Hydrogen fuel cells begin to show off in the world of competitive racing

[longship]

5. What?????

There are awesome petroleum reserves on Earth. The thermodynamics of petrol go back millions of years when the origins of coal and oil was first laid down.

Molecular Hydrogen, on the other hand, is not a natural resource on Earth. There is no natural repository of hydrogen on this planet. All hydrogen gas escapes because our measly planet doesn't have enough mass to hold it. Sorry, buddy, that's just the physics of the situation.

This means that hydrogen must come from other sources. The major source is hydrolysis of water, which thermodynamically takes more energy than is released in burning the hydrogen. (There's that pesky physics and thermodynamics again.)

To sum up, whereas oil and coal were laid down millions of years ago and remained for that time for us to use to generate energy, all the molecular hydrogen escapes our planet so we have to generate it from other sources which takes more energy than is released by burning it.

Therefore, hydrogen is not an energy source, but an energy storage method (but a very good one).

QED.