http://www.swampfox.ws/south-carolina-lured-away-the-director-of-the-university-of-connecticuts-global-fuel-cell-center/

 This article looks into the potential use of alternative energy and hydrogen fuel cells.  The future success of alternative energy seems to rely heavily on its publicity, public appeal, and opinion.  The article explains that the state of Connecticut is the one state that has been really trying to spur the development, manufature, and use of fuel cells.  Their efforts however may not be fast or vigorous enough to recruit enough support. 

The alternative energy issue seems to be a good example of a service that relies on network effects to gain support, but has not been able to recruit enough users to make the service worth the while.  If there would be a clear and marked trend to use hydrogen as the energy of future, the demand for alternative energy would increase since people would buy hydrogen powered cars and need fuel.  The more people who demand hydrogen fuel, the more convenient it for each of those people to obtain it, since the supply and availiability would increase.  The more people who use alternative energy, the greater the environmental, health, and economic benefits for everybody. The downside though is that during this potential transition to alternative energy, most people will pay more to participate then to not.  So the gradual efforts to convert energy form won’t be successful since those people will not see shortterm benefits until a bulk of the population also follows.  

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/july13/hydrogen-071305.html