hydrogen

[low_delta]

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are supposed to be cleaner than fossil fuel powered cars. The only byproduct of burning hydrogen is water [oops, the hydrogen is not burned]. President Bush says that such cars will "make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of oil."

But he's also developed a plan for producing the hydrogen. Using fossil fuels. It's obvious that oil profits come before the environment (and always have), but where is the energy independence?

And whether it makes sense to create the hydrogen using oil or not, Bush is lying to us. Our air will not be cleaner, and this will do nothing to reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

Article at Mother Jones.

Comments

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

But wouldn't some of the development costs and all of the production costs be reflected in the price? And they're not priced so prohibitively that people don't buy them.

And the energy companies won't be setting up massive arrays of solar panels because there's no place to put them. Such power generation needs to be decentralized. I think the power companies would rather be in the the generation business as well as the distribution business.

[dwivian]

Existing tax incentives allow production of photo-electric cells at a loss. And, that writeoff, plus the 'green' attempt, allows for indulgences for other less green activity elsewhere. It would be a major blow to solar power for the DoE to attempt to remove those incentives, unless the public stepped up to pay the real cost of production.

And, there are LOTS of places for massive arrays -- tops of buildings, for one. Just as Cell buildings lease space, so could power companies provide 'spot' power to the grid for buildings, and send excess back into their system, for minor leases and reduced power consumption cost to the end user. And, the array could encompass several city blocks with a central substation and filters.

This will, of course, piss off the birds.....