The way I see it, electric or hydrogen are the only two viable consumption side technologies in the midterm.

Production side you have fission for the near term, then preferably fusion, but that seems to be 30-50 years away until commerciality.

If I was president, I'd devote moon landing type resources to funding the tokamak and getting that up and running within a decade. And I hate hippies.

I agree about the baloney. Anytime an 'expert' tells you they can predict what is going to happen in technology out to 2090 - they are fooling themselves or trying to make a fool of you.

Clarke's first law of prediction:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

differing opinion attached... with actual math/numbers!

Suspicions comfirmed. There was no study. The conclusions were fabricated by H2GEN corp of Alexandria, VA to boost sales of their H2 generators. These generators "burn" natural gas to produce Hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Efficiency of the conversion is listed as 60%.

Thank You Finman!! I have hoped there was such a concise document debunking the hydogen economy! My favorite quote from that document:
"Hydrogen can never compete with it's own energy source. It has no past, present or future".

Hydrogen is NOT the way to economic or environmental security. It's an expensive, inefficient farce, and the sooner everyone realises this, the better off we'll be.

Hydrogen could have its place in energy/environmental security. But like most people on this forum agrees, its not for cars.

Imagine you having a solar panel system and 1 (or 2) wind generator in your home.... the fuel cell generator could store the extra unused energy for evening use. Use them all up then go into the grid. Or forget the grid all together.

The hydrogen HOAX is way worse than you may know. Consider the activity of the California Air Resource Board (C.A.R.B.) , the "champion" of alternate fuels for us ... you think they want to push clean EV transportation ?? NO !

Plugs and Cars

You may not be in CA, but CARB (who are supposedly leading the nation via clean regulations that are eventually followed by other states) is only feigning a solution. The oilies own these people. THIS is what happens when big oil has regulaters/legislators in their pocket ... the rules will be exactly what your sponsor wants them to be . . . if you continue to have them fund your election campaign.

GM et al have already acknowleged the folly of fuel cels, and the wastefulness of fuel converted to hydrogen, yet CARB still pushed it. How can that be?

Give me a $10k solar array, and a $30k BEV and I could have 0 (well, almost) carbon emissions for transportation today and for the next 20 years at almost no additional cost. No new technology, or Trillion dollar infrastructural developments required. While $40k sounds like a lot, it happens to be exactly what Edmunds predicts the total ownership cost of a fairly average car like a 4cyl Accord to be over 5 years.

Just for fun, the $3T cost of the Iraq war could have put 75 Million of these cars on the road. And at no cost and almost no operating cost to the owners. Talk about an economic stimulus, GHG reduction, and energy independence package! The economic benefit to an average family would have been ~$6-$8k per vehicle per year. Makes my 1 time $600 check from George look a little pitiful. 75 million BEVs on the road would have cut our GHG emissions from LDV by at least 30-50%. LDV gas consumption would be reduced by a similar amount, or maybe 20-30% total reduction in consumption. By coincidence I believe thats about how much we import from unfriendly nations.

Would have been nice.

Rob

Fusion has been 30 - 50 years away from being commercially viable ever since they started researching it. The research facility in my area is almost 40 years old. AFAIK, that facility still has not reached "break even" :ballchain: despite hundreds of millions in funding and having one of the most powerful lasers in the US.

Estimates of availability that are that far out are just WAGs, IMHO. They might as well say, "we don't know when it will prove commercially feasible"; however, they might lose all their research funding if they did say that so they probably will not admit it. IMHO, such a statement would be much more honest.

My "Manhattan Project" would be ultra capacitors and organic solar cells.

I want to be your friend! What's the organic solar cells all about? I'm intrigued.