On Christmas Eve, the Los Angeles Times reported that the US Environmental Protection Agency "has cleared the way for automakers to produce hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars to meet zero-emission vehicle requirements in California and 10 other states."

"This is a real Christmas gift for all of us," Air Resources Board Chairman Dr. Robert Sawyer gushed.

The EPA would've done just as well to huck some coal in Sawyer's stocking. Because despite hydrogen's long-term promise as a storage mechanism for intermittent power sources like wind, it's a long, long, loooong way from making sense as something you'd stick in your car. In the mean time, it mainly serves as a distraction automakers (like, oh, say, BMW), petroleum execs and politicians can employ when they need to avoid speaking about real, near-term transportation fuel alternatives.

The Website Always On has a great post today called The Hydrogen Hoax in which the author points out many of the problems with hydrogen. Most notably, because it's a storage medium rather than a primary fuel, hydrogen must be produced from clean sources of energy before it's clean power. Hydrogen produced from electricity generated by stinky, old-school power plants actually uses quite a bit more energy than if you'd just used the petroleum or electricity directly. And then there's the small problem of how to store it – which boils down to putting it under tremendous pressure, extremely low temperatures, or in fuel cells, which require converting the energy BACK into electricity before it can be used.

Which brings me to the issue at hand. Why are we still talking about hydrogen as a transportation fuel? I'll tell you: Because it's a stall tactic, a smoke screen, a feel-good story that the aforementioned automakers, petroleum execs and politicians can employ to buy time. Time in which they can claim "we're working on it" while they continue to neglect the huge opportunities to embrace existing technologies that could make a big difference far, far sooner, and do so without huge modifications to the existing infrastructure. Technologies like biodiesel, plug-in hybrids and flex-fuel vehicles.