Publication Date:
2005-06-25
Description:
Converting all U.S. onroad vehicles to hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (HFCVs) may improve air quality, health, and climate significantly, whether the hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of natural gas, wind electrolysis, or coal gasification. Most benefits would result from eliminating current vehicle exhaust. Wind and natural gas HFCVs offer the greatest potential health benefits and could save 3700 to 6400 U.S. lives annually. Wind HFCVs should benefit climate most. An all-HFCV fleet would hardly affect tropospheric water vapor concentrations. Conversion to coal HFCVs may improve health but would damage climate more than fossil/electric hybrids. The real cost of hydrogen from wind electrolysis may be below that of U.S. gasoline.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Jacobson, M Z -- Colella, W G -- Golden, D M -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2005 Jun 24;308(5730):1901-5.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4020, USA. jacobson@stanford.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15976300" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Air Pollution/*prevention & control
;
*Climate
;
Computer Simulation
;
Costs and Cost Analysis
;
*Energy-Generating Resources/economics
;
Fossil Fuels
;
Gasoline
;
Greenhouse Effect
;
*Health
;
Humans
;
*Hydrogen
;
Mortality
;
*Motor Vehicles
;
Smog/analysis
;
Vehicle Emissions
;
Wind
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
