An orderly transition to prevalent, even predominant, use of hydrogen as a U.S. energy carrier can be made practical and profitable at each step, starting now, but only by doing the right things in the right order:

• deploying fuel cells first in efficient buildings for combined heat and power;
• meanwhile developing and deploying road vehicles ready for direct-hydrogen fuel cells (superefficient Hypercar(SM) vehicles achieve this via threefold lower tractive load, making the fuel cells small enough to afford and the compressed hydrogen tanks small enough to fit);
• initially fueling nonfleet hydrogen fuel cell vehicles from buildings near where they're parked, adding value by selling their electric output to the grid;
• deploying hydrogen appliances outside buildings as they become cheaper; and
• once a sufficient hydrogen market has thus been aggregated, serving it by not just decentralized but also centralized conversion of hydrocarbons (or offpeak electricity if cheaper) into hydrogen for pipeline distribution.

Surprising advances in vehicle technology and electric efficiency now make this prospect realistic. It is also consistent with rapidly emerging trends toward decentralized electricity production -- capturing more than 100 "distributed benefits" that collectively increase economic value by typically an order of magnitude.

This page updated July 16, 2001