Sir, Mr Adrian Lyons, the Director-General of the Railway Forum, advocates hydrogen “to protect our energy future” (letter, June 1; see also letter, June 8). He later implies that hydrogen is “a new source of energy”.

Hydrogen is not a source of energy. Elemental hydrogen does not occur naturally, it is an energy carrier like electricity, with which it shares certain environmental advantages when used as a fuel in transport systems.

Like electricity, hydrogen has to be made from primary energy sources. To make a significant impact on transport in the UK the choices seem to be to make it from 100 new nuclear plants, 100,000 wind turbines, biocrops replacing a substantial acreage of arable land, or to derive it from natural gas, coal or oil on a massive scale.

Before embarking on the huge investment required to store, distribute and dispense hydrogen to thousands of hydrogen filling stations, the merits of these and related options for its production need to be thoroughly evaluated in the light of the considerable research and development taking place in various countries.

The UK has much to offer on this and related work on fuel cells and carbon storage, but more needs to be done to co-ordinate it and to provide it with the backing it merits from government.

JAMES HARRISON
jamess.harrison@virgin.net

From Mr Ralph Lovesy

Sir, Mr Lyons suggests that trains running on hydrogen would have a “greatly reduced environmental impact”. However, it is difficult to see how it can be more efficient to run buses and trains on hydrogen, with the associated financial and environmental costs of electrolysis, storage and transportation, than to run them on electricity.

Why use electricity to produce hydrogen, only to use the hydrogen to produce electricity again?

RALPH LOVESY
(Campaign for Battery Electric Vehicles)
ralph@inspiron.co.uk

From Mr John Baillot

Sir, When will the people of Britain learn the simple facts of physics? Hydrogen has to come from somewhere, and this involves the expenditure of energy. Energy that can be captured either comes from natural sources, or it is the result of burning resources, or it comes from nuclear energy.

Geothermal energy is not an option for the UK, nor does the technology yet exist to harness tidal power. Wind power is possible, if the ugliness of the turbines and the intermittency of the supply are acceptable, which they are not. Burning natural gas and coal for electricity is a waste of carbonaceous resources and creates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

We are left with nuclear fission which, if properly managed, would provide the UK’s energy needs for the foreseeable future with the safety that would be expected after half a century’s development in this field.

The green ideal has to be abandoned in favour of the practical if the world is to be saved from climate change. Who can deny that, given the present state of technology, nuclear power is the only salvation?

JOHN BAILLOT
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire

Explore Letters

• Feedback