A Hydrogen-Based Economy 836
Glog writes "Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall of Wired magazine have written an amazing article explaining why we need to transition to a hydrogen economy. Lots of info there, estimated cost and benefit ... very good solid reasoning for whatever floats your boat - national security, environment, super-duper-charged automobiles."
Thank you Wired. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not cynical.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids, and (I wish) water-powered cars, now THAT would be something worth exploring
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I see is a cracking plant run from household electricity. Or any other central locations, where you can fill up on H2 and O2, but that is just a Hydrogen fuel cell.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:5, Insightful)
The two big problems with renewables are:
a) Where the energy is generally doesn't have good grid connections. For example, there is enough wave energy off the west coast of Scotland to run the entire UK, and enough wind to run about half the country. There are simply no Supergrid connections to the entire region. It would be very expensive and fairly difficult to build them. But we already have gas pipelines to supply the towns with natural gas.
b) You can't regulate them by demand, as you can with fossil powered turbines. When the wind blows, you get electricity, regardless of whether you want it or not. The Grid can't store electricity - it has to produce exactly as much as is being used at any one time. Any imbalance is taken out of the kinetic energy in the spinning turbines, which leads to a.c. frequency fluctuations. Too much wind/wave/solar power feeding straight into the Grid would rapidly lead to desynchronisation.
However, both these problems could be solved by using Hydrogen, as it's a simple method of storing energy, which could be piped ashore/around using existing natural gas pipelines and stored until needed (porosity issues aside).
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they killed the programs because they were wasting a huge amount of money and getting little commercial interest. Apply Occam's Razor.
Damn them for trying to profit.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks like a sound business plan to me. Create a market, then exploit it. Don't worry about the Oversight committees [corpwatch.org], those can be taken care of with a little pressure from the top and a quick nip off the old budget.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmm, that liberal mind of yours is in overdrive, I see.
Perhaps the reason for war is not a business decision, not strictly for oil, not religous, and not idiological... Maybe, just maybe, the intelligence community has information that we are not privy too. Maybe, just maybe, the president has access to intelligence that we don't. Maybe, just maybe, it is not in the long-term interest of world peace to let a violent dictator thas has attacked Iran and Kuwait and killed thousands of its own citizens keep weapons of mass destruction.
The economic and, more importantly, political cost of this war is huge. Bush has taken a huge hit in the polls and the United States' political capital in the world is all but spent, and then some. If Bush is spending that economic and political capital, there's a reason. And, despite the beliefs of cynical liberals who believe Bush is just interested in oil, that's simply not the most logical or realistic answer.
Why everyone thinks they must go beyond the stated goals to determine the "real motive" behind the president is beyond me. Cynical liberals and anti-oil fanatics will say I'm naive when in reality they are simply being illogical. When you do the math and analyze the situation there is really only one explanation for all the effort being made on Iraq: Saddam is a dangerous dictator which intelligence information indicates is a threat to the world and to the United States. No other explanation, regardless of how cynical you are, makes sense.
Personally I'm not 100% in favor of the war. I'm not convinced that it's necessary right now. But the last 12 years have shown us that Iraq is NOT going to disarm--after 12 years what good is another week, month or year? If they wanted to disarm, they would have. Accepting that logic the question is WHEN do you take action? We have hundreds of thousands of troops over there now which is costing big money to support. The economy doesn't want to improve until the Iraq question is resolved. And it's going to start getting hot next month and will remain hot for a good 6 months.
My assumption--and I don't believe it's naive--is that the president has information that we don't. I believe he is right in that Iraq does not plan to disarm--this is based on the last 12 years as well as their (in)action since November when 1441 was passed. If we know something about their capabilities and they're not going to disarm, the time to do the work is now. So it's not too hot, we don't have to keep paying to keep troops deployed, the economy can start recovering immediately, and we can finally let France resume its typical importance in world affairs--zero.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mind you, Resolution 641 (I think that's it) from 1991 mandates regime change, so technically, the US already HAS a UN mandate.
Personally, I think that the invasion is ALL about Iraq's strategic position in the Middle East. It borders all the iffy countries that the US has been having trouble with, and neatly divides the Arab states and sandwiches them between US friendl
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:4, Insightful)
ROTFL. You are slightly out of the loop, aren't you? The French actually built the Iraqi nuclear reactors, and gave them the technology for building nuclear weapons. The current French president Chirac railed against Israel for bombing the nuclear facilities in Iraq just before they obtained nuclear status, because French scientists were killed in the process. The French also have substantial oil deals with Iraq. Over here in France we see clips of Chiraq and Saddam Hussein being quite chummy, though apparently this was a few years ago.
Personally I don't see what the fuss is about. France has had a long history of appeasing dictators. It's always Britain or the US that go in to do the right thing, with or without the UN.
I wouldn't hold your breath, unless inspections are given a legitimate chance.
So we hold 300,000 troops on the Iraqi border for another 12 years?
Phillip.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Interesting)
I like how all of these articles that demand a hydrogen economy use the threat of Middle Eastern extremism and terrorism as a reasoning for switching completely from fossil fuels to hydrogen. Do they really think that replacing all of the power plants around us with nuclear ones and then doubling them will make us safer? Or that any local initiative to build two or three new nuclear power plants at a time wouldn't be met with enormous local grass roots resistance?
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:4, Informative)
George W. Bush, State of the Union 2003.
At least he is interested.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Insightful)
The technology is there, but it is not ready for prime time or its not practically implementable. Just like Hydrogen.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the filling stations will switch over on their own once a skeleton infrastructure is put in. From the filling station owner's perspective, spending the 30k has to get him some measure of return. If he's the only fill station around for a hundred miles, he knows that every hydrogen car driving by will top off with him. If everybody's got a hydrogen pump, that pump needs to generate enough revenue to displace one of his gasoline pumps.
If he's going into a market with only 650 national competitors with maybe 1 or 2 local ones, it makes sense and people will start to go for it. As the number of hydrogen cars rises, more will switch over because while the number of competitors is rising, the number of hydrogen car visits is too.
Past a certain point, gasoline infrastructure will start to go away as we all get our stuff (lawn mowers, cars, generators) working on hydrogen. Eventually we'll have a few bitter old timers wailing about having to trek far to get some gasoline.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, could we stop the BS "No Blood for Oil"? 58% of our oil is importated and the #1 importer is...Canada!!! #2 is Russia! We don't need the middle east for oil, but you know who does? Europe. Yup, those same liberal fascists who insist we're just evil and want cheap oil are actually protecting their own oil supplies. They're all pussies who need to be lead. Otherwise someone would just walk all over them (ala Hitler)
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:5, Informative)
- Middle East 25%
- South And Central America 22%
- Canada 15%
- Mexico 12%
- West Africa 12%
- Europe 8%
- Rest of the world 6%
Here is the source [networkideas.org]Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:5, Insightful)
The real barrier is an effective way to produce hydrogen that isn't more expensive and polluting than using oil as a fuel.
This book is amazing (although a little text-booklike). It has a section about how the US government had a 727 flying using hydrogen as a fuel in the 1950's. And, no, thats not more dangerous than jet fuel in case of a crash.
I'm cynical, but I think the government and the oil companies are supportive of hydrogen once we figure out how to make it feasible.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Insightful)
Feasibility is not the hold up. It's how to make it profitable.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kennedy's famous goal of getting a man to the moon had little to nothing to do with feasibility or profitability. As the article states, it sprung from an understanding of US long term interests.
I think that reducing our dependence on oil is similarly in our long term interests. I don't know if a hydrogen based system is the answer since there are some pretty intractable problems with it as I've seen noted elsewhere in these comments.
One point not brought up in the article is that President Bush, being deeply associated with the oil industry is probably the best possible person to spearhead a program like this. A Lefty Democrat would simply be written off as an environmental whacko and ignored by the idealogues opposing him.
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Insightful)
Their program amounts to little more than "bribe people to use hydrogen power" - bribe scientists to work on the problem, bribe automakers to produce the vehicles, bribe oil companies to build new fueling stations, bribe citizens to buy new cars. Did they ever stop to think that if you have to pay off everybody under the sun to go along with your plan, maybe it's not such a great plan? Or maybe they just think they're smarter than everybody else, so of course everybody else will just have to be jollied into going along with their plan. You'd think if it were that great a plan, you might actually be able to convince some people to go along with it without paying them off. Besides, what kind of precedent does this set? "It shouldn't take much persuasion to convince the oil and car industries that the most profitable course is to adapt to hydrogen sooner with government money rather than later without." Great. Collectively drag your heels and complain about how hard the task is -> get money from the government. Why pay for your own capital improvements?
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Thank you Wired. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Thank you Wired. 4690 (Score:3, Funny)
As for collecting gas from Uranus
(And don't ask why I'm replying five days later
Won't happen for a LONG time. (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's not doomed for more than six months. The accountants won't let the investment happen. It's not too late... yet.
-Mark
Re:Won't happen for a LONG time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not skip the middle man and run our cars on natural gas? It is easier to convert to, safer, and many vehicles already do this. The US is the Saudia Arabia of natural gas
Re:Won't happen for a LONG time. (Score:3, Interesting)
The alcohol can be readily created from crop surplus. Is nitromethane and other power boosters that expensive? Granted, the oil companies have nothing to gain from this. But the alcohol can be made from just about any half asses crop.
Re:Won't happen for a LONG time. (Score:4, Insightful)
Petrol sold in France has to contain a minimum of about 10% hydrocarbons derived from oil-seed rape or similar crops. If you drive across the french countryside you will see extensive fields of these crops being grown to support this law (bright yellow flowers). I don't know if you can run a car directly from vegetable oil, although I seriously doubt it, but you can crack / polymerise these oils into pretty much any hydrocarbons you need (plastics, fuels etc). All you need is energy which you can get from burning some of it.
Plants can be a very versatile source of energy. You an even power people with them.
Re:Won't happen for a LONG time. (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, the irony is KILLING me (Score:5, Funny)
Is it just me, or does anyone else find it ironic that on the same page as this "How Hydrogen can Save America" article, there's a GIANT FUCKING AD FOR AN SUV [wired.com]
I think it's the human race's nature to destroy itself, hydrogen tech or no hydrogen tech.
Re:Oh, the irony is KILLING me (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's why:
What do most Americans want in a car? Something that is big (which implies safety), roomy (which implies comfortable), and has a reasonable amount of power (which implies that it is easy to drive). Once upon a time, Americans bought large sedans to satisfy their auto buying needs. How many people owned full sized Chevy Impala's/Ford LTD's during the 1960's-1980's?
However, thanks to CAFE (Coporate Average Fuel Economy) Standards that our government has, you can no longer buy this type of car. To produce this car under CAFE standards, the automaker must produce a fair amount of smaller more fuel efficient cars, which most Americans hate and American auto makers tend to lose money on.
Therefore, in order to satisfy their customers and keep costs down, American auto makers have been trying to get around CAFE for years. One of the more humorous examples was the Cadillac Cimmarron, which was a Chevy Cavalier dressed up in Cadillac trim so Cadillac could make CAFE standards.
SUV's however, do not fall under the same CAFE standards as cars. They are considered trucks. CAFE standards are much lower for trucks than cars. To illustrate the absurdity of this law, a station wagon (car) which got 20 mpg would be worse under CAFE than an SUV that got 15mpg.
With SUV's American auto makers could give their customers big, roomy, cars and not run into trouble with the government. In other words, in trying to raise fuel economy standards, the government has only made them worse. If the market wants more fuel efficient cars, auto makers will provide them or suffer the consequences. If not, then the law hurts both customer and consumer.
(Not to mention that the lighter post CAFE cars are more dangerous. Because of this, and estimated 40,000 people have died because of CAFE. So I say, "No blood for oil - Repeal CAFE!")
True with a caveat (Score:5, Insightful)
Increased nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal power generating capacity would help solve this problem of course. However, it will be a long, long time before we can wean ourselves off of hydrocarbon based fuel sources.
Re:True with a caveat (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:True with a caveat (Score:5, Informative)
But you still can't get around the laws of thermodynamics. The energy that comes from burning hydrogen is from the process of breaking the bonds in H2O (a very endothermic process), so sayeth the First Law. And you're never going to get as much energy out of the hydrogen as you put into it, so sayeth the Second Law. Conclusion: It would be cheaper and more efficient to skip the hydrogen middle man altogether.
The only way a hydrogen economy can be appreciably more environment-friendly than what we have now is if we use nuclear power to crack the water. And that won't happen in the US any time soon for obvious reasons (unless Bush delivers on what he said about building more nuke plants).
Re:True with a caveat (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:True with a caveat (Score:2)
The authors of the linked article suggest we'll get the power from nuclear plants: "Nuclear power will serve as a stopgap, enabling the US to achieve energy independence while allowing wind, solar, and hydropower a chance to mature. Given the choice between powering the carbon-free hydrogen economy with fossil fuels or nuclear energy, even Greenpeace might embrace nuke plants as the lesser evil." (See point 4 [wired.com].)
It might have been more accurate for the authors to call their piece "The Nuclear Economy" -- hydrogen is just the storage and delivery mechanism.
wee (Score:4, Funny)
Help me, I'm confuzzled [beryllium.ca]!
This post is prezactly [beryllium.ca] on-topic! Honest!
(okay, stop ignoring now
A hydrogen-based economy would be awesome! If we could generate all our power from water ... we'd have an almost infinite supply! woo!
Except for that nasty using-up-all-the-oxygen thing ... ah well. I'm sure we can adapt. Nitrogen works, right? :)
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
It seems like it would be difficult to carry around little canisters of hydrogen to pay for everything.
I don't get it.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Hydrogen Fueling Station -- WTF? (Score:2)
Lets GO (Score:2)
I think the biggest problem is that you have these special interest people for Oil that mess things up. Hydrogen sounds so appealing, but......way can't we just "DO IT"???
I am way ahead of them. (Score:3, Funny)
This is all well and good... (Score:5, Insightful)
How much you wanna bet the funding for those end just before we get to the point where they might be useful, so that we can persue the next big thing in energy efficiency (all the while sticking with the crappy methods we use now)?
Re:This is all well and good... (Score:3, Insightful)
So far, noones come up with a more profitable replacement to the internal combustion engine. It's as simple as that.
And more oil goes into plastics production and heating every year than ever goes into vehicles as gasoline. The whole "it's all about the cars" thing is a bunch of intellectual dishonesty.
How about harvestable fuels based on corn/flax/hemp oil, rather than pumping it out of the ground? Sounds reasonable to me.
A Hydrogen Economy Is a Bad Idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=1523
Don't reflect realities (Score:3, Insightful)
Wishful thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
We dont know how to make hydrogen a commercially viable alternative. As soon as it's profitable, it'll take off in a big way.
It's the simplest element, it's everywhere in the universe, we'd never run out of it, but we dont know how to get it without putting more energy into the extraction than we would get from it as a fuel.
Why not just write an article on how a pixie-dust based economy is the wave of the future? Or another one about rocket cars and living in giant plastic bubbles under the ocean?
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:3, Funny)
It's easy. You see, at the same time we want the cars to get healthier, we also want the people in them to get healthier. So we switch from using hydrogenated vegetable oil in our frying, which frees up all that hydrogen so it can go into our cars instead!
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
We dont know how to make hydrogen a commercially viable alternative. As soon as it's profitable, it'll take off in a big way.
That's the whole point of his article: we don't know how to do it yet so we'd better start working on these tough problems. One of the first statements he makes is that the problems are technological rather than scientific. He's saying that unless the government starts spending some heavy R&D dollars to figure out a profitable way of creating pure hydrogen, we're never going to get this strategy off the ground.
GMD
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Check out page 3 [wired.com], point number 4, to read his suggestion of using "steam reforming" combined with nuclear power to get the hydrogen. (Of course, read this comment [slashdot.org] to see why this might not be such a good idea...)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh I see, because it's hard, we shouldn't bother? I think the article's whole thrust was that we should try solving the problems.
Its oh so much easier to spend the 100 billion on destroying, then rebuilding Iraq.
It's simple to obtain the budget for the R&D - don't go to war the savings provide the budget. Don't get me wrong, I'm no dove, and when it's warranted, there's nothing I like more than watching our boys kick some major ass, but in this case, the money could be better spent elsewhere.
I for one would rather fight terror with economics, not bombs. How many terrorists do you think could afford the plane ticket out here if it weren't for oil?
Science kit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Science kit (Score:3, Informative)
Hydrogen is not an alternative energy resource (Score:5, Insightful)
Hydrogen + fuel cell is just hoped to be either better for storage of electricity than batteries, or cleaner than hydrocarbons (still has to be converted somewhere, generating pollution and CO2), eventually. That's all, until we can use the planet as a Bussard collector.
Re:Hydrogen is not an alternative energy resource (Score:3, Interesting)
Ironically the largest reserve of oil is not in Saudi Arabia or Iraq. It's actually north of the border. Yup, you heard it right. Canada has the largest oil reserves in the world in the so called "Alberta oil sands". It's actually oil that soaks the topsoil but its extraction is entirely possible albeit more expensive. It costs about $2.50 to extract a barrel of oil from a traditional oil field whilst it's around $14 to extract the same quantity of oil from Canada's tar sands. Hence they only ramp up production there when oil prices are above $20 a barrel or so.... So there you go, True North, cold, free and filthy rich.
While hydrogen car fuel is fine ... (Score:2)
That said, burning hydrocarbons up for vehicles should be stopped. No problem with that.
MIT study: Hydrogen car no environmental panacea (Score:3, Informative)
I think I better trust the motives and analysis of the MIT folks. http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article1205.
Another perspective (Score:3, Informative)
Political Effects (Score:3, Insightful)
I seriously doubt switching from oil to hydrogen will stop terrorist attacks.
How to create hydrogen? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, the question is, where are we going to get the energy to create the hydrogen? From... oil burning electricity generating plants? That would kind of defeat the purpose of switching to hydrogen for our cars, wouldn't it? In fact, it would require more electricity to generate the hyrdogen, which would in require more oil! And if folks say, "build more nuclear plants for electricity generation", I'm sure that's going to go over really well with the environmentalists in California. They'll just love that idea.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for hydrogen powered cars, but it seems like we're playing a shell game here, moving the oil from the cars to the electricity generation.
(If my assumptions about generation of hydrogen are wrong, someone please correct me!)
Re:How to create hydrogen? (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen isn't necessarily generated through electrolysis. There are various chemical reactions that may be used to generate hydrogen--mostly from fossil fuels, however.
Really interesting ways for the future might involve some bioengineering. Bacteria already exist which produce hydrogen from water [newswise.com]. Another article here [energycooperation.org]. The best part is that these bacteria are perfectly happy being fed wastewater, which helps to solve another one of our environmental problems.
I fully expect that with some genetic engineering we will have some very cost-effective hydrogen producing microbes in a matter of years--not decades. Alternately, we might just produce the enzymes (hydrogenases et al.) and use them act directly.
Yes, biosourced hydrogen would require some significant infrastructure--but so does shipping millions of barrels of oil halfway around the world, refining the stuff and separating it into hundreds of different products. I also don't foresee massive fluctuations in the price of sewage due to world events.
Re:How to create hydrogen? (Score:3, Informative)
treating wastewater is simple. (Score:3, Informative)
Hydrogen is not an energy source... (Score:2, Insightful)
For an alternate perspective (Score:4, Informative)
Feared Three Letter Word (Score:2)
Simultaneously decrease demand for foreign oil (that funds terrorism, that produces more carbon dioxide than needed, as well as other pollutant products of combustion, and that increases the United States' foreign trade deficit, and causes the need to investigate oil exploration in sensitive pristine wilderness areas) and provide the needed revenue for hydrogen-based energy technology research and development by imposing a new additional tax on gasoline?
I get so confused by people that immediately cry out about the general principles of a tax but don't seem to mind as much if the price of gasoline increases for different reasons than a tax (fear of war, etc.). Equivalent revenue enhancing windfalls from oil price increases are currently absorbed by private entities in the producer chain.
I know, it's all politics, perception and emotion and someone's favorite source of revenue is at stake.
But it's a sound idea all the same.
Re:Feared Three Letter Word (Score:3, Interesting)
I helped blow up the world trade center ...
I bought a dictator a helicopter that he used against his own people...
I helped fuel a riot in a latin american country...
I'm propping up a government that subjates women...
(When you buy gasoline, you help buy a lot of very bad things.)
Kablooey (Score:2)
interesting article analyzing bushes stance on... (Score:5, Informative)
car talk [tnr.com]
"A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy,
which can be used to power a car producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With
a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome
obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first
car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and
pollution-free." President Bush said these words during his State of the Union
address, introducing the FreedomFUEL proposal--which is really how the White
House spells it. The president wants to spend $1.2 billion over the next five
years to research the production of hydrogen as a replacement for gasoline in
automobiles.
Someday men and women will probably drive cars running on "fuel-cell"
motors that have no pistons, consume hydrogen, and emit no pollutants,
including no greenhouse gases. Between the zero-pollutants advantages of
hydrogen and the fact that its supply is in principle inexhaustible, the
world's petroleum-based economy will probably eventually yield to a
hydrogen-based economy--to everyone's benefit. Republicans relentlessly mocked
Al Gore for saying the internal combustion engine should be replaced by
something better, and now George W. Bush is saying exactly the same thing.
The attraction of hydrogen is great, since hydrogen-based transportation
would both be environmentally benign and reduce the need for the United States
to import petroleum. But Bush's proposal joins a new convention of
rhapsodizing about hydrogen-powered transportation--Jeremy Rifkin numbers
among current hydrogen zealots--while skipping over the small matter of where
we get the hydrogen. Worse, the White House plan offers a long-term
distraction from a short-term need: While the administration dreams big about
our hydrogen-powered future, it does little to improve fuel-economy standards
today.
here are many impediments to a future in which fuel-cell automobiles
dominate America's roadways. What form--gaseous, liquid, or mixed with
metallic dust to prevent explosion should there be an accident--would the
hydrogen we pump into our cars take? How would the hydrogen be moved in
commercial quantities to those filling stations? Could average motorists pump
hydrogen themselves, considering it is now handled only by specialists? But
these are engineering questions and presumably can be answered.
Unfortunately, a cost-effective answer to the question of how to obtain
hydrogen may prove more elusive than answers to questions about how to handle
it. At first glance, this issue would seem simple. After all, our world
contains gargantuan amounts of hydrogen--two-thirds of the oceans, for
instance, are made up of this element. But the pure form of hydrogen needed to
power fuel-cell cars does not occur naturally on Earth, where hydrogen is
chemically bound to other elements, such as oxygen in the case of the oceans.
And, while the stars contain an almost inexpressible amount of hydrogen in its
pure form, stellar material will not be on sale at your local filling station
anytime soon, or ever.
Because pure hydrogen does not occur naturally on Earth, any pure hydrogen
for use as fuel must be manufactured. Today, pure hydrogen is most often made
using natural gas as a feedstock, but that means fossil fuels are still being
consumed: Basically, the process turns a fossil fuel, methane, into something
that seems not to be a fossil fuel, hydrogen. Pure hydrogen can also be
manufactured using petroleum or coal, which of course are the very fossil
fuels whose grip we wish to loosen. And, while pure hydrogen has been
manufactured from agricultural products--plants contain hydrogen bound as
carbohydrates--at the research level, it remains to be seen whether this could
work commercially. Enviros rhapsodize about making hydrogen from seawater. But
there's a catch: Making hydrogen from water requires loads of
electricity, far more electricity than the energy value of the hydrogen that
is obtained, and something--be it a coal-fired power plant or an atomic
reactor--must provide the electricity. Indeed, the big misconception about
hydrogen is that it is a "source" of energy. Pure hydrogen is not an energy
source, except to stars. As it will be used in cars or to power homes and
offices, hydrogen--like a battery--is an energy medium, a way to store
power that has been obtained in some other way. Hydrogen makes an attractive
energy medium because its "fuel-cycle" calculations--the sum of all steps of
manufacture and use--show reductions in greenhouse gases compared with any
automotive fuel burned today. But hydrogen is going to be an expensive energy
medium and, in the early decades at least, will be a medium either for natural
gas, a fossil fuel, or for atomic power.
Today, the most practical means to make pure hydrogen is a process called
"steam reforming" of natural gas. A natural-gas molecule has one atom of
carbon and four atoms of hydrogen; "reforming" strips off the carbon atoms,
leaving pure hydrogen. But not only is a fossil fuel--natural gas--the raw
material of this process, energy must be expended for the "reforming" itself,
meaning a net loss of BTUs. Using Department of Energy estimates, the White
House says pure hydrogen from natural gas is currently "four times as
expensive to produce as gasoline."
Applied engineering and commercial-scale production would surely bring
down the price. The most optimistic credible projection I have seen comes from
Jesse Ausubel, a specialist in "industrial ecology" at the Rockefeller
University, who thinks commercial-scale hydrogen made from natural gas could
be produced for about 40 percent more than the price of gasoline. That's
within striking distance of a good deal. But there is a catch to this catch:
Optimistic estimates for hydrogen from natural gas are based on the current
low selling price of natural gas. Significant new demand for natural gas might
raise its price. And, while natural-gas supplies are steady at the moment, who
knows what the effect on supply would be if hydrogen manufacturing caused
natural-gas consumption to skyrocket?
So maybe the hydrogen should be made from coal or petroleum. Fuel-cycle
calculations show that using coal or petroleum to manufacture hydrogen would
lead to some reduction in greenhouse gases but not to a big cut; moreover,
we'd still be digging coal and importing petroleum. Maybe hydrogen should be
made from agricultural products-- "biomass," in energy lingo. But biomass
feedstocks might be grown using fertilizer, which is made mainly from fossil
fuels, and again the fuel-cycle calculations show only a moderate gain in
pollution reduction for the large capital costs entailed in establishing an
agriculture-hydrogen economy. (All hydrogen schemes, it should be noted,
involve large capital costs.) Owing to these concerns, John McCarthy, a
Stanford University professor emeritus of computer science, has written, "The
large-scale use of hydrogen depends on using either nuclear or solar
electricity." Otherwise, it's just repackaging fossil fuels.
But solar power on the scale required is far from practical. It is
possible to imagine a green-dream-come-true energy cycle that uses solar
collectors to generate electricity to crack hydrogen out of water: zero
greenhouse gases and endlessly renewable. For the moment, solar collectors are
much too expensive. The Worldwatch Institute, a much-admired, left-leaning
environmental organization, recently rated sources of electricity by combining
their capital cost and true social cost--that is, taking into account
"externalities" such as pollution and entanglements with the Gulf states.
Solar power finished last, much more expensive than coal-generated
power, even when coal's external costs are factored in. An indicator:
Solar-derived electricity currently wholesales for around ten times as much
per kilowatt-hour as coal-fired watts.
Even if the price of solar power fell by orders of magnitude, there would
be the not-so-little problem of where to put the solar collectors. To replace
the petroleum we use to power our cars with hydrogen split from water might
entail doubling America's electricity-generating capacity. Doing that with
solar collectors could require covering a land area roughly the size of
Connecticut with photovoltaic cells. In theory, the collectors could be put in
space, where sunlight has eight times as many watts per square meter as on the
ground and where no one's land need be taken. Figures in a recent study in
Science magazine suggested that doubling the electricity-production
capacity of the United States would require placing approximately 40
photovoltaic collector dishes, each the size of Manhattan, into orbit. Even if
capital cost were no object and society possessed the technical means to build
objects in space the size of Manhattan, such a project would take a century.
hich brings us to atomic power, the energy source everyone loves to
hate. In theory, lots of new atomic stations could be built to make
electricity to manufacture hydrogen, and the stations could use new,
"inherently safe" reactors designed so that they cannot melt down. (In
inherently safe reactors, the atomic chain reaction is initiated in such a way
that, if safety systems fail, the chain breaks; researchers have deliberately
turned off all cooling and safety systems of inherently safe prototypes and
nothing happens.) But political opposition to atomic reactors is intense, and
capital costs here would be high as well. Some estimates also suggest that, if
a significant number of new reactors were put into service, uranium--currently
plentiful--would become scarce after a few decades. This could be avoided by
building "breeder" reactors that make more fuel than they consume. But
breeders work by breeding plutonium, and most nations, including the United
States, have suspended construction of breeder reactors because such machines
would increase the risk of plutonium being diverted for nuclear weapons
production.
Many researchers continue to believe that "fusion" reactors, which mimic
the internal process of the sun, someday will be perfected. Over the long
term, fusion reactors might solve all global-energy questions, oddly, by using
hydrogen to make hydrogen! In a fusion reactor, tiny amounts of hydrogen
isotope are fused into helium, generating heat. (The sun fuses hydrogen into
helium for its luminescence, and nuclear bombs get much of their force from
fusing a small amount of hydrogen isotope.) Heat from a fusion reactor would
drive turbines to make electricity; the electricity would crack hydrogen out
of water in large quantities; the hydrogen would power cars or be turned back
into electricity in individual fuel cells in people's homes. Though a
hydrogen-to-hydrogen energy cycle might sound like a perpetual-motion machine,
it could end up being the technology that someday makes global-energy needs a
solved issue.
But this is all blue sky because fusion reactors barely function in the
laboratory--there is nothing remotely close to a commercial prototype. And,
even if a grad student ran from a laboratory tomorrow yelling, "Eureka!" and
clutching the secret of an unlimited-energy-fusion future, it would be another
century-long project to convert the world to an energy economy based on
machines that simulate the centers of stars.
Realistically, these concerns dictate that, for the next few decades,
hydrogen would be manufactured either from natural gas or by using power from
a new generation of atomic reactors. The most cost-effective combination, some
researchers think, might be natural gas heated directly by atomic reactors,
whose high operating temperatures turn out to be ideal for the reforming of
hydrogen from natural gas. But that means our miracle zero-emission hydrogen
will be produced from fossil fuels via an intermediate stop at a nuclear
reactor--not exactly what the Sierra Club had in mind.
All these drawbacks do not rule out hydrogen as a fuel, they merely
represent problems to be overcome. Hydrogen is sure to enter common use
someday, perhaps during the lifetimes of children now being born. After all, a
century ago, smart engineers and economists would have sworn it physically
impossible--to say nothing of impossibly expensive--for the world to consume
75 million barrels of oil per day, as we do today, at affordable prices. But
there is almost no chance hydrogen will make a dent in energy-use patterns
during a two-term Bush administration. Even the White House concedes that the
earliest a significant number of service stations could offer pure hydrogen
would be 2020.
Hydrogen has always been interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
It is very clean. It is relatively efficient. I'd prefer a liquid fuel, but then again, I'd prefer a non-volatile, non-toxic fuel, too. You can't always get what you want.
The attractive things about hydrogen are its real abundance. There are so many interesting possibilties for how to make it. I saw a fascinating series of papers (curse me for not being able to find the original links - although you can get familiar with the ideas with some simple google searches, i.e. this conference poster [tu-berlin.de]) on the use of genetically engineered bacteria that produce hydrogen when eating various things, even waste products.
"Electric" has massive drawbacks both in storage and distribution, which are both dirty and highly inefficient. Methanol/Ethanol are probably even dirtier, though potentially renewable, but there are questions about how sustainable, for instance, corn power really is. Geothermal and hydro are obviously limited in place and abundance... Solar, wind and tides are ideal but unpredictable and expensive. I'm excited to hear about big improvements in solar power systems, but the big stuff (70%+ efficiencies) still seem a ways away for commercial use.
To me, that leaves good old hydrogen (in combustion? in a fuel cell?) - attractive both for its unparalleled cleanliness and the interesting potential sources. Why not?
One Concern (Score:3, Insightful)
When reading the article, one part in particular jumped out at me:
Is the Prius really a radically different automobile from the view of the consumer? It has the same sort of range as a traditional car, and you still have to fuel it up like other cars. The only radical differences I can see are its gas mileage (which is not always what it's cracked up to be [caranddriver.com]) and the higher cost of repairs. I'm hesitant to extrapolate from its acceptance to the acceptance of a car that runs on entirely different fuel, and requires a now-nonexistent fuel infrastructure.
public perception of alternative-fuel cars (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, and maybe more importantly, is public perception of these types of vehicles. I know just about nothing about the workings of hydrogen-powered cars, which lumps me in with (I'd wager) over 95% of the rest of the country. When people like me hear the term 'alternative-energy automobiles,' we think 'expensive and underpowered.' And what does the average consumer look for in a vehicle? A low price and lots of horsepower.
I'm not saying that hydrogen-powered (or solar-powered or whatever) vehicles are incapable of costing little or being able to tow your boat; I'm just claiming that the average American thinks along those lines, and as long as this perception exists then there will be no demand for alternative-fuel cars.
What I think we need is a huge marketing campaign which essentially hammers people over the head, and beats into them the advantages of hydrogen power. There are economic advantages, environmental advantages, and even simply the coolness that can come from owning something the neighbors don't. It could even be explained that their views of hydrogen-fuelled vechicles are wrong, and that they really can have the horsepower and cost in addition to an environmentally-friendly car. A huge marketing blitz could be undertaken relatively cheaply and have the effect of greatly boosting demand, which in turn would cause corporations to invest capital and make this actually happen. That, along with tax credits or some sort of incentive program, would generate demand with consumers and put the whole alternative-fuel concept on the right path.
Please, everyone, settle down... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hydrogen will not, can not, be a primary energy source for our society. Current hydrocarbons provide net energy (at least in a temporal sense) because the energy that was consumed in their creation was used millenia ago. There are no similar, vast reserves of hydrogen waiting to be exploited.
While other posters here (and many others in varied other media) talk of a supply of hydrogen gained from splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, they have forgotten that this process requires energy, thus necessitating some other primary energy source. Some suggest that source may be solar or wind or hydro--but then they are the actual source of the energy, hydrogen is merely an intermediate storage device.
It is much more likely that any 'hydrogen economy' that emerges in the next 3-4 decades will be based upon the extraction of hydrogen from methane, either at a large scale, or in fuel cells at the point of generation.
I'm not saying that hydrogen has no place or not interesting, but in our excitement, let's not forget the law of conservation of energy.
--my $0.02
Re:Please, everyone, settle down... (Score:3, Insightful)
Burn the petroleum at a refinery to produce the hydrogen, which then gets shipped out to "gas" stations to fuel cars. It's much easier to filter and control the pollution produced at the refinery than it would be to control pollution produced by petroleum using cars. It's quite possible that generators could be designed that are more efficient than the engined currently in cars (since those are horribly inefficient.)
Furthermore, when new technologies that reduce pollution are implemented, it's relatively easy to upgrade a small(er) number of refineries. As pointed out in the article, there are a _lot_ of older cars out there, and every time an improvement in fuel effificeny or pollution reduction is made you have to wait a long time for it to filter down.
And that's completly ignoring the fact that if the cars are using hydrogen, we don't _have_ to use petroleum as the original source of energy. We could have many different sources producing hydrogen. If OPEC raised oil prices, hydroelectric facilities or nuclear power plants or other sources could increase production to keep the price of hydrogen down. Or if we found that some other method of production was cheaper we could do away with petroleum all together.
Once cars have been decoupled from a direct dependence on petroleum, all kinds of possibilites open up. Why do you think electricity is the other big energy currency we use? It's very generic, and it doesn't matter to the user where it came from. Imagine the difficulties if your computer had to run on a specific brand of electricity (hydroelectric, coal, nuclear, etc)
BMW is on the Bandwagon (Score:4, Informative)
Unless the economy turns around, all I'll be able to afford is a hydrogen-petrol Yugo
H2 ? Nah, CH3OH (Score:5, Interesting)
Dream on!
Let me break down the 5 areas that they say need R&D. I accept that these are the main problem areas. However, consider the alternative, of methanol powered fuel cells.
1. Solve the hydrogen fuel-tank problem.
However you do it, it's more difficult than storing gasoline. With methanol, it's eactly the same problem. Bush should devote $0 to this problem, and instead point to the current solutions for oil.
2. Encourage mass production of fuel cell vehicles.
This one is the same for methanol fuel cell vehicles. But wait! With methonal, the internal combustion engine is also a viable alternative. It's less efficent than a petrol IC engine, at current standard, but that's migigatable (I think petrol IC will probably slightly excel methanol IC). So, you can get methanol into vehicles sooner, meaning the total cost is spread over a longer time. The dual engine technology will assist adoption.
Additionally, methonal fuel cells, all solid state, are working in lab prototypes. This is about the same state as hydrogen fuel cells, so you'd not lose anything by going to methanol over hydrogen, and you'd gain a lot.
3. Convert the nation's fueling infrastructure to hydrogen.
Easier with methanol - it's the same type of problem as gasoline, so use the same type of solution - no real R&D needed here. That's a significant win over hydrogen, and equal with gasoline. The problem of supplying dual fuels is the same w.r.t. hydrogen or methanol.
4. Ramp up hydrogen production.
Methanol is more difficult to manufacture than hydrogen. But... there are two options. The first one, diret chemical synthesis from CO and H2 is very slightly more complex than direct hydrogen production. The other option, ferment it from celulose. All the waste wood / straw can be fermented into methanol. I don't know which would be cheaper - but I do know that it's not possible for one man to manufacture hydrogen on his ranch. A methanol still, on the other hand, is perfectly feasable. Spin that correctly, and there's capital there.
On the whole, however, it's 50/50 methanol / hydrogen.
5. Mount a public campaign to sell the hydrogen economy.
Hindenberg. Doesn't matter what actually happened, the helium industry spun it so well, that it's embeded in peoples minds that hydrogen is unsafe.
Methanol is methylated sprits. I don't think anyone thinks that's more dangerous than gasoline.
So, slight win for methanol, on the safty front.
Overall, I make that two noticable wins for methanol, two slight advantages, and one where it's 50/50.
Postscript: I use methanol, rather than ethanol because ethanol fuel cells are noticalby more difficult (== expensive), and producing methonal from biomass uses wood and other indigestable matter. Generating ethanol requires sugars, i.e. food.
Utterly inane... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the myth of the hydrogen economy is confounding to me. For example, take the claim that "hydrogen is plentiful" made by Mr. Schwartz. Yes, it's a plentiful element, bound in low energy configurations in other molecules. There are no hydrogen "free lunches" sitting out there waiting for us to take advantage of them. The problem is that most of the sources of hydrogen take more energy to get hydrogen from than they provide in energy output from burning the hydrogen (or reacting it in a fuel cell). This is fundamental chemistry and physics. No ranting and raving or spending campaign is going to change it.
The "hydrogen economy" really needs to be relabeled as the "coal economy" or the "nuclear economy", because hydrogen's role in this hypothesized economy is merely as a very efficient battery.
The most viable alternative energy sources we have right now are right under our noses but we've chosen not to see them. Ethanol can be produced quite efficiently at reasonable cost from renewable sources. Low cost cellulose-containing feedstocks are available that don't end up with the energy-sinkhole problems faced by corn-based ethanol (i.e. you end up putting more energy into making it than you get out of it). The tools of biocommodity engineering are starting to mature, and this is where we need to put more resources.
Ethanol and methanol, in fact, can be used to power fuels fairly efficiently (not quite as much so as hydrogen). But we don't have to wait - FFVs (Flexible Fuel Vehicles) are on the market today, thanks to tax incentives. People need to be made aware of this alternative. The problem? Outside of the midwest and corn based ethanol, it's hard to fuel up on fuel grade ethanol at the pump. More investment in building production facilities and developing distribution channels to the pump is needed for the several million FFVs already on the road, and a government-financed consumer awareness campaign would also go a long way to supporting this effort.
Other real possibilities exist too - biodiesel, for one, though the economics of it are likewise not as favorable as for ethanol production.
We don't need to enslave ourselves to oil. But we do need to be realistic about the alternatives and acknowledge that hydrogen is merely part of the equation. We shouldn't use "hydrogen" as shorthand to refer to the broad array of _real_ alternative energy solutions that are available. The myths about hydrogen need to debunked - it doesn't make you anti-progress or pro-oil to point out the realities of a full "lifecycle analysis" (to use the term from the biocommodity engineering literature) of hydrogen production and usage. And to divert vast volumes of money to research hydrogen when that's not necessarily the most viable path to a sustainable energy economy seems at best foolish.
Re:Utterly inane... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are no free lunches waiting, but you can build a system to get free lunches. Sure, solar is expensivce to build, and low yield, but if you build enough of it, can that power used to extract hydrogen from water? Once you get it going, it's free. You put no energy in, you just use the sun. And you can augment the unstable solar enegergy from teh sun with traditional electricity from power plants.
As for the "free lunch" of the fossil fuels, its not free. We're not paying for it, though. The dinosaurs did. And you can be damn sure it took a lot more energy to get those fossil fuels where they are today then we will ever get out of them.
The trouble with fossil fuels is the circuit to create them is HUGE! It ges back millions of years to solar energy power plants, some plants being eaten, those animals dying, being compacted and cooked in the crust, and eventually drilled and pumped up by us. Just because the lunch was paid for millions of years ago doesn't mean it was free.
Repost? No, recycling! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can maintain an air of hype-proofness it is fairly easy to see how stupid the "Hydrogen Economy" ideas are in both the short term and long term. Hydrogen is merely an energy carrier a finicky one at that. Many of its proponents only see the end result, a car that spits out warm wet air, without fully realizing the infrastructure that warm wet air is generated with.
Diesel, especially biodiesel has a much better cost/benefit analysis but isn't as sexy as technology as hydrogen. Even the word Diesel fares ill in comparison to the dynamicism of hydrogen's syllibles. It also seems to me that the American public, three quarters of which live in urban areas, connotate Diesel with dirty and noisy MAC trucks and pubtrans buses. If they're a little more technical they probably instantly think of Diesel cars like the TDI Golf and Jetta with their 90hp-I-think-I-can-make-it-up-to-passing-speed engines.
What Diesel hybrid proponents ought to do is start up a massive test drive program. Give a couple people the keys to a Diesel hybrid for a week with a full tank. If more people see they can actually use freeway on-ramps effectively AND have most of the tank of gas left by the end of the week they'd see Diesel hybrids and hopefully Diesel engines in a much different light. Electric assist makes a huge difference in the car's feel, especially for those who shun anything that won't pop off a light like a Roman candle.
The Honda Dualnote concept car is an excellent example of this idea, the combustion engine charges an ultracapacitor while idling or braking. Said capacitor gives an extra umph (100hp worth) when accelerating. If you were to stick such a system on a high efficiency yet power deprived car like the TDI Lupo it'd make for a fair bit of go juice without expending a ton of gas juice. Citroën and Audi have shown that it is possible to make exceptionally clean burning Diesels which is promising for the Diesel-smells-like-poo opponents. Nissan's Gloria is making some great advancements using toroidal CVTs instead of conventional gearboxs.
These sorts of advances lend well to designing a really badass Diesel hybrid. From conception to fruition Diesels are going to be far cheaper than any hydrogen powered car for the next several decades. Diesel fuel is much easier to store and transport than pure hydrogen, it is more robust than methanol, and with biodiesel is renewable and is only pumping the CO2 back into the environment that was used to grow it.
Hype about hydrogen based utopian societies are the same sort of pie in the sky crap that has been fed to people about fusion power. It's payoff point is always somewhere out in the distant future where we all use transporters to get to work. Hydrogen COULD be viable as could nuclear fusion. They could be viable technologies at a point in the future but not now and not any time soon. Hyping these technologies up does little to fix any problems anyone has in the here and now which is where we live.
Hydrogen will be a good idea some day but unfortunately not today. Until then we ought to work towards improving what we have available to its most efficient state while working on the technology of next year. I personally think Diesel's time is due but clean and efficient gasoline engines would work just as well for me. I just want more cars on the road with that get 40+ miles per gallon. I'd really love to see 90+ miles to the gallon. The more fuel efficient our cars get the less dependent we are on the gas pump to lead functional lives. Three times the gas milage means a third of your current fuel expenses. I'm sure everyone in meat space can find a use for a couple hundred extra dollars left at the end of the year, for some a few thousand.
Just one problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
Take a look at where we get our oil from. I'm not talking in terms of politics or culture: I'm talking in terms of economics. For many of the oil-producing nations of the world, oil is the only natural resource they have. The influx of money to those nations has allowed great things to be done in some of these nations. It has, admittedly, also fueled some dictatorships, but even in these cases, the standard of living has risen somewhat.
Take away that inflow of cash, and you utterly decimate the economies of these nations. That's what people forget: it's not just the oil companies that benefit from oil. What do you intend to do when you've plunged some rather large nations back into the poverty that oil had finally allowed them to escape? What do you think they will do? Will terrorism decrease, as the groups see themselves as being finally left alone, or will it increase, in revenge for ruining their economies?
It's a delicate game, politics. Each decision leads to others, and has consequences far greater than can usually be seen at the time the decision is made. This is one of them.
Hmm.. (Score:3, Interesting)
In the long run, automobile fuel cells themselves might be tied to the grid, making it possible for vehicles to feed power into the system rather than simply consume energy. That is, electrical meters might run backward some of the time. Futurist Amory Lovins envisions a peer-to-peer energy network in which spot power is distributed to users from the nearest source, be it a utility station or a station wagon.
It seems to me that the peer-to-peer grid idea could possibly take care of the car sitting for long periods of time - just burn off some of that extra energy to provide for a more immediate need and credit the energy back to you.
It still doesn't necessarily solve the problem of being "out of gas", but it sure seems more palatable.
Hydrogen later, do this instead now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, we should concentrate on a few other things first, which are immediately achievable, and ultimately more useful, in both the short and long term.
First, we need to get the sulfur out of diesel fuel. I'm taking this first because it's a no-brainer, and the current policy is too little, much too late. US standards for diesel are lower than Europe's, which is why we can't have their terrific, new-generation diesel cars. The average small car can, and does (over there) get 40+ mpg, without hybrid technology. Look at the Jetta Diesel -- it easily beats the Civic Hybrid, with no high-tech fancy stuff. The thing is, that's not even the best of the breed. Plus, if we get the sulfur out of the diesel, we can also clean up our industrial diesel engines considerably, which are the second biggest source of pollution in many areas.
Second, we do need that high-tech fancy stuff -- hybrid cars are terrific. Designs like the Insight/Civic are simply a better way to build a car, for a variety of reasons -- improved electrical systems, etc. The thing is, we need a better internal combustion motor to begin with -- and that's a new-generation diesel. A Civic Hybrid seems great at 45 mpg, but a hypothetical Jetta Diesel Hybrid would probably top 60 mpg. And if you must, SUVs with 40 mpg city, 30 mpg hwy are feasible too.
Third, we need to invest in smart power grids, and distributed power systems. This would allow to hook their solar systems, windmills, natural gas microturbines and fuel cells, and even hybrid cars into the grid, with the meter able to run backward. This would encourage development of clean power systems by eliminating the barrier to becoming a producer. It would drive down costs because of increased supply, and result in a more robust system. It's more efficient because it cuts transmision losses. Distributed power is better than a centralized model in a time of crisis -- what happens if someone bombs Hoover Dam, or other regional facility? Distributed power is better for national security. All it takes is some new switching gear and a computer network to control it all -- why are we not doing this?
Finally, we need to make our whole society more efficient by reducing car-dependent real estate development. It's ridiculous that people accept 50 mile commutes as normal. People should live, work, and shop within a very few miles. Unfortunately, lack of planning or lousy planning and zoning prevents this in many American cities The real solution to oil dependence is getting people out of their cars. Much has been written on this. Do a search on "new urbanism" if you wish.
So there you go -- clean diesel, diesel hybrid cars, and distributed power; plus land use, urban planning, and transportation reform. These are the solutions we have available to us *right now.* There are no huge technical problems to overcome. Hydrogen has huge technical considerations, and even bigger socio-political-economic ones. Sweeping revolution is fun to think about, but never works out in the real world. I say we take the baby steps first.
score me redundant but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not gonna happen.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, how much does oil cost per barrel to Saudi Arabia to produce? a few bucks? less? how much are they selling it for? 30+ bucks and counting? They could flood the world oil market with oil at $5/barrel (which would translate in gas at around 40c/gallon) and still rack in profits...
Personally I don't believe that until oil runs out we'll ever wean ourselves from it: and given how big the reserves of oil producing states are, I don't believe it will run out for another several decades unfortunately...
just my 2c
why crawl when you could FLY?! (Score:3, Funny)
All we need is a $100 trillion/year subsidy to develop antimatter-resistant materials and technology for producing antimatter from medical waste and discarded athletic shoes.
A distribution network would not be necessary because your car could run for 75 BILLION miles on a single kilogram of antimatter, which has four billion times the energy density of gasoline and SIXTEEN BILLION times the energy density of chemical hydrogen.
Oh no they're breaking down the doKJY(W*#&^
Biggest Problem with the Article (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's the rub. Even neglecting the astronomical capital costs, no one has concieved a renewable energy program that will fulfill our energy needs. Most hydrogen will have to be produced from natural gas. The rest will have to be produced using electricty generated by nuclear, fossil fuel, and hydroelectric plants. No renewable technology has yet been proposed that could possibly generate enough power to do this a bearable cost. Hence, our dependance on foreign oil remains.
Hydrogen is a distraction. (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is energy generation/production/harvesting. We need to stop shipping in oil and burning up coal and start harvesting it from renewable (AKA "effectively infinite") sources, particularly the ones with low environmental impact. That means solar, wind, microhydro, biodiesel, cellulositic ethanol, tidal and current turbines, and geothermal. We need on-site off-grid power generation. We need to distribute energy generation and storages so that we don't need delicate, wasteful shipping methods - be they the power grid or fuel trucks. And we need to stop letting everyone get away with building structures and devices that waste energy with wild abandon.
Long story short - hydrogen may have potential, but it's being sold like snake oil and it's years away from reality. If we focused on simpler, proven technologies and put some real effort into some rather obvious fields of research (like high efficiency solar) we could have a working system in much shorter order.
Plutonium based economy (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I guess a hydrogen based economy is better than an information based one. Just be prepared to pay the inventor of cheap, plentiful hydrogen the same or more than you're paying for oil, even if it is nearly zero cost to produce, if our experience with the info biz is any example to go by. If someone can get filthy rich off pc software, imagine what this future hydrogen baron is going to make off something we really need like personal transportation!
Hydrogen as a Currency (Score:3, Interesting)
This is correct, if we switch all teh internal combustion engines over to hydrogen, we'll still need energy to produce the hydrogen. And yes, at first a lot of that hydrogen might be produced by burning or refining petroleum fuel at plants and then shipping the hydrogen to refueling stations.
This does not mean that hydrogen is useless, or that we should deveop ethanol or methanol vehicles instead, or any of the other alternatives suggested.
Hydrogen is the simplest form in the series of energy carries we've been progressing along. We started out with wood, then moved to coal, then petroleum. Each of those is a hydrocarbon, and as we've progressed up the chain there's been more and more hydrogen and less and less carbon. Each step is more efficient at storing energy than the last, and hydrogen is that last step we can take before moving on to something complety different.
Although we can't find it naturally, hydrogen is relatively easy to produce given another source of energy, and as stated, it's very efficient at storing the energy you put into it. This means that hydrogen makes an ideal energy currency.
A long time ago, before there was money, people used barter to get what they needed. You might trade 1 goat for ten chickens. Some cultures eventually devolped a pseudo-currency where everything would be equated to a certain number of one thing, everything had a certain value in chickens for example. After awhile, minted currency was developed that turned this idea into an abstract form. The money was artifically produced and assigned a certain value, and by using this abstract currency people didn't have to carry chickens around anymore.
Petroleum is a pseudo-currency, like a chicken. We've all agreed that (for the most part) petroleum is the standard, and that's what we use to run our internal combustion engines. You can't toss a couple of logs in your gas tank and have your car work, and most cars aren't happy with having methanol poured in them without some adaptions being made.
Hydrogen actually carries the energy with it, which in some senses makes it a pseudo-currency, but the fact that it can be artifically produced using other sources of energy makes it more like a real currency in my opinion, which makes it very similar to electricity.
No one is particulary concerned that if we run out of coal our computers will stop working because there would be no more electricity. We'd build more hydropower plants and more nuclear power plants, and more people would install solar cells on their houses. There might be a period of changeover, but because electricity is an energy currency we'd be able to adapt quickly. If all of the sudden we ran out of oil however, most people are convinced (with good reason) that it would be a disaster)
However if all inernal combustion engines used hydrogen, another energy currency, then we could handle the issue in the same manner as a lack of coal. Other production methods would ramp up to meed the increased demand, and after a period of minor difficulty, everything would be back to normal.
Similarly, no one worries that if fusion power is developed into a workable form that their TV won't be compatible with it anymore. The electric grid is designed so that any source of power can be hooked in. Likewise, your car wouldn't care where the hydrogen came from. If you want to be extra green and produce your own hydrogen using methanol so you don't have to worry about the enviromental effects of petroleum being used, go ahead, your car won't notice.
Along with this increased versatility the centralized production would bring with it imporved efficiency. Petroleum based internal combustion engines are horribly inefficient, and efforts at improving fuel efficiency have only begun to address that. If the petroleum currently being used at cars was instead being refined into hydrogen at centralized plants, not only could more efficient methods of generating power be used at the refinery, but it would be much easier to deal with the polution at a single point source.
The most important point of hydrogen is the freedom it gives us from a single source of energy. Using hydrogen doesn't mean that we would necessarily stop using petroleum, but it would mean that we _could,_ and to some extent we wouldn't have to deal as much with the messiness inherent in petroleum internal combustion engines. Just like the existance of currency doesn't meant that you have to give up owning chickens, but it does mean that you can if you want, and you don't need to carry them with you when you go to the store anymore.
Slashdot excerpt from 1906 (Score:5, Funny)
From the story: "With the advent of Henry Ford's use of the conveyor belt to speed up the production of horseless carrages (from a day and a half to 90 minutes) many in the US are looking to a future driven by gas and oil."
Prices estimated according to what? (Score:3, Interesting)
I googled up this recent article [kansascity.com] that says OPEC is producing 24.5 million barrels of oil a day. At $40 a barrel, that's $980 million a day spent on oil around the world. Let's say we take a quarter of that into the US (it's more, iirc). That's a quarter billion a day in oil alone, without touching infrastructure, etc.
$100 billion is going to "... shift the balance of power from foreign oil producers to US energy consumers within a decade"?? Forget it. "The White House should ask for $5 billion - roughly $30,000 for each of the nation's 176,000 filling stations - to get the ball rolling"?? Get the ball rolling? The authors of this article want station owners to install something for which there's zero consumer demand -- and then only have the government subsidize enough to get the ball rolling?
How much is the government going to pay to give everyone a car that uses this new fuel? And once everyone's driving, what is the government going to do about all the other products that use petroleum? Cars in driveways are just the beginning, and filling stations aren't even that.
These numbers might sound big to us individually, but taken in context they are a drop in the bucket. If switching from oil to hydrogen was that easy, we'd've done it long ago.
Re:I want my hydrogen car! (Score:4, Informative)
These guys who use solar power in their homes, and sell the surplus to the power company, could also use the surplus to create hydogen fuel for their cars. That's self-sufficiency.
Re:I want my hydrogen car! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Obstacle (Score:2, Informative)
The burn begun whem a spark (thanks to static electricity) crossed one canvas to another, igniting the Aluminun.
Re:Obstacle (Score:4, Insightful)
The Hindenberg just had a big Hydrogen balloon that wasn't being depleted - it was simply "there". In the case of a hydrogen-powered car, the hydrogen supply would be steadily depleted in a semi-closed system with little to no chance of a huge pocket igniting. For the exact same reason that, under standard usage, gas tanks and fuel lines don't explode.
This does not account for Pintos and Volkswagens, of course.
Hydrogen not the Hindenburg's Problem (Score:3, Informative)
rocket fuel [ch2bc.org].
Re:Obstacle (Score:3, Informative)
It wasn't just a big bag of hydrogent, it was a big bag of hydrogen painted with solid rocket fuel [clean-air.org].
Think about it: How else do you get a zeppelin to go up in a brilliant fireball when hydrogen burns clear?
Re:Obstacle (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Get America off arabian oil. (Score:3, Insightful)
Terrorism is a last-ditch attempt to gain the attention of powers that don't/can't/won't pay attention to the social effects of their policies.
It's because the US has fucked about with the economies and societies of Middle-East nations, and is continuing to do so, all to secure their supply of oil, that terrorism against the US came about.
By your logic, terrorists should be attacking the Swiss, the Norwegians, the New Zealanders, and the Mongolians, all because they're different.
You must understand: terrorism is a political tool, not a religious one. Wars are religious, and the impending one is no different.