Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Widespread Use of Hydrogen May Hurt Ozone Layer

Posted by michael on from the six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other dept.

Saeger writes "The AP has a story about a CalTech study which has found that the Hydrogen Economy may deplete the ozone layer by 'as much as 8 percent' on the assumption that '10 percent to 20 percent of the hydrogen would leak from pipelines, storage facilities, processing plants and fuel cells in cars and at power plants.'" CalTech's press release has more information.

2 of 481 comments (clear)

  1. FACE IT by CiXeL · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The greater the size of our population grows, the less buffer we will have between us and the environment. The greater our numbers climb into the billions and finally trillions, the greater the effects our slightest alteration to the environment will create. One person with a campfire is nothing, 100 million people with campfires and you start to get some serious pollution. One person hiking through the woods is nothing, thousands of people visiting a national forest every year is like throwing a 40,000 person concert there.

    Its our numbers, not the action that destroys our environment.

    No matter what we do, we will pollute and destroy.

    --
    http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
  2. Re:Fossil Fuels by Rich0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Still, it has a major advantage in the fact that it is commercially viable to burn oil in a power plant with sophisticated scrubbing equipment to minimize the pollution output. A plant generating hydrogen to power 100,000 cars will not produce as much pollution as 100,000 cars will. EPA regulations are much easier to enforce on a couple of thousand power plants than on a couple hundred million cars. You also decouple energy use from energy production - which means that if a more efficient system for producing energy is discovered you can switch to it easily without rendering obsolete every car that exists.

    For the short term hybrid vehicles are definitely the solution - they don't require any infrastrucutre and reduce pollution and oil use immediately. For the longer term you need a system that can run at high power for extended periods of time if you want to use it in cars. Hydrogen is probably your best bet. How you make the hydrogen is up to you... Eventually it might be made using solar power, but for now you are still helping the environment even if the hydrogen is made by burning coal...