The Hype about Hydrogen
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| Author | Joseph J. Romm |
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| Language | English |
| Publisher | Island Press |
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Publication date
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2004 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 53138756 |
| 333.79/68 22 | |
| LC Class | TP261.H9 .R65 2004 |
| Preceded by | Cool Companies (1999) |
| Followed by | Hell and High Water |
The Hype about Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race to Save the Climate is a book by Joseph J. Romm, published in 2004 by Island Press and updated in 2005. The book has been translated into German as Der Wasserstoff-Boom. Romm is an expert on clean energy, advanced vehicles, energy security, and greenhouse gas mitigation.
Over 200 publications, including Scientific American, Forbes magazine and The New York Times, have cited this book. The book was named one of the best science and technology books of 2004 by Library Journal.
The thrust of the book is that hydrogen is not economically feasible to use for transportation, nor will its use reduce global warming, because of the cost and greenhouse gases generated during production, the low energy content per volume and weight of the container, the cost of the fuel cells, and the cost of the infrastructure. The author argues that a major effort to introduce hydrogen cars before 2030 would actually undermine efforts to reduce emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
The Hype about Hydrogen contends that global warming and U.S. reliance on foreign fuel imports cannot be solved by the hypothetical hydrogen economy that has been advanced as a possible solution to these problems, and that "neither government policy nor business investment should be based on the belief that hydrogen cars will have meaningful commercial success in the near or medium term."
The book explains how fuel cells work and compares different types. It then reviews the difficulties in marketing fuel cells for applications other than transportation and argues that these are in fact easier and more likely to happen sooner than transportation applications.
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