The (Possible) Future of Alternative Energy

Sponge! writes: "The stuff that turns oil into margarine. The stuff that made the Hindenburg float. The stuff that combines with oxygen to make water and with carbon to make methane. The stuff that sends the space shuttle skyward and could someday power your car, office building, house, cell phone, even your hearing aid. That "Stuff" is hydrogen, and according to Amory Lovins, it is the future of energy. Here is an interesting article on Lovins and his view of hydrogen as the number one fuel."

Comments

Short term/long term

[perdida]

We have been able to transfer a lot of our daily consumer power needs off the grid for years.

Unfotunately, any large scale production of alternative energy using consumables would require a massive capital investment by government and private enterprise that they have been postponing later and later.

We could have hydrogen powered cars and solar powered houses right now, if 40 years ago somebody had started a small factory making consumer goods that used these energy sources. By now, there would be lots of factories making the goods, and cheaper production methods would have resulted.

The short term planning orientation of energy companies and their associated enterprises is what keeps us dependent on fossil fuels today.

Only now are corps like BP investing in alternative energy. And BP isn't advancing the field much, it seems to be buying up small alternatives industry firms and keeping them in a technological and marketing holding pattern.

In my opinion, private enterprise and government won't invest the massive amounts required to scale alternatives production until the cost of fossil fuels is so prohibitive that they are (short-term) forced to do so.

By then, it will be too late.

I wish I knew what to do about this.

Re:Can we harness..

[TGK]

Not really. Fusion "containers" are massive electromagnetic coils which are themselves suspended in a vacuum chamber. The idea is to magneticly contain a 100,000+ C plasma until fusion occurs and hopefully produce more energy than you use. This is a ways off.

In answer to a question further down the page, hydrogen fuel cells are better than batteries because of the rate they can deliver energy. It's difficult to make an electric car that can make a decent top speed. Hydrogen fuel cells pack the punch to give you a good boost.

Last point -- Someone else was asking where the energy for this will come from, pointing out that you will always come up short if you're using water as your source of hydrogen. A reply indicated that other more hydrogen rich molecules would be used. I wish to clarify that this is the case, but only until either more advanced solar systems can be developed or until fusion power becomes more practical. The idea is not hydrogen as an energy source, but as a storage medium.

That is all.