> > > I must admit, the idea of hydrogen powered cars...
> >
> > This would rock, but I don't know how close those things are to hitting the market at an affordable price. I want to know how it's going to happen, because you know that oil companies will spend every last dollar they have to prevent it from happening. But if it did, we wouldn't have to walk on eggshells around the Middle East, which would be absolutely wonderful. Not that we're doing that now, of course.
>
> So long as there are still oil-fired powerstations and a plastics industry, I doubt OPEC would really be overly concerned. IIRC, transportation only accounts for 12% of oil use, globally.

The thing is, given highly efficient fuel cell technology, an easy way to get hydrogen for relatively little energy and some sort of effective distribution system *for* hydrogen, we could completely change the face of electrical distribution. Those three are pretty big stumbling blocks, but if they happen it's conceivable we could power houses and buildings using the technology. Either centralized fuel-cell stations and a grid, similar to what we have now, or have each house with its own miniature power plant. I find the former more likely, but still.

Also, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration, transportation is by far the biggest consumer of petroleum in the country. The industrial sector uses about 4.67 million barrels of oil a day, while transportation uses about 13 million. I don't know off-hand about world-wide usage (I'm sure the EIA site has that information), but considering the sheer amount of transportation that goes on in America, this doesn't surprise me too much. If we could eliminate our transportation usage, the U.S. nearly produces enough to not rely on any oil imports. (Oh, and Sam, apparently we have enough oil on reserve to last us 53 days right now.)

Stephen