The Energy Evolution - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power - page 8

weight could be reduced by 40 percent. Hydrogen can be transported in
underground pipelines, tanker trucks or ships. Hydrogen pipelines can
carry both gaseous and liquid hydrogen.
Although it may be difficult, more cooperation is required between
vehicle manufacturers, fuel producers, and the government. The infra-
structure for the production and delivery of the fuels can evolve as need-
ed with free market forces providing most of the momentum. But, there
will need to be a coordination of selections of fuels and the adjustments
needed to run those fuels.
A combination of available alternative fuels should evolve with the
most likely choices affected by a number of technical, political and market
factors. In order to allow a wider application of alternative fuels, a num-
ber of obstacles have to be overcome. These include economic, technologi-
cal, and infrastructural issues. In the past, gasoline has been plentiful and
has had a significant price advantage compared to other fuels. This could
change quickly and alternative fuels would need to become more com-
monplace.
COST ISSUES AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
Accountants and economists commonly consider the cost of a barrel
of oil or a ton of coal or a therm of natural gas to be the taking cost and
the replacement cost is neglected. If the replacement cost of oil is used to
establish the cost of gasoline at the pump, cars would be much more fuel-
efficient. If we valued the replacement cost of energy, natural gas would
not have been vented for decades from oil fields.
When the external costs of using fossil and nuclear fuels, including
environmental regulations and health care costs are factored into the price
of gasoline products, hydrogen becomes one of the least expensive fu-
els. Many believe that the legislative trigger mechanism for the hydrogen
economy is the passage of a Fair Accounting Act that will insure that hy-
drogen will be the least expensive fuel.
Society must become more sustainable to conserve the resources that
make humans productive. A more complete economic analysis and ac-
counting would stimulate improved efficiency for economic development
and promote a future with sustainable prosperity.
The problems of expanding demands for diminishing resources
have been important in modern struggles for more oil resources. In World