Green Options

London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced plans to create Britain’s first “hydrogen highway” by building a network of hydrogen filling stations throughout the capital.

As part of the scheme, a pilot fleet of around 150 hydrogen cars, five buses and 20 black taxis will be assembled in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics.

The flamboyant mayor has gone on record as saying that he wants Britain to become a world leader in fuel cell technology and his team have made the ambitious claim that, within twenty years, up to one in three of the 31m cars in Britain could be fuelled by hydrogen.

Greg Frenette, a lead engineer at Ford Motors, said last week that it may take at least 20 years before hydrogen-powered cars become widely available because obtaining the fuel is so costly and difficult. But the latest news from the Reuters Global Environment Summit is that these zero emissions cars could become a reality in California very soon as the state plans to build out “Hydrogen Cities” to support the hydrogen car industry.