The False Promise of Hydrogen: What The President Is Driving At (The Facts!)

The False Promise of Hydrogen: What The President Is Driving At
Georgia Op-Ed in National Review Online
by Paul J. Georgia
January 31, 2003

In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush proposed that the federal government spend $1.2 billion on hydrogen fuel-cell research. "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," Bush said. "Join me in this important innovation, to make our air significantly cleaner and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of oil."

Bush obviously feels significant pressure to appear that he's doing something about the environment. At some point it might dawn on him that there's nothing he can say or do that will satisfy the radical environmental lobby and their media lapdogs. Bringing up such issues in high-profile speeches, such as the State of the Union, only provides fodder to his political enemies. Predictably the eco-radicals attacked Bush's plan for not requiring automakers to put affordable hydrogen cars on the market by a certain model year. They also claim that the plan is just a way to avoid forcing the automobile companies to lower fuel-economy standards.

It makes even less sense, however, for President Bush to throw a lot of money at a technology that is decades away from commercial viability. The "hydrogen economy" has been promoted for years by environmental activists and alternative-energy gurus like Amory Lovins. But hydrogen is not a source of energy, something which hydrogen advocates either don't understand or refuse to acknowledge. Since hydrogen does not exist in geological reservoirs it must be extracted from fossil-fuel feedstocks or water. The process of extracting hydrogen uses energy, which means that using hydrogen is less efficient that burning fossil fuels. And if you're worried about global warming you certainly don't want to go that route. As a recent energy-technology review in Science magazine pointed out last November, "Per unit of heat generated, more CO2 is produced by making H2 [hydrogen] from fossil fuel than by burning the fossil fuel directly."

The other option is to extract hydrogen from water using renewable-energy sources that deal fossil fuels entirely out of the equation. But that is a pipedream. Renewable energy itself is not cost effective, and by the time you use the energy to extract hydrogen from water, transport that hydrogen to where car owners can get to it and then recombine it with oxygen to re-extract the energy the cost becomes astronomical.

Honda, for example, is leasing five of its FCX fuel-cell vehicles to the city of Los Angeles. It is clearly a PR ploy since the cost to the company for each car is $1.6 million. Honda has also constructed a bank of solar panels in Torrance, California for the purpose of generating "clean" electricity to produce the hydrogen. But it takes a whole week to generate enough power to produce one tank of hydrogen at a cost of $40,000 per tank. Call me crazy, but that's a long way from affordable transportation.

Renewable energy has its own significant drawbacks. Wind power, the only renewable energy even close to being competitive, requires enormous subsidies to stay afloat. Subsidies for wind power, which include an array of both federal and state tax breaks and credits, along with accelerated depreciation (five years as opposed to 20 years for other electric generating facilities), are so extensive that their value sometimes exceeds the wind farm's revenues from selling electricity.

One of the subsidies, a 1.7-cent-per-kilowatt-hour production tax credit that must be renewed periodically by Congress, throws the industry into a recession every time it lapses. In 1999, for example, the tax credit wasn't available and only 50 megawatts of wind generation were installed. Congress renewed the tax credit and new generations soared to 1700 MW. In December 2001, the credit lapsed once again and wasn't renewed until March 2002. That year, only 410 MW of new capacity were installed. An energy source that is so heavily dependent on taxpayer subsidies does not meet President Bush's stated goal of providing this nation with affordable and reliable energy.

Moreover, wind farms are incredibly land intensive. Three newly proposed wind farms in West Virginia would occupy 30 to 40 square miles but would produce slightly less electricity than a new 265 MW gas-fired combined-cycle generating plant, which would occupy a few acres. Sallie Baliunas at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimates, using very conservative assumptions, that producing enough hydrogen with wind power to replace just one-third of the vehicles on the road today would require 210,000 square miles. In reality, that number would likely be much higher. Finally, the history of federal funding of energy-technology research is downright depressing. It is a landscape littered with dozens of multibillion-dollar failures. It is unlikely that this new endeavor will result in anything more than wasted money.

Hydrogen does have as shot at something if produced by coal gasification. You could mine the huge deposits in a Western State (Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Montana) and gasify coal on site. These coal at such sites it extracted with huge steam shovels not by tunneling. The gasification process also produces electricity. So you have to ship hydrogen and electricity from the coal mine to the cities.

http://www.coaleducation.org/lessons/twe/mcoal.htm Half of the minable surface coal in the United States is located in the West, but significant amounts are also present in Appalachia and Midwestern states. Surface mining is used when the coal seam is located relatively close to the surface, making underground mining impractical.

When I see this article, and it's been often, since people keep posting it, I am reminded of my 7th grade science teacher teaching us about jet engines and their promise (1954). Since we all understood how propeller powered airplanes flew, by pushing air via the propellers, jet engines were something new. The same idea existed though, spoke the teacher, for jets. Cold air was taken in via the intake, super heated by a flame, and pushed out the exhaust, thus producing thrust which pushed the airplane. The teacher then went on to teach that this would never work in outer space, since there was no atmosphere for the thrust to push against.

I often wondered what happened to him.

While today's understanding of power from hydrogen doesn't appear practical, perhaps there is an unknown principle out there someplace that will change the results. I'd rather invest in finding the future, because dwelling in the past or present doesn't appear to have much future.

Many years ago the pursuit of storing electricity led to batteries. Perhaps a renewable energy cell the size of a battery composed of some sort of nuclear compound is the answer. I say keep investing in the future.

You are right about the need for abundant nuclear fusion. However,...

I have it on highest authority (a colleague who is a prominant name in nuclear fusion research and who was offered the position to be the head of the entire ITER project, but turned it down), anyway, he says that we will not see sustained, practical fusion in our lifetime. He thinks 50 years is extremely optimistic, and is more likely 100 years away.

Honda and Toyota, as well as some others already have cars scheduled. One minor problem is that at present they will only range 130 miles before refueling. That will be solved. The bigger problem is to be able to produce Hydrogen efficiently and create an infrastructure for delivery. Since today this is not feasible, doesn't mean we should abandon reserch.

H2 power clearly is not the Panacea The left (Jeremy Rifkin, for example) thinks it is.

The only thing that would satisfy the Left is a 'free energy' system. And, even then, they would find something environmentally objectionable with it. I don't pay much attention to the leftist 'solutions'. The burden of developing the future is on the Right side of the political system.

You're right about Honda's initial investment. I doubt that Honda has put out as much money as they have for the fun of it. They seem to think there is a feasable future in the technology.

I have no doubt whatsoever that some day we will have affordable cars that run on fuel cells. The relevant question of course is whether this need is so absolutely critical that government should be spending massive amounts of tax dollars to subsidize the research. I believe the need is not that critical (despite the radical environmental caterwauling), and that the market, and not the government, should dictate the development of this new technology.

Orbital Solar Power Satellites. Turns the Sun's energy into microwaves which are then beamed to rectennas placed in deserts. The microwaves and turned into electricity and water is turned into hydrogen.

The problem is not as the author describes rather the storage and distribution infrastructure needs to be built first. But we cannot afford to build the dist. network because nobody uses hydrogen and nobody uses hydrogen because we don't have a distribution network.

None of this is new. We have been planning and talking about hydrogen power since the late 60's.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com

The teacher then went on to teach that this would never work in outer space, since there was no atmosphere for the thrust to push against.

Hate to bring it up, but I don't think jet engines DO work in outer space. Not for the reason stated, but because they don't have an oxygen source.

Rockets require the operator to supply both fuel and an oxydizer.

He thinks 50 years is extremely optimistic, and is more likely 100 years away.

I hate hearing predictions like this. Technological and scientific breakthroughs tend to be sudden and dramatic (Think about the PC in 1980 vs 1990 vs 2000)). Placing time projections like this tends to cause people to accept that this is how long it will take and they do their R&D accordingly.

The teacher then went on to teach that this would never work in outer space

Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that jet engines do work in outer space? They don't. Not because there is no atmosphere for the thrust to push against, but becouse there is no atmosphere to compress and push out the back.

And this notion that just because one can point to certain things that were once thought impossible and have proven not to be, does not mean anything now believed to be impossible will, in the future, be practical. Some things, yes. But there are far more things long thought impossible and are still impossible.

Ah, last time I checked there were power lines going into oil refineries, too. It certainly takes energy to drill wells, extract the crude, transport it to refineries, catalytically crack it, refine the product, transport that product to distribution centers, and then distribute it. TANSTAAFL, folks.

Three newly proposed wind farms in West Virginia would occupy 30 to 40 square miles but would produce slightly less electricity than a new 265 MW gas-fired combined-cycle generating plant, which would occupy a few acres.

On the other hand, there are farmers that earn extra money by permitting wind farms on their crop lands. The big towers have no apparent negative effects on the crops, there are no nearby neighbors to complain about the sound (wind farms can be noisy), and they make some steady bucks.

I hate hearing predictions like this.

I know what you mean. I was very disappointed by this fellow's words also. But if anyone in the world is qualified to know, this guy is. And he is at least as aware as you or me of the unexpected and unpredictable advancements of science and technology. He also knows much more about the politics, costs, time-scales, and what we still need to know than you or me. And taking all of this into consideration, his conclusion is that it cannot be done in a mere 50 years.

I must apologize for my 'I know this guy...' approach. But it would be unethical of me to give his name, without his permission, on account of his position. I know that isn't very satisfying but that's the best I can do publicly.

But hydrogen is not a source of energy, something which hydrogen advocates either don't understand or refuse to acknowledge.

Every time I see this, I've just got to ask, "what's their point"? Nobody said Hydrogen was "source of energy". It's an energy transmission medium that can be used for mobile use.

I prefer fission to generate the original energy. It's the safest, cleanest, largest source of energy we've got.

And as far as the nuclear waste "problem". It isn't. If there are any humans around to harm in a few tens of thousands of years when any storage method might fail, then they can rebury it perfectly easily. If no humans are around, then who cares

Rockets require the operator to supply both fuel and an oxydizer.

Actually, and I'm just being picky, rockets just require a source of pressure for the thrust chamber (engine). H2O2 produces a very fine steam powered rocket in the presence of a catalyst, and water filled rockets, heated externally, were tested for war rockets in the latter 1800's. There are a number of monopellants that need no oxydizer. Again, I'm just being picky here.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.