The Hopeful Yet Dismal Science of Hydrogen Fuel Cells

Last week, I discussed how biodiesels carry promise as a transitional fuel in a more environmentally conscious economy. However, biodiesels do not seem a viable long-term alternative to gasoline or diesel due to its difficulty in fulfilling demand, not to mention the fact that it can only mitigate emissions—not eliminate them. There is another technology that could prove to be a fitting long-term solution, and that technology is the hydrogen fuel cell.

Biodiesel:An Alternative Fuel With a Foothold

Seeing the effect we’ve had on the world through industry—in particular, the burning of fossil fuels—can be depressing. With the world’s temperature increasing faster than it has in millennia, and our continued, voracious consumption of our rapidly depleting fossil fuels aiding that rise, despair seems the natural recourse. Nonetheless, countermeasures exist, and to my surprise one of them—the use of biodiesels as a fuel source—is gaining traction.