Urban 'Clustering' Provides Incubators for a Nascent Hydrogen System. By Jad Mouawad, NYTimes, September 23, 2008. "On a strip of Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, a futuristic experiment posing as an ordinary fuel station may be bringing the world one step closer to the hydrogen age... Carmakers have argued that without a network of hydrogen filling stations they couldn't roll out fuel-cell vehicles... [while] energy companies, on the other hand, [have argued] that without large numbers of fuel-cell cars available at reasonable prices, [there's] little point in building a costly new fueling infrastructure. This classic chicken-or-egg dilemma has long hobbled the development of most alternative fuels... But [now]... automakers and oil companies [are trying] to break the hydrogen logjam. Their answer is to introduce both... [and to cluster] them in urban centers... 'The game now is about clustering; it's the only way to take this next step,' said Duncan Macleod, VP of Shell Hydrogen. Shell's Santa Monica Boulevard station -- which has conventional gasoline pumps as well as an odd-looking nozzle with bright blue 'hydrogen' labels -- is part of this strategy. So is Honda's decision to lease about 200 of its newly developed [fuel-cell] FCX Clarity cars over the next three years to selected customers in Southern California, who will be able to fill them up at the new Shell station and others." [Today's NYTimes is carrying a special section called The Business of Green, which includes the above story as well as Coal, a Tough Habit to Kick, a story about environmental opposition to large solar farms in Southern California, a story called Reclaiming His Place in the Sunabout Arnold Goldman's new solar company, a piece about methane power in Vermont and a story about Green, Inc., a new blog on business, politics and sustainability.]
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