Hydrogen is not a fuel!

[Eugene Coyle]

Mike Ballard, I usually find your views dead-on but I think you are off here in a couple of dimensions.     First, hydrogen is not a fuel.  It is a storage medium for energy extracted from other fuels -- whether wind or nuclear or whatever. Mike Ballard wrote: Hydrogen is useful because it is not a carbon based fuel. <snip> Capitalists who own shares in the carbon based fuel industry will always try to convince you that converting to non carbon based fuels is utopian. It's the same argument they use against socialism i.e. TINA. It looks to me here as if you are making the mistake of thinking of a change in technology as a change in an economic system.  Is hydrogen the alternative to capitalism?     Amory Lovins has led a whole generation of environmentalists down the road of thinking that there is a technological fix for capitalism.  In the part of your post I snipped out you made clear that you don't think that way.  But why defend hydrogen? Shane Mage sees hydrogen as a way to "reconfigure our vehicle fleet."  Why not think a little about getting rid of the need for "our vehicle fleet"?  Forget trying to dream up technological fixes to save capitalism. Gene Coyle