrol.

The main problems with H2 as a fuel right now are:

1. Most H2 is currently generated directly from fossil fuels, releasing CO2 and wasting energy in the process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
2. Storage and transportation of H2 is far more difficult than with other gasses because it requires over 9000 times the pressure of Propane to contain the same energy at NTP.
3. Pressurised H2 causes metals to become brittle and fail, potentially leading to fatal disasters.
4. H2 is a very low energy density fuel, so relatively large amounts are required. This increases the weight and size of the vehicle.

There are methods of generating H2 directly from sunlight and water, either using photosynthesis or electrolysis. These may be viable in the very same sunny parts of the world we currently depend on for oil, but until there is a market and while oil is still cheaper there is little financial incentive to invest. It would take millions of acres of solar collectors to replace one oil well.