TIME FOR HYDROGEN

No longer ‘20 years in the future,’ hydrogen and fuel cells are a vital, high-growth solution for carbon reduction across the transportation and other industry sectors.

After decades of R&D, some false starts and a smattering of low-volume production vehicles, hydrogen has emerged as a vital enabler for carbon reduction across the transportation sector. In gaseous form, the lightest and most abundant chemical element is an efficient energy carrier and battery-like storage medium. When produced from decarbonized sources and used in fuel-cell systems, hydrogen can be a genuinely low- or zero-emission source of electricity.

Energy-grid experts increasingly see hydrogen as a valuable “knob to turn,” broadening renewables' effectiveness by serving as a load-balancer for wind and solar. For vehicle engineers and customers, hydrogen fuel cells - with an energy-to-weight ratio 10X greater than lithium batteries - offers some key practical advantages over battery-electric propulsion. Time required to fill a 350- or 700-bar (5,000- or 10,000 psi) high-pressure storage tank is as quick as topping up with gasoline or diesel. And compared with the ponderous mass of large-EV battery packs - 3,000 lb. (1360 kg) in GM's Hummer EV and an estimated 10,000 lb (4536 kg) in Tesla's Class-8 Semi - a fuel-cell propulsion system with similar performance is a veritable lightweight.