Hydrogen economy unnecessary, say City College of New York researchers

The "right" fuel of the future is not yet decided, but bloggers at Technology Review, an independent media company owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are convinced that hydrogen is certainly the wrong fuel to be the farm on. They first wrote about their stance in a survery called "It's Not Too Late" about a month ago. In that piece, they argued that we have the technologies available today to dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions and we certainly don't need to wait for the hydrogen economy or other new alternative energy sources to kick the fossil fuel habit. The writers recently revisited the topic with a post that finds other researchers coming to the same conclusion.
Researchers at City College of New York (writing in the journal Science) found that actually implementing all of the alternative energy generation types available now (concentrated solar thermal energy, nuclear energy, geothermal and hydroelectric plants, wind energy, photovoltaic cells, and biomass) could "could replace all fossil fuel power plants". As if that's not enough, they even claim that plug-in hybrid vehicles could replace 80 percent of the gasoline used in the United States. The problem – and you knew there was a problem – is cost. Their estimate to reduce fossil fuels by 70 percent is $200 billion per year for 30 years. Yikes. But it'd be money well-spent.

[Source: Technology Review]