How about a battery? Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com suggests hydrogen isn’t really a fuel:
For a very long time, I have been skeptical of hydrogen as a fuel, because, in fact, it isn’t a fuel so much as it is a form of battery. Right now, most hydrogen reformed from natural gas, so it is a fossil fuel; the fans of hydrogen are pushing electrolysis, which uses a lot of electricity, so it was often promoted by the nuclear industry as a justification for building more reactors. It would then be turned back into electricity in fuel cells and drive electric motors, which is what batteries do. But hydrogen is a tiny molecule that is hard to keep bottled, and the whole process seems less and less efficient or straightforward when batteries keep getting better and cheaper. …
Ben Spurr of the Toronto Star notes:
Because the fuel is stored for later use after it’s produced, it could be produced during off-peak periods overnight, which would lower the cost and allow the province to tap into its considerable electricity surplus. Hydrogen would also allow Metrolinx to run clean trains while avoiding the expensive and disruptive work of erecting overhead wires along hundreds of kilometers of track.
Those are both key points; hydrogen as battery could use off-peak power to run trains at peak times. It could help flatten out demand and help pay for those multi-billion dollar refits of the nuclear fleet.
Changing a viewpoint or definition often leads to insights, so I appreciate this recasting of hydrogen as just an irretrievable fuel to a cyclical battery element.
