Hydrogen - clean?

There's much hype over the Hydrogen Fuel Cells clean energy, wasting water vapor and finally getting most of the cities rid of most the pollution.

But there's a catch.
A fuel cell will be used, for example, to propel a car, instead of using petrol. Great. No more car smoke irritating your throat and making your garage dirty. But I digress...

The car (and I'll stick to cars for the example) needs energy to run, to be turned into "moving". This energy is now provided by the petrol explosion inside the engine, and in the future, the fuel cell will enable the car to be propelled too, releasing water: since the Hydrogen (H) is combined with Oxygen (O) in the "explosion", into Water (H2O).

Marvelous, but if so, why am I "ranting" about a catch?

Easy.
Hydrogen exists in Natural mostly combined with another element, and you've guessed it, Oxygen, into a very well know element, Water. To separate Hydrogen from Oxygen, in the water, trough a electric process which results in a chemical reaction, you need... water and... *power*, electrical in this case, and loads of it.

So, in order for you to have your car propelled by a fuel cell, it implies that those fuel cell need to be manufactured. To manufacture a cell that will provide your car with equivalent energy from an oil source will imply using that same oil to produce the same amount of energy to produce the fuel cell.

Some will argue you don't have to use oil, just electricity, but electricity needs to be produced, either with clean sources, nuclear or oil - and unfortunately, major is still, and is going to continue to be... OIL.

Following me? I'm confused too, so I'll make it simpler.
The fact is that you are not reducing fuel consuming, you are just transferring the "where" the fuel is used (from cars to fuel cell manufacturers power providers).

In the end, you are still burning more or less the same amount of fuel you did earlier, and I confess I can't yet see where that will be cheaper... or cleaner.

Well, actually less since you can produce electricity to make those fuel cells without petrol or burning of fossil fuel, but the sad reality is that most power is produced using fossil fuel and consequent dangerous emanations to the atmosphere, as I said before... and as oil prices rise, economic damage is also done, wether or not you use fuel cells, for the oil is still present in the process, at least, for now.

So conclusion is, use your head and think, don't be fooled by the industry marketing cosmetics.

The fuel dependence, and I insist, will continue, disguised, generating even more money - perhaps a reason for it's price to sky rocket enduring parallel industries such as a suposed to be "green" one?

Power will be more expensive, hence, all that depends on it, including those cells until someone starts doing them using clean, cheap, non oil dependent energy - will go up or stay up too.

Unless people and government totally focus on full clean energy production from start, the problem will remain disguised.

Good news: hydrogen may be produced using sea (or river) weeds, I heard, or whatever they are called - all it takes is sunlight and water - and residue being Oxygen, it's hard to get any better - this is what should be done, inform the people from start to finish, not just disguising the apparent result and keeping the results all the same on the long run.

Having said that, I'm all for un-polluted cities and less, much less, noise.
However, I'll miss the roar of high-end sports gasoline engines (not the diesels though), and I own quite a few... as someone very arrogant once said, a true gentleman never drives anything with less than twelve cilinders.

© Alvaro M. Rocha - All rights reserved.