"Fuel cells have been touted as a green power source "
Touted green by politicians and journalists alike, who basically have zero technical education!
Although fuels cells are compact and have a high energy storage capacity, they are not " a green power source" when the whole picture is included for the extraction of the fuel itself. True the waist from the cell is not pollutant yet, often overlooked by the hype is the fact that hydrogen or what ever fuel is used must be prepared with another energy source, which for all particle purpose would be fossil fuel.
Hydrogen can be taken from water, but it would require more energy to do it , than what would be returned when used in the fuel cell, therefore it would be more green to just burn the fossil fuel directly, since less would be used for example comparing an automobile combustion engine to a fuel cell engine. However for small devices combustion engines are not practical, so this report has some merits, very exciting!
But getting past the hype, fuel cells are just part of the solution, what is still needed is a clean low cost energy source free from the dependency of terrorist nations, such as nuclear power!
I felt the same way with the old technology that needed hydrogen. This new technology, "direct methanol fuel cell", uses methanol directly, there's no need to separate the hydrogen first using some other energy source. Apparently it uses platinum as a catalyst to achieve the same thing!! That's the part that is exciting.
I'm curious though what it's goint to cost (not mentioned in the article) since platinum ain't cheap - it's roughly twice the price of gold... and rising.