This month's Wired has an amazing story on the potential future of fuel-cells, comparing the drive to wean America off of the gas-teat to the Cold-War-driven space race of the Kennedy era.
Like the car companies, oil producers have already taken steps toward an oil-free future. Over the past 15 years, corporations like Shell and Exxon have ceded their leadership in oil production to a dozen state-owned enterprises in countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, and Norway. Instead they've focused on adding value farther down the supply chain by refining crude into gasoline and distributing and selling it through filling stations. They know they could play the same role in a hydrogen economy, which is why Shell and BP have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in hydrogen storage and production technology. Indeed, BP, formerly British Petroleum, has rebranded itself Beyond Petroleum.
The major oil companies are already extracting hydrogen from gasoline for industrial uses at nine refinery complexes throughout the United States. With a little push, these plants could serve as hubs for a nascent hydrogen-distribution network.
Converting filling stations is bound to cost billions of dollars over several decades. But it should cost relatively little to retrofit clusters of stations in proximity to both a hydrogen-producing refinery and a population center where fuel cell vehicles are sold. Oil companies could meet initial demand by trucking hydrogen from refineries to these stations. As the number of fuel cell vehicles on the road rises, stations that aren't served by refinery hubs could install processors, called reformers, that use electricity to extract hydrogen from gasoline or water. The White House should ask for $5 billion – roughly $30,000 for each of the nation's 176,000 filling stations – to get the ball rolling.
