"Why not just burn natural gas?"

We're talking about Tax-a-chusetts here. A state run by people who are past masters at spending other peoples' money.

"How much energy is lost converting the gas into hydrogen?"

Quite a bit. Plus there is a bit of leakage of H2 into the atmosphere in the process -- and H2 is the most potent ozone-depletion agent ever produced by man.

And, of course, there is all that CO2, which the Liberal (capital L) Greenies (capital G) consider to be a Bad Thing. But to be a Liberal Green, you have to be able to completely ignore inconvenient facts.

"Hydrogen sounds good in theory, but if it is sourced from fossil fuels then the cost to fill up and the impact on the environment will still be high."

It's even worse than that. H2 is a potent pollutant all by itself.

BUT -- It's the perfect fuel for people who can freely spend other peoples' money.

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I agree - Hydrogen from steam reformation is ridiculous - both scientifically and politically. Cars run more efficiently on CNG than on gaseous H2 and using a fossil fuel to create zero emissions won't solve any energy sovereignty problems. The only reason to do this is the almightly ZEV, but this approach doesn't help the national economy or the environment when the ZEV's H2 comes from a "dirty" and likely foreign source... so really, what's the point? We'd be far better served in the interim with the drastically reduced tailpipe emissions afforded by simply moving to natural gas from petroleum fuels. Sadly, the global supply won't support that for long... but then again, which fossil fuel will vanish first?

I suppose we could try spending the millions from this nonsense on something else like battery research and retooling our existing electrical grid to support PHEVs (with range extension until the battery tech catches up)... but who wants to do that when there's plenty of flashy 'pie in the sky' ideas to fund? *sigh* If only there was a way to make batteries and Smart Grids as sexy as Hydrogen...

Getting back to the original story, here's a similar article from a couple years ago:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/08/onsite_steam_me.html

I imagine most comments here are going to run parallel to those made there.

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@CanaDog
Cars run more efficiently on CNG than on gaseous H2

That's true for ICE cars, but the efficiency advantage of a fuel cell more than outweighs the energy lost in the steam conversion.
Which is the reason why I don't undestand money being put into hydrogen ICE research. If you go hydrogen, do it right and use a fuel cell.

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