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And Japan and South Korea subsidize home-installed fuel cells (an 80% subsidy in S. Korea's case). I'd like to see a comparison of costs and benefits (including greenhouse gases) of these fuel-cell units vs. the German approach.

Whoah, seriously? They're making alane (stabilized aluminum hydride, AlH3)? Yep, a quick search revealed this to be the case. This would interest the rocketry industry as well, since alane offers great Isp. Let me check those weight numbers. Aluminum's atomic mass is about 27, while hydrogen's is about 1. AlH3 would thus be about 10% hydrogen by weight, so 9% would be essentially saturated, and 6% over half saturated. If correct, this would be incredible.

HOWEVER...

As many people seem to forget on energy and rocketry threads, breakthroughs like this are sadly a dime a dozen. The vast majority never reach the market or reach it in a greatly diminished form. Thus, take press-release style reports of breakthroughs with a heavy grain of salt.

Whoah, seriously? They're making alane (stabilized aluminum hydride, AlH3)? Yep, a quick search revealed this to be the case. This would interest the rocketry industry as well, since alane offers great Isp. Let me check those weight numbers. Aluminum's atomic mass is about 27, while hydrogen's is about 1. AlH3 would thus be about 10% hydrogen by weight, so 9% would be essentially saturated, and 6% over half saturated. If correct, this would be incredible.

HOWEVER...

As many people seem to forget on energy and rocketry threads, breakthroughs like this are sadly a dime a dozen. The vast majority never reach the market or reach it in a greatly diminished form. Thus, take press-release style reports of breakthroughs with a heavy grain of salt.

We are not rapidly running out of natural gas. We're running out of domestic natural gas, but world natural gas supplies are still quite plentiful. Note that the US used to use a significant amount of oil for electricity generation. When it became expensive, we switched, and now oil is almost unused in this country for power generation (except for backup power). Barring some instant, "ooops, we're out of natural gas -- when the heck did that happen?" moment (which is essentially impossible), there's not going to be an electricity shortage.

As for a charcoal fuel cell: it's not about whether or not you can get energy from charcoal in a variety of manners. Feeding it and removing the byproducts, even in a slurry, is the problematic element -- especially when you factor in the cost of making your charcoal consistent enough. Don't believe me? Here's what the associate of the inventor of the charcoal fuel cell has to say:

http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage4635.html

"Handling of solid fuel, such as charcoal, is not easy. If we want to feed charcoal into the cell continuously, we have to solve the problem how it can be fed. This is one of the biggest problems of solid fuel," Mochidzuki said.

As for charcoal itself, its production is a lossy process. Much of the original energy is contained in the released gasses -- namely CO, H2, and volatile oils/tars -- but they're mixed in with lots of CO2 and H2O, making for less efficient combustion (not to mention the energy loss involved with the process heat). Not to mention that, if you don't want to get tar deposits clogging up your generator, you need to use the more expensive "downdraft" gassification method. Then there's all of the energy expended not just in production, but in gathering and processing the biomass (not applicable for some kinds of biomass, but definitely important if you want the vast amounts of biomass referred to here).

The issue is that this article's author basically assumes that people are morons -- that biomass gathering and charcoal conversion simply hasn't been considered before. Charcoal is just too expensive for it to be economically viable right now. And I can just picture the author's response: something along the lines of "Just give the technology some time..." Just like the crutch that they used with the "just over the horizon" battery technologies. There's a big problem with this logic: you can't point to "just over the horizon" technologies for the techs that you like while ignoring them for techs that you don't like. Want to include better battery tech? Well, you should include cellulosic ethanol, then, since we're just as close to having that as we are to having better electricity storage. Heck, while we're adding in techs that are "not quite there", we'll have to add improved bitumen extraction, shale extraction, methane hydrate/clathrate extraction, thermal depolymerization... (on, and on, and on...)

I live in Finland, and had to google to find out what you're talking about. I guess the claims about Hydrocell's products come pretty close, but fuel cell technology is not really in that wide use here.

Electric and (more so, I'd presume) hybrid cars do have some penetration, but then again there's less obstacles to adopting them.

forgot to mention, that these people, as well as a few others, claim to be "The World's First Hydrogen Scooter".. I wonder who is telling the truth???

http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage3616.html

For those who want more, the best links on for intelligent green reading:

WorldChanging.com -- which also has an article about wave power.

TreeHugger, which is already linked in the story.

Dave Pollard, which writes very insightfully about lots of things including environmental philosophy.

Green Car Congress, where you can get the best news about green mobility, cool cars & industrial developments.

IDFuel, which is more about design but covers some of the same ground as TreeHugger.com

FuelCellWorks for all the latest news about fuel cells.

Grist Magazine, for news and a touch of humor, plus lots of interviews.

I found a paper about the 20 hydrogen myths (pdf format). It tells a lot about the Hindemburg, and other urban legends related to hydrogen.

Anyway, having pressurized hydrogen in your car is _NOT_ what the latest technology advancements are about. It's about hydrogen cells. And nanotechnology provides a way of storing hydrogen in solid media under low pressures.

For more info, check out nanoapex news and search the topic "nanoenergy".

(Note to editors:
Do NOT, under ANY circumstances, moderate this post as 'insightful'!)

Well, the technology does seem to be getting better.

Here's a recent press release about an alternative to chemical batteries. It's a storage capacitor made of porous carbon. Supposedly can store twice the charge of lead acid batteries, recharge in 1 minute and last indefinitely. Sounds relatively simple.

I think some people think the idea of refueling is a bit arcane sounding, but the point of fuel cells is the higher energy density and the somewhat increased flexibility we have in creating new technologies to exploit the form of the energy. Batteries haven't improved by much in many many years of research.

According to FuelCellWorks, the DoCoMo phone will have up to 300 hrs functioning time. This is an improvement on my current cell phone, which lasts about a week. Furthermore, the use of little canisters for refueling is pretty much like carrying around a spare battery. It gets around the recharge problem. If I'm in a rush, I don't want to have to stick my phone into the power socket for half an hour.

At some point, I think we won't need to refuel. DoCoMo or someone else can make a device that will use electricity to regenerate from the fuel cell waste products back into fuel. Highly inefficient, but convenient when you run out of your little canisters