Scott made an interesting comment:

"I am convinced, alternative energy sources are rapidly attaining pricing parity with oil."

Think about what really drives the cost of Saudi crude oil. Their whole country is practically floating on the stuff. All they have to do is drill a hole in the ground, suck out the oil (if it doesn't flow out on its own) and load it onto someone else's super tanker. Now compare that to a hydrogen economy, i.e. build a nuclear reactor to produce the raw energy, convert water into hydrogen, build fuel cells to convert the hydrogen into electricity, build hydrogen storage devices, deal with nuclear waste issues, etc. We can never economically compete against Saudi crude oil because they got their oil for nothing while any alternative that we can make has to be produced from scratch. Even solar energy is not free. For example, until quite recently it cost more energy to manufacture a solar voltaic panel than the panel could produce over its life time (Siemens recently produced some panels that are actually net energy producers). The price of Saudi crude oil is defined purely by demand. As the cost of alternative energies gets more expensive then the price of Saudi crude goes up and should a cheap alternative appear then the price of Saudi crude would go down. In economic terms, they're holding all the aces.

Gary