" Just where do you think that we will get the hydrogen ? From petroleum ? Or nuclear ?"
I was thinking we could get the electricity from: Petroleum, nuclear, hydro (dams), coal, ethanol, solar, wind, or anything else you can think of. The problem isn’t where the energy to produce hydrogen will come from – it’s whether the government will allow us to quit using oil: The taxes oil generates cannot be taken out of the system without Washington D.C. going bankrupt.
The benefit of United Nuclear’s system is freedom from the Mid-East, not a magic new source of energy or a perpetual running motor. It will still cost money and use dirty energy. The difference will shift the pollution from our cars to the power plants and take power/reliance away from the Mid-east (Iran).
Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com
The great thing about producting hydrogen from grid electricity is that you can start/stop the process at will. Which means you can take off-peak electricity and produce hydrogen.
Electricity from "base load" plants is something like twice as energy efficient as "peaking plants" that are started up to handle daytime use. See all those street lights out there? They aren't out there so much to light the streets, but were promoted at cut rate prices by the electricity companies to get something from the excess power at night.
If we had a "real" hydrogen economy, where all that electric power was soaked up by hydrogen production at night, and ALL electric plants were "base load" plants, I'd bet our overall energy efficiency would be pretty good. I'm sure there's an energy loss in the conversion to H2, but making up for it by using large efficient plants to produce the original electricity is a good thing.
And then there's nuclear.
We could take OPEC back to the sand ages, if we REALLY wanted to.