For Yosuke Ito, having a Toyota Prius on the driveway is not green enough. His house, as well as his car, is a hybrid. “I’m living the Hy-life,” he said.

The single-storey home he shares with his wife, Mitsuko, near Fukuoka, 965km west of Tokyo, has mains electricity but chiefly runs on electricity and heat generated from hydrogen, which is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than conventional sources of power. “We save thousands of yen a year and we don’t pollute so much,” he said.

Ito, 68, an unlikely green revolutionary who used to travel around Japan in a petrol-fuelled car selling soy sauce, is one of hundreds of homeowners who have signed up to join the Fukuoka hydrogen town project.

Private companies, such as Nippon Oil and Nippon Steel backed by central government, believe that hydrogen is the fuel of the future and are creating the world’s first hydrogen-powered town and building the first “hydrogen corridor” that they say will eventually run from Fukuoka to Osaka and Tokyo. The idea is simple. Supply homes with hydrogen to generate electricity to power lights and heat water. At the same time, create a network of hydrogen filling stations so that drivers can top up their hydrogen-fuelled cars, such as Honda’s stylish FCX Clarity.

So far, so futuristic. But there are problems. A hybrid house is expensive. The fuel-cell stacks cost some £10,000 — although government subsidies reduce that figure by about half. Nippon Oil acknowledges that even this is a high price to pay. Manufacturing improvements will bring the price down to about £2,500 by 2015, it said. SUNDAY TIMES, LONDON........Read more

Source Web Page:Times of India