Hydrogen production 'must be green'

Jochen Schmalholz, the head of BMW's clean-energy technology, believes energy companies need to find ways of making hydrogen more efficiently if hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars are to be viably classed as clean energy alternatives to petrol and diesel vehicles.

According to Mr Schmalholz, around 80 per cent of the world's hydrogen supply comes from natural gas or oil.

This means CO2 emissions are produced - offsetting the fact that CO2 emissions are reduced through the use of hydrogen as a power source for vehicles.

Indeed, he thinks that hydrogen cars "only make sense if we can produce green hydrogen".

"We can move a car without any CO2 emissions but we just shift the problem to production of hydrogen," Mr Schmalholz confirmed in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr Schmalholz believes a solution to this problem would be to produce hydrogen using electrolysis and solar energy.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/news/hydrogen-cars-still-two-decades-away-bmw/2008/01/25/1201157629983.html

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