hydrogen powered cars

Algae get a lot of airtime as a possible future source of biofuels to wean us from dirty fossil fuels, but even biofuels don't go so far as to eliminate hydrocarbons (and their constituent carbon emissions) from our energy diet. But a different use for algae could prove a better solution to the future of fuel.

A new process that produces clean, sustainable hydrogen from photosynthesis in algae could change all that. The means of manufacturing clean, usable hydrogen has heretofore required a high-energy process that drastically dilutes the upside.

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Highways filled with hydrogen cars are still decades away, but that doesn’t diminish the achievement of rolling the first fuel-cell car off a mass-production line. To open up interior space, Honda developed its own fuel cell, a 100-kilowatt stack that packs substantially more energy into a 65 percent smaller space than other designs and squeezes neatly into the tunnel between the front seats. And by working through several generations of concept cars, Honda has gotten the once-experimental FCX to look and drive just like a gas-powered car. [ Read Full Story ]

Twenty-five years after Three Mile Island's near-meltdown stopped the industry cold (not a single U.S. plant has been approved since), nuclear energy is making a serious comeback. This fall, Congress is expected to start funding a $1.1 billion project to build a new breed of nuclear reactor. The design requirements represent a quantum leap: In addition to being safer and less vulnerable to terrorism than current nuclear plants, the new reactor must do double duty-generate electricity and crank out hydrogen, the presumptive automobile fuel of the future.

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