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A Hydrogen-Based Economy
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."
The hydrogen economy needs trillions of dollars in investment to get it going. This won't happen in our "returns-in-six-months-or-else" system we have at present, beacuse it is more cost-effective in the short term to do what we're doing right now. When the global energy system becomes dire - which it WILL, eventually, and sooner than you think - the hydrogen economy will take off, because if it doesn't the human race is quite literally doomed.
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
This is all well and good, but why can't we promote hybrid cars in the meantime? I for one was pissed when I found out the Bush Administration was ending the programs for hyrbrid cars and shifting the money to hydrogen cars that won't be around for at least 10 years.
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)?
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Since when did blatant conspiracy theory become 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.
The hydrogen economy has lately gotten lots of press, but much of it mistates role that hydrogen can play.
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
I don't know which is more sad, that the parent didn't read the article (which devoted a whole section to different ways to get hydrogen) or the fact that there are three replies to his comment which failed to point this out.
Check out page 3, point number 4, to read his suggestion of using "steam reforming" combined with nuclear power to get the hydrogen. (Of course, read this comment to see why this might not be such a good idea...)
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
Perhaps not efficient, but necessary. The problem here isn't one of physics - it's engineering.
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).