MIT study: Diesel Beats Hydrogen For Green Car Power

An anonymous reader writes "Bummer story on Science Blog for people looking to gas up on the H. Even with aggressive research, the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle will not be better than the diesel hybrid -- a vehicle powered by a conventional engine supplemented by an electric motor -- in terms of total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, says a new MIT study. If we need to curb greenhouse gases within the next 20 years, improving mainstream gasoline and diesel engines and transmissions and expanding the use of hybrids is the way to go."

Comments

diesel

[BigBir3d]

Diesel has been used in Europe quite extensively for some time now. Superior mpg, and clean emissions.

Of course, why not move up the schedule on particulate standards for big rigs, buses, garbage trucks etc. in the USA? World leaders my a$$...

No news here

[bcboy]

The only thing they're saying is that using a carbon based fuel to generate hydrogen isn't better than using the fuel directly. This isn't terribly surprising. Hydrogen isn't an energy source, since we don't have piles of it ready to burn. The only way it will be a clear win is if there is a viable way to generate it without using carbon fuels, e.g. solar, wind, nuclear, etc.

The headline is a bit misleading.

Re:Where do we get the H?

[mbogosian]

it takes nearly five gallons of crude oil to produce one bushel of corn

I call bullshit on this one.

There is no way it takes 5 gallons of crude oil to create a bushel of corn. A gallon of crude costs about $ .50, while a bushel of corn costs under $2.00. If this was true, every corn farmer in America would have gone broke a long time ago.

From this article:

One need look no further than the $190 billion farm bill President Bush signed last month to wonder whose interests are really being served here. Under the 10-year program, taxpayers will pay farmers $4 billion a year to grow ever more corn, this despite the fact that we struggle to get rid of the surplus the plant already produces. The average bushel of corn (56 pounds) sells for about $2 today; it costs farmers more than $3 to grow it. But rather than design a program that would encourage farmers to plant less corn -- which would have the benefit of lifting the price farmers receive for it -- Congress has decided instead to subsidize corn by the bushel, thereby insuring that zea mays dominion over its 125,000-square mile American habitat will go unchallenged.

From this article:

Growing the vast quantities of corn used to feed livestock in this country takes vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn takes vast quantities of oil -- 1.2 gallons for every bushel. So the modern feedlot is really a city floating on a sea of oil.

From this article:

The corn, in breathtaking defiance of economic common sense, sells for 50 a bushel less than it costs to produce, without regard to the foregone value of the water.

From this blurb about Frank Moore:

The amount of fossil fuel needed to produce one bushel of corn has been estimated at anywhere from one to six gallons.... Today's farm requires fossil fuels to manufacture fertilizer, power machinery and transport the final product. The short-term benefit is the corn gets to market more economically. The long-term effects are pollution, soil destruction and the depletion of a non-renewable resource.

These are just a few references availabe. The point is that corn production is subsidized and it uses a huge number of natural resources. In the words of South Park's portrayal of Johnny Cochrane, "this does not make sinse".

Re:Let the political ranting begin

[Eccles]

MIT did not use these because you could never generate more energy than was used to create the wind or solar generation devices in the first place

windpower.org claims an 80:1 ratio of produced energy to energy to construct and maintain for windmills. Granted they have a bias, but an 80:1 bias?

A real reason not to include wind power is the expectation that even by 2020, there almost certainly won't be enough wind farms to provide enough energy for a significant fraction of the world's autos. So in the short run, hybrids will have the most dramatic effect on fuel economy.