How much fuel (usually coal) is burned to convert the gas into magical Hydrogen? How much advanced manufacturing and industrial waste is required for each fuel cell?
They would probably be better off running the trucks directly on natural gas. Many cities do so with their bus fleets and the exhaust IS much cleaner than diesel.
Steam reforming is more of a heat added process than requiring significant electrical power, Natural Gas is used by Air Products for the Heat.
In Texas, we get 46% of our electrical power from Natural Gas, 36% from coal.
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/annual_generation_state.xls
When I was a kid, I would sniff the diesel bus exhaust. Sweetest smell ever :).
Made me a hobbit.
The cheapest way to make hydrogen is reforming natural gas. A relatively cheap and clean process and nagural gas is cheap right now. Since they are using the trucks on site, a way to store usefull amounts of hydrogen in the truck is a much smaller problem.
The question about the fuel cell is more germane, the manufacture process is not as dirty as solar cells or batteries but it does involve mining precious metals. I am all for mining but an environmentalist would probably have issues.
Burning NG would probably be about as efficient as the fuel cells when you consider the energy used in reforming the NG and storing the hydrogen but electric motors have more low end torque than ICE when looking at them pound for pound so for moving loads around the plants, the electric trucks may make sense.
I wouldn’t have a knee jerk response to fuel cells just because they through out the environment verbage, they could make sense economically, Let the market decide.