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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."
I'm sure that Bush and everyone who actually matters will read this and say "Good golly this is a great idea! We should do it right away, oil companies be damned!"
I'm not cynical.
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
While eventually we probably will move to a hydrogen based economy, there is a flaw here. Currently and in the foreseeable future, extracting the vast amounts of hydrogen that we'll need requires...wait for it...hydrocarbon based fuels like oil and coal! That's right, in order to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, we need energy. How do we produce most of our energy? Hydrocarbons.
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.
It seems like it would be difficult to carry around little canisters of hydrogen to pay for everything.
I don't get it.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
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.
Conspicuously missing from the article, where the hydrogen comes from.
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?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Hey, to all those who may either have kids or maybe you're a big kid yourself. I saw a cool science kit over at Frys that has a small refillable fuel cell used to run a little car included in the kit so you can have some fun learning about these guys. The fuel cell housing/wall itself is see-thru. It was $30 at the one here in Dallas. Not too bad. Might make a nice gift for the geek in your life.
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.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
car talk
"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.
-- john
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
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. Another article here. 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.
~Idarubicin
Unless the economy turns around, all I'll be able to afford is a hydrogen-petrol Yugo
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
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.
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
I think it's the human race's nature to destroy itself, hydrogen tech or no hydrogen tech.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Hydrogen powered cars?
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.
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.
Hydrogen is pie in the sky for now.
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.
Currently, the least expensive method is a process known as steam reforming, in which natural gas reacts chemically with steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Far preferable would be to use carbon-free resources like solar, wind, and hydropower to produce electricity for electrolysis, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen would make renewable energy practical, acting as a storage medium for the modest amounts of energy such resources produce. Wind power, especially, lends itself to this sort of use.
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.
People go on and on about the hydrogen future, but it's a mere distraction. Hydrogen will not replace oil, or coal, or gas. It may replace gasoline. Because hydrogen is an intermediate energy form - it's temporary storage between production/harvesting of energy and use of energy. And for all its supposed advantages, it's got a lot of faults. IMHO, diesel/biodiesel is a much more flexible and practical intermediate fuel - and if anyone could come up with a better battery, it would beat both.
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.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?