February 01, 2008
New technology to make cheaper, low-carbon hydrogen
Nanoptek, a startup based in Maynard, MA, has developed a new way to make hydrogen from water using solar energy. The company says that its process is cheap enough to compete with the cheapest approaches used now, which strip hydrogen from natural gas, and it has the further advantage of releasing no carbon dioxide.
Many people claim that the fatal flaw in using hydrogen as the replacement for gasoline is that is also uses petroleum and natural gas to make hydrogen. But you have to remember that, while that may be true today, in five years you'll still be making gasoline from petroleum, but we'll have come up with all sorts of other ways to make alt fuels like hydrogen and biofuels.