It makes sense to me. Slap stickers on your public transportation vehicles that say things like “Clean Air Vehicle” and “Zero Emissions Vehicle” to greenwash it. I understand that at the end source, that AC Transit bus that you look at drive through the intersection, whilst you are sitting alone in your car may make you remark something in the effect of “Really? Clean air vehicle? That’s kind of cool.”

Basically, I’ll let you read more into it yourself, but hydrogen needs to be produced by humans to be used in these fuel cell vehicles. It takes energy (fossil fuels, nuclear, “renewable” energy, et al) to produce this hydrogen. The problem with this is that production of hydrogen from water requires more energy to produce than is released when hydrogen is used as a fuel.

There are many different ways to produce hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid-electric cars batteries, “renewable” energy sources (windmills/solar panels). I want to know the end result over the entire lifecycle.

  • How much energy/emissions does it take to produce? (solar panel/batteries/fuel cell)
  • How much energy/emissions does it take to transport the above product/resource to it’s destination?
  • WHERE do the emissions occur?

There are a lot more factors, but everyone just looks at the sticker on the vehicle and doesn’t think through the entire process. They just get the instant green feeling that “Oh, I drive a hybrid, I’m saving the environment.” They don’t think that the hydrogen propelling the bus they are riding was produced somewhere in Nevada or elsewhere and they have to deal with the emissions from the coal plant that provided the energy to produce the hydrogen.

Here’s your homework – go read up on Thorium and how it should be used in nuclear power plants instead of uranium. I’ll give you a hint – it won’t result in another Chernobyl, doesn’t need a low-population buffer zone, and the byproducts aren’t able to be used in nuclear weapons. Nuclear is the wave of the future. Combine this with electric cars (assuming that the environmental impact of all these batteries that have a limited life-cycle are produced well) and we will be better off that we are now.