The Post covers today the opening of a gas station in NE that sells hydrogen fuel. Apparently, at this point the only vehicles that will use the station are six minivans used by GM to demonstrate the technology to members of Congress. Shell views the project as a “real-life demonstration” of the technology, which they hope to someday make economically viable.

And the Shell people certainly seem excited. Here’s Shell Hydrogen chief executive Jeremy Bentham raving to the Post:

“I think this is a little like the cell phone industry in the early 1980s — you had a patchy infrastructure and cell phones the size of briefcases, but those people had a vision of how to step forward to the future and have created a very, very big business.

Meanwhile, some environmentalists are skeptical. Apparently the most common ways of producing hydrogen fuel involve burning natural gas or coal, producing “vast” amounts of climate-changing carbon dioxide. David Hamilton from the Sierra Club told the post he thought the new station was an example of a “hugely subsidized” technology “devoid of economic reality.”

The new station even has its own rather spartan website. While we’re all for new technologies, we’d like to remind Shell and GM that they should get cracking on those flying cars before these highfalutin hydrogen ones.