32 operational hydrogen fueling stations open in America, more planned
Like I said, it must be hydrogen week around here. The U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy subsection sent out an email yesterday announcing, among other things, that there are now 32 hydrogen fueling stations open in America, and 19 more are on the way. The growing number of stations doesn't mean that it's easy to go fill up a fuel cell car yet, as 21 of these stations are private, used by transit agencies of private fleets. California has the most hydrogen fueling stations, with 16 current and 12 planned stations. Fourteen more states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont) also have hydrogen available at at least one pump. You can see a list of the stations here.[Source: National Hydrogen Association via EERE]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Phil L. 8:52AM (6/02/2006)
Anyone know what process they're using to supply the hydrogen? Every approach I've researched still requires a larger energy investment than what we can currently get out of it. So there needs to be some other energy source (petroleum and coal, in general) out there to fund it.
This doesn't mean that hydrogen isn't extremely promising technology - it just means there will need to be fundamental changes in order for the hydrogen fueling station count to go from 51 to something more usable, such as 51,000 (there were about 168,000 gas stations in the US in 2004 http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/quizzes/answerQuiz16.shtml ).
This is why I get so frustrated when I see yet another cute hydrogen car concept or brightly-color hydrogen fueling station: None of it means anything until we come up with a large-scale way to procedure hydrogen without having to develop some other energy source to do it.
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