How much global and U.S. energy need can fuel cells meet potential and recoverable?
I don't think anybody really knows. I would definitely say they can eventually power every vehicle ever, but that would take time, and more importantly money. Big money.
gas cellular vehicles will probable be out quicker. no might desire to have organic hydrogen in storage. some gas cells can split the hydrogen off of quite obtainable hydrocarbons like methane or LPG. simply by fact gas cells are greater suitable than two times as powerful as inner combustion engines human beings will ask your self how we ever have been given alongside with in basic terms having a 4 hundred or so mile selection till now having to refuel.
That's like saying how much of our energy needs can be met by gasoline engines. The answer is none, engines are hunks of metal, fuel cells are hunks of metal. The energy is in the gasoline or hydrogen that you use and you get that gasoline or hydrogen from fossil reserves. Fuel in itself is just energy stored chemically and fossil reserves are just solar energy collected and stored by nature over millions of years. Now if you were to use solar, hydro, wind, or nuclear power to produce hydrogen for the fuel cells then that solar, hydro, wind or nuclear would be able to provide for some of our needs, the hydrogen itself is just a carrier of that energy and indeed when Sandia labs looked into more efficient ways of producing hydrogen from water with clean energy they concluded that it was just as easy to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels like gasoline and diesel by the same processes. In truth, almost all sources of energy is solar in some ways and it is the only source of energy available at a rate large enough for our foreseeable needs. Fossil fuels are just a trickle of solar energy that has been saved up over millions of years that we are using at a rate much quicker than it was saved at, geothermal, nuclear and tidal simply tap larger reserves of energy whether it's the heat of the Earth, radioactive decay or the kinetic energy of the moon's orbit and Earth's rotation. Solar energy can outprovide and out last all other sources of energy and all energy can be converted to whatever form you want albeit at varying degrees of economy.