The Power and Transportation Future - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power - page 280

Political obstacles to tripling nuclear power production would need
to be set aside. Natural gas supplies would need to be increased.
Another problem is cost-effectiveness, hydrogen must be able to
compete with alternative strategies including more fuel- efficient internal
combustion engine vehicles. The Shell studies estimate that the cost in the
U.S. to supply 2% of cars with hydrogen by 2020 is about $20 billion.
In the near term, hydrogen is likely to be made from fossil fuel sourc-
es. The annual operating costs of fuel cell power are likely to be higher
than those of the competition in the foreseeable future.
The Kyoto treaty failed to pass in the U.S. Senate and the energy bill
passed in 2005 hardly considered climate change. But in June of 2005, the
U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution urging Congress and the
states to meet the targets set by the Kyoto treaty and pledged to improve
environmental practices in their cities. A number of states are also setting
their own targets for emissions reductions.
Since 1990, University of California-Berkeley professor John Harte
has been baking a Rocky Mountain meadow to investigate the effects of
global warming. On a slope near Gothic, Colorado, Harte has set up an ar-
ray of infrared heat lamps across 100 yards of grasses to create the effects
of warming. In this ecosystem sagebrush is crowding out the other plants.
Other experiments suggest that mountain meadows could become arid
areas by the end of the century if warming continues.
Satellite data show the Arctic region warming more during the 1990s
than during the 1980s, and Arctic Sea ice is now melting by up to 15 percent
per decade. The loss of the Arctic Sea ice could alter ocean circulation pat-
terns and trigger changes in climate patterns worldwide. Southern Ocean
sea ice floating near Antarctica has decreased by almost 20 percent since
1950 and recent studies have also shown the worldwide acceleration of gla-
cier melting. Across the world, farmers and climate scientists are finding
that generations-old patterns of rainfall and temperature are shifting.
There are those who believe that global warming is the most poten-
tially catastrophic environmental problem facing the nation and the plan-
et this century and it is the problem that requires the most urgent action.
They may advocate that spending money on building a hydrogen infra-
structure would take away resources from more cost-effective measures.
But, a hydrogen infrastructure may be critical in achieving a major CO 2
reduction in this century.
In the first half of the 21st century, alternative fuels could achieve
greater emissions and gas savings at lower cost, reducing emissions in