Environment: Hydrogen might be the answer to energy woes

With the need for clean energy rising, why not consider hydrogen? It is plentiful, and if properly extracted, cheap. Hydrogen can be used for cars, buses, trucks, electricity generation, and energy storage.

Water contains hydrogen and an electric charge is needed to release it. Using coal fired generated electricity is expensive and dirty so we should use renewable sources of energy. These could include wind, solar, tidal,and hydro. All these forms of energy have times when they are off the grid because of temporary low demand.

For example, in the Spring there is an excess of hydroelectric power and often wind farms are temporarily shut down for lack of need. This excess energy capacity could be used to create hydrogen. The hydrogen could then be transported/piped and stored for future use. Any type of intermittent generating capacity, such as tides, could be used.

The cost of this clean energy would be low because the generators are already available and only the cost of hydrogen generators, storage facilities and additional preventive maintenance to generating equipment would be required.

Hydrogen helps solve the problems of energy storage and the need for additional reliable, inexpensive, clean energy.