Hydrogen economy

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Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century Alex Steffen See book keywords and concepts

The hydrogen economy by Jeremy Rifkin (Tarcher, 2003) Rifkin refers to hydrogen as "a promissory note for humanity's future on Earth." The hydrogen economy is the best primer out there on the coming oil crisis and the new economy that is poised to emerge from the harnessing of hydrogen as a a alternative fuel source.

Several years ago, most people would have said that hydrogen-powered cars were the only solution—and exciting new developments from manufacturers like Honda have restored faith not only in hydrogen cars but also in a future hydrogen economy. However, hydrogen development is more challenging than had originally been anticipated, and will clearly be slow to yield workable results. We can't assume that hydrogen-powered cars will be perfected in time to head off the potential shortages and disastrous environmental consequences of peak oil and global warming.

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century James Howard Kunstler See book keywords and concepts

The upshot of all this is that there is not going to be a "hydrogen economy." We may use hydrogen in some new ways, and may continue producing commercial hydrogen chemical products. An enlarged nuclear power infrastructure may lower the cost of making hydrogen by electrolysis. But we are not going to run places like Hackensack, New Jersey, or Anaheim, California, on hydrogen. We are not going to replace the current U.S. automobile and truck fleet with hydrogen-powered cars.

The longer you look at the particulars of a proposed "hydrogen economy," the more laughable a fantasy it appears to be. But it is instructive in showing the limits of our thinking, for instance, our blindness to other solutions for America's extreme car dependency in the coming permanent oil crisis. Instead of finding a new fuel to run suburbia, a far more sane and intelligent response might be for Americans to live in traditional walkable communities served by public transit.

Ulf Bossel and Baldur Eliasson, "Energy and the hydrogen economy," EVWorld (http://evworld.com), January 2003. at the cost of scores of billions of dollars (assuming the other technical problems could be overcome). This is unlikely to happen. Add to this that the infrastructure of every individual fueling station in America would have to be retrofitted. What all this boils down to is that a hydrogen-powered automobile system and all its supporting infrastructure cannot be substituted for an oil-based system under any plausible equation currently understood.

We'd get less energy out of the hydrogen than we would put in to create the hydrogen, so what would be the point? The "hydrogen economy" fantasy also does not address the issue of replacing oil and gas to heat tens of millions of houses and other buildings. Hydrogen composes about 73 percent of all the matter in the universe—at least in our neighborhood of the universe. But it is not found naturally in a free state near the planet Earth. Around here it is always bound to other elements in chemical compounds. Water, H20, is the most common: two hydrogen atoms bound to one of oxygen.

To some extent, the term "hydrogen economy" is a disguise for "nuclear economy," because nuclear energy may be the advanced societies' only realistic resort where large-scale electric generation is concerned, and the subtext is that an expanded and updated array of nuclear plants could produce large amounts of hydrogen economically. But I will get back to the question of nuclear energy itself later in this chapter. Of course hydrogen is produced commercially now and has many industrial and chemical uses. But compared with the oil we burn, the amount of hydrogen used by industry is minuscule.

Proposals for switching from an oil and gas to a hydrogen economy are generally associated with the fuel cell technology. A single fuel cell is basically a piece of plastic between a couple of carbon plates that are sandwiched between two end plates acting as electrodes. These plates have channels that distribute the fuel and oxygen. They are modular and can be stacked to produce different amounts of power. Fuel cells can operate at efficiencies two to three times that of the internal combustion engine, and require no moving parts.

Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths Brian O'Leary See book keywords and concepts

And now for the easier part, the technical aspects of the hydrogen economy. I see hydrogen as one of several key elements to a near-term victory over petroleum and other forms of dirty energy which must be wiped off the face of the planet (perhaps with the exception of some petrochemicals). I'm sorry for my strong language, but its time is long overdue. I refer to my new book for details on this one. As for hydrogen, I have the following view: I see it as an interim fuel on the way to true "free energy", devices that could produce electricity from the zero-point field.

All of that could change in the fully developed hydrogen economy described in the next section. Ironically, cold fusion or Mills cell technology could provide the most inexpensive route to hydrogen production, but if we have these technologies we may not need large amounts of hydrogen for fuel anyway. Yet another approach to traditional renewable energy is growing crops whose biomass can be burned to produce charcoal, fuel oils, process steam, methanol and various chemicals.

Commercial prototype hydrogen automobiles are commonplace. A hydrogen economy can also lead to a new energy economy through the use of cold fusion cells and hydrogen cells which could provide an abundance of cheap hydrogen and electricity. New Energy. Ultimately we shall be moving beyond conventional energy generation into new energy. Some of us are using the definition of new energy as "a source of energy of practical use that has heretofore been unrecognized by science." 3 By this definition conventional renewable energy is not new energy.

Only with a public awakening can these numbers change. The hydrogen economy. This is the middle ground. As I describe in a later section, hydrogen is clean-burning, abundant, feasible, and potentially economical. This light gas could soon replace fossil fuels as our primary energy carrier for internal combustion, power plant boilers and fuel cells. The scientific community knows the methods of hydrogen production, infrastructure, storage and consumption. The concepts involve basic chemistry and there are no show stoppers, except for the will to invest in new engineering.

They fall into three basic categories: renewable energy, the hydrogen economy and new energy. Currently available renewable energy. The feasible renewable alternatives which have been studied and used for decades include hydroelectric power, solar energy, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power, ocean thermal gradients and solar power satellites which could beam microwaves to the Earth's surface. Each of these sources has its advantages and disadvantages.

Retrofitting existing energy systems and designing new systems for transportation, utilities, and heating, cooling and cooking could all neatly unfold in a hydrogen economy which would supplant a fossil fuel/nuclear economy. New energy breakthroughs could add fuel to the fire. While this mix of sustainable energy makes sense, their timely implementation (now is not too soon) awaits a paradigm shift in our social and political thinking. We shall see that something as simple as a populist movement to shift government subsidies from petroleum and coal ($20 billion a year in the U.S.

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