The Hyrban car, powered by fuel cells, was launched last year amid much fanfare.

The intellectual property in this vehicle and technology will all be held by the Forty Fires Foundation and the intention is that it will then be made available on an 'open source' basis.

The idea is - and the cost of components such as fuel cells was a major issue in this - that the Hyrban will not be sold, but leased, leading to the provision of transport as a service, rather than the usual transaction-based model of car sales, planned obsolescence yada yada.

Such a model potentially aligns stakeholder interests in a new way. That is probably why I was able to convince Hugo Spowers and his co-founders when they were setting up the venture - with financial backing from members of the Piech family (of Porsche fame) - that they should set up Riversimple as one of the UK Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) I bang on about, rather than as a conventional Company, whether or not 'for profit'.

The last I heard they are were working on a few partnerships with municipalities to lease vehicles,of which Leicester is the first to be announced.

Riversimple - Leicester to host 2012 Riversimple pilot

June 10th - Today Leicester City Council and Riversimple announce the joint signing of a memorandum of understanding. This is a ground breaking agreement that will see 30 Riversimple two seat cars on the roads of Leicester in spring 2012. The pilot will last for 12 months and will involve a range of customers from businesses, car fleets, car share schemes, local government and private customers.  The council and Riversimple will cooperate to find the customers to test drive the vehicles and locate and staff a suitable refuelling point. The announcement was reported in national and local press.

Perhaps it's already underway... Volvo have been developing reformer/fuel cell stacks for niches, such as generators for boats, where the advantage of silent operation presumably justifies greater expense.

This is key.  I'm afraid that idealism has infected much of the push to develop a renewable energy sector.  There is a genuine ignorance both about what is technologically viable, and what is economically viable.

Marginal cost is what drives this show.  The fact is that there are niches right now where many types of renewables are economically viable because the marginal cost is quite high.

For example, one of the strangest realities of our present situation is that the Afghanistan War may just be the impetus for developing technologies with broader applicability once economies of scale kick in.  The problem is that you need niche markets that can cover R&D costs for first generation models.  That's where the US military comes in.

By the time that a gallon of gasoline finds its way into a Humvee in Afghanistan, it costs around $400/gallon. (€77.33/liter) At that price, most any type of equipment that can use renewable power to shorten the supply chain is worth the cost.  So the US military is heavily investing in PV solar equipment for field operations.  

Once these companies that supply the US military get past that first generation, they will be able to tap into the economies of scale that emerge when the price starts to fall.

And it's not just the military.  Think about streetlights.  Solar PV can easily be integrated into the physical casing of the street light, and together with LED bulbs can take it off the grid.

Adopted globally, how much electricity could that save?

If we want to get serious about cutting carbon footprints, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels there needs to be an active effort to identify and target these niches for development. That is what industrial policy in the 21st century has to be about.  And the nation that figures that out first has much to gain.  

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg