Hydrogen’s Empty Environmental Promise

Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20001-5403
Phone (202) 842 0200
Fax (202) 842 3490
Contact Us

December 7, 2004
Briefing Paper no. 90

by Donald Anthrop

Donald Anthrop is professor emeritus of environmental studies at San Jose State University and the author of more than 60 papers and articles on energy and water resources.

Donald Anthrop is professor emeritus of environmental studies at San Jose State University and the author of more than 60 papers and articles on energy and water resources.

Published on December 7, 2004

PRINT PAGE

CITE THIS

Sans Serif

Serif

Share with your friends:

Politicians on both the Left and the Right have increasingly embraced subsidies for hydrogenpowered fuel cells as a promising way to move America away from reliance on petroleum. Although advocates concede that such technologies are at least several decades away from penetrating the market in any significant manner because of cost considerations, less attention has been paid to the environmental implications of such a transition.

Given current technology, switching from gasoline to hydrogen-powered fuel cells would greatly increase energy consumption even if the hydrogen were extracted from water rather than from fossil fuels. That’s because it takes a tremendous amount of electricity to harvest hydrogen and to deliver it to consumers. Moreover, a transition from gasoline to hydrogen would nearly double net greenhouse gas emissions attributable to passenger vehicles, given the current fuel mix in the electricity sector.

Download the PDF of Briefing Paper no. 90 (90 KB)
View this Briefing Paper in HTML
Get Adobe Reader