Commenter Wrote:
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> The problem with hydrogen at the moment is that
> most is made from natural gas. Now you can capture
> the CO2 and store it permanently, but that is
> rarely done, or you can produce your hydrogen by
> electrolysis of water. Unfortunately, that is not
> very efficient. It is much more efficient to use
> the electricity directly with batteries or
> catenary... or both.

LMAO... The "cost is no object" CAHSRA fiasco, now needs competition in wasting public funds for a "cost is no object" ZEV technology, and it can only be delivered by "wires" right?


Is "dirty" and "inefficient" the new official "party line". like I'm hearing on X from all of the "evil hydrogen" "conspiracy" from the contractors, the contractor funded "advocacy" groups, and the "parrots" that bleatings? Is this the hydrogen is all hydrogen is (or will be???) made from natural gas (not true)and that it is "inefficient" to make using elecrolysis (more bullshit, as Sunline was using electrolysis of good old fashoned "water", virtually for free, in 2003 in the Coachella Valley, using off peak wind energy) contractor party line?

This sure sounds like the same kind of nonsense being spouted by the morons who posted the same kine of horse manure, and then went on to claim they could electrify 600 miles of mainline at $2 million a mile (also bullshit, not even close, even from back when I did my first RR electrication study of CA RR's back in 1988).

Cost benefit and technological market competitiveness, not foamer, or contractor, or lobbyist BS will guide the freight RR's and should guide the public RR's. Let's start letting those wind permits en-masse for the west coast off shore wind reserves and see how efficient off peak hydrogen can get by trusting science and the market place, like we showed 20 years ago at SunLine.

There are possibly some places that electrification will pencil better, but this discussion is basically like "my mode is better than your mode" except this line of BS is "my ZEV is better than your ZEV"... As George Carlin noted, that's bullshit and it's bad for you (or at least your taxpayer or consumer wallet, when it's being picked to use an unnecessarily expensive technologies to clean up our trains, when lcheaper alternatives might be less costly and just as effective.

Can't those who try to lobby and influence the "connie bureaucrats" at the CARB "politburo", to favor and/or even "mandate" their expensive solutions, just let science, economics, and the magic of the "free market" decide which is the cheapest to capitalize, fuel, and operate ZEV? Just set a ZEV standard and see who can meet it in the "marketplace" of science and technology most efficiently.

And yes, FUD, having spent twenty years of my career spending a quarter billion dollars of "our" money on air quality demonstration projects, and having worked with SunLine, among other agencies, that have shown H2's potential, I am very supportive of letting H2 compete. Because, among other reasons, the view from many in the private sector, that seem to think it can compete very well and is the one of the potentially cheapest ulltimate ZEV mobile fuel fuels (or at least that is what T. Boone told me and Mike Antonovich at the meetings I used to go to, when we were looking at how to spend that money wisely...) and are spending money to develop this "effective" and "efficient" ZEV technology.