Real estate prospecting for the hydrogen economy or sustainable economy

[MachWing]

What characteristics would be desirable for a city to be chosen as a location to develop a model hydrogen city or model hydrogen economy?

Or more generally, what characteristics would be desirable for a city to be chosen as a location to develop a model sustainable city or model sustainable economy?

If you'd like to comment on my choice of Macomb, IL as a great place for such a project, see my post under the "Post carbon cities" thread in "Environmental Planning."

[Cardinal]

You would want to look for a source of material for hydrogen. Biodeisel production is one such source. How much hydrogen can be viably developed, though? Not enough to more than simply make a dent in overall energy demand.

[MachWing]

Thanks for your reply, Cardinal. In a micropolitan city, there may be enough sources of renewable/sustainable energy for the dent made by an hydrogen component, when coupled with a few other renewables, to completely supply energy needs. By integrating a variety of sustainable energy sources - hydrogen for some applications, passive solar, solar-electric, wind, biofuels, and geothermal for yet applications - the city/region may be able to become locally self-reliant.

This would certainly be more difficult for metropolitan areas. But "local" for a micropolitan city may be a few 10's of miles. And "local" for a metropolitan area may be a few 100's of miles, depending on how big the hub-and-spokes patterns of resource production and consumption may be. The similarities and differences between micropolitan and metropolitan hub-and-spokes systems could be studied to better understand the process of infrastructure transition to post-fossil-fuel infrastructure.