Extracting hydrogen from water is not the most efficient way to get it:
Quote:
The cost of hydrogen production is an important issue. Hydrogen produced by steam reformation costs approximately three times the cost of natural gas per unit of energy produced. This means that if natural gas costs $6/million BTU, then hydrogen will be $18/million BTU. Also, producing hydrogen from electrolysis with electricity at 5 cents/kWh will cost $28/million BTU — slightly less than two times the cost of hydrogen from natural gas. Note that the cost of hydrogen production from electricity is a linear function of electricity costs, so electricity at 10 cents/kWh means that hydrogen will cost $56/million BTU.
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Source for this info is
here, with some more data on the various methods of hydrogen extraction and their efficiency. Note that there is little to no discussion of byproducts, which is as important to the discussion of hydrogen as cost.