Mr. Fusion

The Christian Science Monitor has a nice summary of recent pieces questioning the "cure all" of ethanol as an energy alternative. So it's heavily subsidized, effects world food prices, isn't more efficient as a fuel source and it may not even be cleaner when taking into a count the full production to use cycle. Wonderful.

Hydrogen has similar obstacles. Yes, it's a lot cleaner than fossil fuels at the end point, but pure hydrogen isn't easy to come by. The cheapest way to make it is electrolysis which requires electricity, which is produced primarily through... fossil fuels.

From a simple market perspective, there is no easy cure-all (obviously). The challenge is to bridge the gap from produceability to profitablility. Alternative energies are still in their "early adopter" stage for the most part, so what is the best way to bridge the gap to make them mature? Subsidize them? Incentivize them? Let the market take care of it?