There's a heart warming story over at Wired News that describes how Sierra Nevada brewing company is installing hydrogen fuel cells to generate up to a mega-watt of power. They wanted independence from California's notoriously flakey and expensive energy grid, and also to cut emissions caused by their brewery.
They are initially getting their hydrogen from converted natural gas thus using what has been dubbed "black hydrogen". Black hydrogen is any hydrogen generated from fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal, or oil, or even hydrogen from other sources (such as water) but using fossil fuels to obtain the power to generate the hydrogen from them. Not surprisingly black hydrogen is the form that is a particular favorite of Bush and Big Oil because it has the veneer of respectability, without any of the inconvenience of actually stopping the big oil machine. Also being a less efficient process of obtaining power it actually requires more oil to be extracted from the ground.
The heart warming bit is that Sierra Nevada is hoping to switch over to using the methane by-products of its own brewing process to generate the hydrogen and become completely energy and emissions neutral. I sure hope they can pull it off because such renewalable, no resource depleting systems are the only thing that can sustainably support our life on earth in the long run.
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