Hydrogen makes an incredibly clean fuel. You burn it with oxygen and you get water – no carbon emissions there. It also happens to be the most abundant element in the universe. Super. Here on earth, though, practically every last red hot atom is locked up. We do have plenty of water here on terra firma that we could break up to get hydrogen and that is the plan. Take a little water, apply a little electricity and blammo; you’ve got hydrogen and oxygen. The catch is that you have to spend about twice as much energy to split water apart than you get out from recombining the hydrogen and oxygen. Where will that energy come from? If we use our current infrastructure, it will come from coal and natural gas. In this scenario, we have not only moved the emission of carbon dioxide from tailpipes to smokestacks but we’ve increased the amount we’re spewing. The upside is that it is easier to capture and deal with the carbon dioxide from big point sources like power plants than it is to capture it from several hundred million cars.

This isn’t to mention the difficulties of distribution and storage of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a tiny molecule that is very good at slipping through tiny cracks – think welds on tanks and connections in plumbing. Leaky pipes aren’t really a huge danger as hydrogen likes to float up and away, but losing gas from your parked car overnight could be annoying. Also, volume for volume, fuels liquid at normal temperatures have way more energy in them. A 16 gallon tank of highly compressed hydrogen wouldn’t even begin to get you as far as a 16 gallon tank of gasoline. Oh – and we have absolutely no large-scale distribution systems for hydrogen. Bummer. Let it go George.

How does ethanol stack up? In 2006, 1/5th of the 105 billion bushel U.S. corn crop – the third largest ever – went to making 5 billion gallons of ethanol. George W. wants to replace 15% of gasoline with ethanol by 2008. Meeting that goal will take 35 billion gallons of ethanol which will take 147 billion bushels of corn. Estimates indicate that it will take an additional 80 million acres of corn to do that. We also have to remember that corn has to feed us and our livestock. Already increased demand for corn has doubled prices from $2 a bushel to $4. The chicken industry has been saddled with $1.5 billion in extra feed costs. The cost to produce a bottle of soda has jumped $0.06. Ultimately, consumers eat the cost.

Ethanol also has its share of problems as a fuel. It carries less energy than gasoline meaning that you can’t go as far on equal amounts of each. It also attracts water like nobody’s business so every last steel component in fuel storage and transportation systems has to be replaced with stainless steel. Plants also don’t just grow and harvest themselves, either. The production of energy from plants – especially corn – takes energy, currently making the whole process nearly a wash. Fortunately, we are very close to being able to produce ethanol from cellulose. Instead of having to use the corn kernels, we could use the stalks. There are also very beneficial perennial prairie grasses that carry the most promise. They are native and actually improve the soil where they grow. But pushing corn as our main ethanol source is stupid and short-sighted, so stop it GW.