Bush called for increased development of fuel cell technology in the energy plan he released last year. Fuel cells have wonderful potential but they're still pretty expensive, something like $1000 per kilowatt according to some sources I've seen. That price is dropping but it'll have to be a lot lower to be viable.

Some people are testing fuel cell powered cars. Since 746 watts equals 1 HP at 100% conversion efficiency, you'll need somewhere around 70+ kilowatts to produce a practical system. At $1000/KW, well, they won't sell very many of them. If they can get it down to something like $100/KW then the economics look a lot better.

Some companies like Ballard (a Canadian company, BTW) are marketing fuel cell systems to convert natural gas into electricity for home or business use. This is a good first market for the technology because it isn't limited by size or weight constraints like a car system.

I'm particularly fond of systems like Ballard's that incorporate catalysts to split hydrogen from natural gas, an alcohol, or even gasoline because we already have the infrastructure in place to support those sources. Eventually, we may develop a hydrogen infrastructure but that will take years and cost many billions of dollars.