[bahblahbah]

"Electricity from a nuclear plant would electrolyze water—splitting H2O into hydrogen and oxygen. Ballard champions the idea, calling nuclear power “extremely important, unless we see some other major breakthrough that none of us has envisioned.”

I am for more nuclear power plants just for the sake of diversifying our energy needs. But the waste is still radioactive after thousands of years. If we are going to go forward with nuclear power then we have to reverse Carter's executive order which banned reprocessing of nuclear fuel. The waste from the the reprocessed fuel is only radioactive for a few hundred years. That at least makes it engineeringly possible to create a structure capable to hold the waste.

"But economist Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England calculates that converting every vehicle in the U.S. to hydrogen power would require the electricity output of a million wind turbines—enough to cover half of California."

Works for me. We need a couple cheap wind turbines to put in every farm field across America and plug them right into the grids.

"Solar panels would likewise require huge swaths of land."

We can put solar panels on ever roof facing south. Farmers could fit their barns with solar panels.

The only way renewable energy is going to take off and provide a significant amount of energy in the US is if we get our farmers involved. We can force it by requiring farmers to spend their some of their subsidies money on renewable energy programs which benefit them and the US in the long run.

[SunkenCiv]

"We can put solar panels on ever roof facing south. Farmers could fit their barns with solar panels."

Photovoltaics are literally pie in the sky. Electricity so produced isn't competitive with conventional sources, and isn't going to be. Farmers don't all receive subsidies, and regardless, your hostility toward the makers of the agricultural surplus that is the foundation of all else in the society is mystifying.