] Hydrogen is the most abundant element on the planet.
] But it cannot be harvested directly. It must be extracted
] from another material. There is an upside to this and a
] downside. The upside is that a wide variety of materials
] contain hydrogen, which is one reason it has attracted
] such widespread support. Everyone has a dog in this
] fight.
]
] Renewable energy is a very little dog. Environmentalists
] envision an energy economy where hydrogen comes from
] water, and the energy used to accomplish this comes from
] wind. Big dogs like the nuclear industry also foresee a
] water-based hydrogen economy, but with nuclear as the
] power source that electrolyzes water. Nucleonics Week
] boasts that nuclear power "is the only way to produce
] hydrogen on a large scale without contributing to
] greenhouse gas emissions."
]
] For the fossil fuel industry, not surprisingly,
] hydrocarbons will provide most of our future hydrogen.
] They already have a significant head start. Almost 50
] percent of the world's commercial hydrogen now comes from
] natural gas. Another 20 percent is derived from coal.
]
] The automobile and oil companies are betting that
] petroleum will be the hydrogen source of the future. It
] was General Motors, after all, that coined the phrase
] "the hydrogen economy".