Hydrogen cars on British roads stepped closer to reality this week, thanks to an EU announcement backing a Europe-wide network of hydrogen filling stations. The news has been welcomed by ITM Power, a UK hydrogen firm that's developed a home hydrogen refuelling station (pictured).
While the EU is focussing on "harmonising" public filling stations from country to country -- ensuring attachments and gas pressures are the same from Ireland to Hungary, say -- ITM is pushing ahead with a filling station designed for your home.
Its 'Green Box' is a refrigerator-sized station that uses mains water and electricity to produce hydrogen with electrolysis. A demo in July proved the Green Box was capable of powering a hydrogen-converted Ford Focus for 25 miles.
Home hydrogen stations are nothing new -- General Motors and others have unveiled working models in the US -- but ITM says its breakthrough has been to radically cut the cost of the materials used to convert water into hydrogen. The membranes in the Green Box use a polymer that ITM claims costs a fifth of traditional ones.
As an ITM spokesperson told me today, there's no confirmed date for its hydrogen fuelling station going on sale. Production versions are, however, being built in Sheffield for trials.
In the meantime, with Honda's hydrogen car hitting roads in Japan, hydrogen road tours taking off in the US and the EU weighing in, the hydrogen economy is finally starting to look like more than hot air.
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