Fuel cells need methane or hydrogen to work.

Wikipedia:

It is also important to take losses due to fuel production, transportation, and storage into account. Fuel cell vehicles running on compressed hydrogen may have a power-plant-to-wheel efficiency of 22% if the hydrogen is stored as high-pressure gas, and 17% if it is stored as liquid hydrogen.[62] Fuel cells cannot store energy like a battery,[63] except as hydrogen, but in some applications, such as stand-alone power plants based on discontinuous sources such as solar or wind power, they are combined with electrolyzers and storage systems to form an energy storage system. Most hydrogen, however, is produced by steam methane reforming, and so most hydrogen production emits carbon dioxide.[64] The overall efficiency (electricity to hydrogen and back to electricity) of such plants (known as round-trip efficiency), using pure hydrogen and pure oxygen can be "from 35 up to 50 percent", depending on gas density and other conditions.[65] While a much cheaper lead–acid battery might return about 90%, the electrolyzer/fuel cell system can store indefinite quantities of hydrogen, and is therefore better suited for long-term storage.


I'm a big fan of "all of the above" when it comes to non-fossil fuels. There's still a lot that needs to be done to increase efficiency and bring costs down. We shouldn't optimize "too early" in deciding our preferred new power sources, just as we shouldn't do that in software development. Local generation probably should be a big part of it, but there are efficiency benefits of having larger plants generating power for, say, 1000 homes, also too.

Cheers,
Scott.