Hydrogen vehicles will not become competitive without massive public and private investment over the next 15 years, according to a report by the U.S. National Research Council (NRC).

The NRC, an independent committee of American scientists, estimates that the U.S. government would have to invest US$ 55 billion between 2008 and 2023 in order to boost technology and infrastructure to a level where hydrogen vehicles would be commercially competitive.

These funds would have to be matched by US$ 145 billion in private investment over the same period, says the NRC.

It’s a particularly large sum of money considering that the NRC predicts that by 2020, the maximum number of hydrogen vehicles on U.S. roads would be 2 million. In other words, the U.S. government would have spent some US$ 25 000 per hydrogen vehicle.

By 2023, however, the NRC anticipates a tilting point, after which hydrogen vehicles would start to become competitive and their numbers would rise much more quickly (60 million in 2035 and 200 million by 2020).

The NRC predicts that three hydrogen technology systems have the highest potential for commercial viability over the next several decades: steam methane reformation using natural gas as a feedstock for on-site production at fuel stations; centralized hydrogen production from coal gasification with carbon capture and sequestration; and centralized production from biomass gasification. Hydrogen production using advanced nuclear reactors could also be possible, but the timetable and costs are difficult to estimate, says the NRC.

In the short term, subsidies that support a transition to hydrogen vehicles would do less to reduce carbon dioxide emission than improving fuel efficiency in conventional vehicles and increasing the use of biofuels, says the NRC. But after 2040, when the number of hydrogen vehicles could be in the tens of millions, they would do more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than either of these other two options.

The NRC says that the greatest reductions in carbon dioxide emissions would come from pursuing all three methods: fuel efficiency, biofuels and hydrogen vehicles. 

 “This portfolio approach, if accompanied by government policies driving a transition toward reduced oil use and low-carbon fuels, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks to less than 20 percent of current levels and could nearly eliminate oil demand for these vehicles by 2050,” says the NRC report.