The article is clear. Hydrogen is not an energy source from any process that exists on earth (except in thermonuclear weapons). I'm going somewhat beyond the article, because my point is that the buzz about hydrogen is a distraction--probably a deliberate one.
Still, the possibility of an economical alternative to gasoline for vehicle fuels
Perhaps, you aren't clear, however, since you call hydrogen "an economical alternative to gasoline for vehicle fuels." Hydrogen, as the article makes clear, I make clearer, and you acknowledge IS NOT A FUEL. It cannot be an alternative to any fuel. You want to make hydrogen right now, the only way you will be able to do that in quantity is by burning coal. That's it. Now, imagine burning 3.5 to 4 times as much coal as would be required to power a coal powered vehicle, and that's the amount of coal a hydrogen powered car will burn. In addition to burning all that coal, you also have transport and manufacturing problems with a highly explosive gas that you don't have with gasoline, but that's another story for another thread.
The point of the post is: forget about hydrogen, per se. If you're willing to burn uranium, then lots and lots of alternatives open up. Maybe hydrogen included, maybe not. But the point is, we suffer from a lack of common sense, not a lack of unbound hydrogen, or coal, or even energy at all.
Great, then, we're agreed that hydrogen is not a practical fuel in today's world, or even in the near future. Fine.
What's needed, then, is further R&D, with continued funding by the energy companies. First and foremost, we need new nuclear plants, of new, more efficient and safer, designs.
I'm glad we can all agree.
I'll welcome any information on energy R & D you care to post, Timm.
Huh...well, the interest in hydrogen is precisely that it can be a vehicle fuel-- and saying that it is a fuel is perfectly consistent with acknowledging that creating hydrogen on earth requires more energy than is released by that hydrogen.
Anyway, the important point, whatever you want to insist on regarding the semantics of "fuel", is that hydrogen is not a net energy source on earth, because there are no reservoirs of free hydrogen. Yes, yes, yes-- all informed posters on this thread agree. Hydrogen is still interesting, however, because it is, at least in principle, portable. So it can be a vehicle fuel, or, if you prefer, a vehicle "energy storage medium". It is, furthermore, much more promising in energy density than electric batteries (even NiMH batteries, which use hydrogen mated to metal), and, unlike electric batteries, a possible alternative to gasoline.
The economical use of hydrogen does depend on cheap electricity-- that's true. But if the other technical problems with hydrogen's use work out, it would be a significant development that economic vehicular travel would depend *only* on there being a cheap source of electricity. For there are plenty of cheap ways to generate electricity in the U.S., and there will be in the foreseeable future. That would be a contrast to now, when we must deal with the international political problems associated with importing oil. There is also the long term possibility that oil will become more scarce and its price will rise. Then, there are the carbon emissions from ICE engines, which, while grossly overestimated by the left in their harmful influence, would nevertheless be a nice thing to be rid of. There is, after all, the possibility of producing electricity without combustion emissions in the future, through fission reactors, and, perhaps someday, fusion reactors.
So, the possibility of hydrogen-fueled vehicles is certainly worth some R&D money now. That's the point.
That said, I agree that hydrogen is sometimes now used as a political distraction. One suspects, for example, that Bush's advocacy of hydrogen produced by electricity from windmills(!) in his SOTU was to bolster his green credentials, such as they are, as a counterbalance to his desire to do things like drill in ANWR. (I think we should drill there, by the way.)
Ok, I'm being a little picky, but the orbiter for the space shuttle has three main engines which burn liquid hydrogen. In this sense, it IS a fuel although perhaps not a very reasonable one for most uses.