It has to be cheaper to produce using this method than using dirtier methods. If we learned anything from the Supreme Court decision in California, it that both legally and based on the principles of a free market you can\'t force someone to use the hydrogen from this Vs from any other process.

Anyone can use any legal form of power generation and sell it into the power grid.

Regarding: \"Powering cars with fossil fuel based hydrogen is not sustainable, not renewable and not much cleaner than today\'s fuels.\"
True that fossil fuel based hydrogen generates emissions in the \"production\" of hydrogen, but that\'s where the pollution ends since the end use of hydrogen, in cars for example, is 100% clean! This translates to a 50% reduction in emissions overall, and 50% is a VERY BIG step forward in carbon emission reduction.

To make this big leap away from fossil fueled vehicles we need to settle on a similarly based fuel for all companies to develop cars or any other vehicles around. I believe Hydrogen will be the catalyst for electric cars because Hydrogen fuel cells can be producing electricty while the car uses it.
The only other question to answer with something like the Dearman angine ready in the next 2 years is that a Dearman engine is more efficient than Hydrogen as a energy converter (power torque needs etc taken into account as Dearman will lag and electric engines 100% from start).
Either of these solutions can be implemented with todays infrastructure with hot swapable bottles able to be placed at any service station where they are currently located.
Governments need to drive the end solution by setting place common sense (how we going to get that froma government??) plans for the immediate future of transport, particularly around traffic congestion and the only viable solution to that right now is what I term a Personal Transport vehicle, something like the Nissan Glide and similar cambersteer vehicle (4wheels please not 3!!), Motorcycles like the Quattro which will ease more people into motorcycle commuting.
Then you can address things like the CO2 emmission moving buses cabs and taxi trucks to Zero emissions in a 3 year project etc. All very acheivable if somebody buts their line in the sand and says tommorrow never comes and today we have to make our best decision.

Nice to see some of these concepts getting off the ground.
@Gavin Greaves: I think I know what you are meaning, BUT hydrogen in these applications is hardly a catalyst, as a catalyst is defined as \"A substance that causes or accelerates a chemical reaction without being affected (consumed) itself\". In these reactions (fuel cell or ICE the hydrogen is being oxidised therefore changed/affected... sorry for nit picking, better use of words helps avoid confusion.
I hope you actually meant that Hydrogen technology is a catalyst for change from a Non Renewable Lifestyle to a renewable one.
(Forget the CO2 bizo, economics and non pollution is good enough, the climate will look after itself... at current rates the Worlds GDP isn\'t enough to offset Climate change if it is driven by CO2, if it is not driven by CO2 then the worlds GDP spent on the problem will only help to make certain individuals Much richer)

erm the US has just spent over a trillion $ on securing Middle East gas for the next 10+ years, so the urgency for developing new fuels is low from a purely commercial point of view - that\'s the BIG problem.
However, there is clearly a very easy solution to all this fuel business - set up a massive solar farm on Moon Base 1, convert it into transportable Hydrogen pods, and ship it back to earth using a Space elevator. Im sure we could have built all that for less than a trillion $.......

@ about 0.20 the energy density of gasoline at 700 bar (!), I don\'t see it replacing transportation fuel anytime soon. Then again, an onboard catalytic converter, converting LNG, petroleum products to hydrogen may allow us to get around this. As I suscribe to the K.I.S.S. principle whenever possible (Keep It Simple, Stupid), maybe just living closer to where we work would yield good benefit with just changes in zoning. I\'m all for reduced or even eliminating pollution, NOT using fuel would be the simplest, most effective cause for reduction.

This is great concept especially if we add the posibility of using the resulting clean water (coming out of the car exhaust) for human consumption in countries where clean water is not available. This way the savings will be huge.

Hydrogen is notoriously hard to contain and has to be compressed to 10,000 psi in order to be useful at all. While it may be one option for immediately-used power generation and specific commercial applications, it is probably best thought of as an adjunct to ,but not a replacement for, gasoline and diesel.
Natural gas and liquid oxygen are probably the winning combo. The question is: who will fund the rolling test beds?

I understand the artist rendering might not show the actual land usage needed for the production of Hydrogen, but thats a lot of land and capital investment. How is this any better then using the lets say off peak nighttime power production from Dams to make the gas?