Once you are satisfying 100% of your STATIONARY electricity needs by means of renewables, (near) zero-emissions fossil fuels or nuclear etc., then possibly you might begin to think of using hydrogen to power vehicles. But until then, using hydrogen for transportation is just plain stupid. Hydrogen offers very little to less than zero energy efficiency benefit relative to alternatives with much lower lifecycle energy costs- if the source of energy is fossil fuels in the first place.
It would make far more sense to first eliminate fossil fuel use for stationary applications. Conserve the fossil fuels for transporation applications where their enormous energy content per unit volume, ease of distribution etc. is most useful. Rationalize transportation by taxing fossil fuels and putting the money into better modes of transport: electric trains that can run on the renewable grid, rather than six seater 2-tonne vehicles each carrying one person. Once we've done these things, we need not worry so much about the remaining true transportation and portable power uses for fossil fuels- their energy requirements and fossil fuel emissions will be a drop in the bucket.
The article was fine- better journalism than I'm used to on the subject. But it didn't mention yet another key problem with PEM fuelcells: their use of platinum. Use less platinum and they become more prone to premature failure/shortened lifespan. The amount of platinum required for robust operation not only renders fuelcells enormously expensive, but the mineable quantities of platinum we have access to in the earth's crust will be gone before we manage to replace our existing fleet of vehicles, much less all those we'll need in future. And before you say, "no problem, we'll just recycle it", take into account that we recycle less than 20% of the platinum currently used in IC engine catalytic converters- no reason to expect we'll increase that to 99+% merely because we're building fuelcell vehicles. And remember that platinum is expensive because it's rare: an excellent platinum ore is less than 1 part per million platinum- that's over 1000 tonnes of ore mined, processed and turned into tailings to produce 1 kg of finished metal. That too costs energy- right now, 100% of which is coming from fossil fuels!
