If you track the news on fuel cell market development you could well be forgiven for thinking that fuel cell electric vehicles were not only commercially available now – they’re not – but also that transport was the only meta application for the technology – it’s not.

I have to come clear here and admit that this drives me up the wall – no pun intended. I understand that the Top Gear culture is pervasive and that any photojournalist worth their salt would rather photograph a shiny sleek car against some shiny sleek background, preferably with a shiny sleek model for good measure, but they are still endgame for the industry. Apart from some very exotic applications such as regenerative fuel cells for a lunar or Mars base, the mass market for fuel cell vehicles is still going to be one of the last to go fully commercial and is unlikely to start for another seven to eight years. Between now and then fuel cells are going to become a pervasive technology in so many other areas but they are simply not getting anywhere near the same level of coverage and therefore not starting the process of technological familiarisation for the general public.

Case in point – stationary fuel cells to power base stations. These are commercially available now from a growing list of companies and as an application have logged significant growth in orders, shipments and revenues over the past three years. But are they covered by any strand of the popular press? The broadsheets? Not a chance. Pop science, geek mags and economics periodicals? Nope not there either. You would think that a product that is helping to further enable the continued move to the electron economy, not just in the global North, but also the developing South, in a more sustainable and economic way might just get a look in.

But maybe that’s the issue right there. Fuel cell technology, along with a host of other new technologies, is helping to clear up the hidden problems, not quite a dirty little secret but not far from, of our shift to an electron economy. As stationary power generators they reduce the carbon footprint of the above mentioned base stations, datacenters and server rooms as well as a host of other applications such as power plants for off-gridders. Portable fuel cells for personal electronics, which will almost certainly be pervasive by the time we see fuel cell electric vehicles on every street, will downshift some of the demand for energy, and therefore footprint, away from the power plant quite literally into the hands of the consumer. Methanol from renewable resources to power your iPad anyone?

But the growing discourse about the need to socialise and familiarise adopters with new technology shows that the fuel cell industry is walking a tight rope of potential backlash scenarios from adopters unless we can get the press to start covering the benefits of this and other new enabler technologies.

Photo by Robert Couse-Baker/flickr/Creative Commons

Kerry-Ann Adamson is a research director for Pike Research with a focus on fuel cells.