Originally published January 6 2006
Agency estimates hydrogen-based energy will help clear the atmosphere of greenhouse gases by mid-century
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The International Energy Agency (IEA) claims that use of hydrogen and other cleaner energies could cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by half as early as 2050.
Aggressively expanding the use of hydrogen and other cleaner energies could halve emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.
In a report coinciding with a key UN conference on global warming, the IEA said that if conditions were right, hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells could play key roles in weaning energy users away from oil, gas and coal.
"In the most favourable conditions, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles would enter the market (in mass numbers) around 2025 and power 30 percent of the global stock of vehicles by 2050 -- the equivalent of about 700 million vehicles," the IEA said.
Another big challenge is reducing the cost of obtaining hydrogen itself, which has to be extracted from fossil fuels, such as carbon, or from water.
The IEA steered away from specifying whether governments should take a tougher regulatory approach, as opposed to a voluntary one, to help the switch to the use of hydrogen.
"Governments should adopt strong policies to reduce emissions (and) we have to reduce drastically the cost of those technologies," said Giorgio Simbolotti, a co-author of the IEA study, Prospects for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells.
Environmentalists and energy experts say that new energy sources can only succeed if there is a high but sustained price for fossil fuels, or if there are tough laws that, for instance, require greater fuel efficiency, lower carbon pollution or widen access to hydrogen at filling stations.
The IEA will present the report next Monday in Montreal at a conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is focussing on ways to reduce pollution of "greenhouse" gases that trap heat from the Sun.
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