

The Hydrogen Hoax - iamelgringo
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax

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smanek
No one has ever seriously suggested using Hydrogen as an energy source -
that's impossible. What we are suggesting is using hydrogen as a battery,
until we get things like super-capacitors working. And, we can fill the
battery with nuclear energy.

Nuclear didn't fail for technological reasons. It failed for political ones.
Nuclear Breeder reactors are still, by a huge margin, the cheapest, safest,
and most sustainable energy solution that the world knows. Using them to power
the energy grid directly, and then to charge whatever portable battery we're
using (hydrogen, etc) is sustainable for at least another thousand years.

Of course, there are huge technological hurdles to using hydrogen as a
portable energy storage device. But, I think we're closer to production on
hydrogen energy than we are with any alternative. Super-capacitors of
sufficient energy density and low enough cost are (imho) at least 20 years
off. Man made gasoline
(<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/science/19carb.html>) shows promise, but
no one has ever done it - so we're a decade away from that at best.

The author of the article proposes biofuels, but they are arguably even more
inefficient than hydrogen. Not to mention that we have millions of starving
people on this planet already. When it takes ~26 lbs of corn to make one
gallon of ethanol (that's about an acres worth for every 250 gallons) I really
think we should be looking at alternatives.

~~~
donw
We agree totally on nuclear power.

I think that the concerns about feeding the starving people in impoverished
countries should be better-directed at their governments. In many cases, food
supplied as aid by the U.S. and U.N. is either rejected outright due to
political bias, sold on the open market to produce money for corrupt
officials, or left to rot in warehouses due to the local government not doing
anything to put infrastructure in place to move 'the food' to 'the starving
people'.

I'm not an advocate for biofuels, but making the argument that biofuel
production is a direct cause of world starvation is more than a little far-
fetched; the causes are complex, and more political than technological in
origin, much like the failings of the nuclear power industry in the States.

Also don't ignore that, in the U.S., a great deal of arable land goes to waste
because of government farm subsidies and other political buggery.

For the sake of playing with some numbers, let's assume that a reasonably
efficient car, powered by ethanol, would require ten gallons of fuel per week,
or around five hundred gallons per year. That's two acres per car, per year.
There are approximately sixty million registered cars in the U.S., requiring a
hundred and twenty million acres of farmland be dedicated to producing fuel
for these cars, and this is only if the cars ran solely on ethanol.

So, if every car in the US were to run on Ethanol, it would consume one-fifth
of the total agricultural production capacity.

Also note that some quick Googling for me shows that yields might be almost
double the 250 gallons/acre number for biofuels.

This doesn't mean that biofuels are the ideal solution, but they are certainly
a strong contender.

Actually, I may have just become a biofuel advocate. The technology to build
flex-fuel cars exists _now_ , and can take advantage of the existing
transportation infrastructure until such time as a better means, be it
hydrogen, super-capacitors, or dilithium crystals, is available. Doing so
would reduce dependence on foreign oil, help boost the national economy, and
would likely have the positive side effect of promoting research into
increasing long-term, sustainable, high crop yields.

~~~
mdemare
The current food crisis cannot be blamed on third world governments, as was
the case in most earlier famines. This crisis in caused by a sudden spike in
the price of rice, grain and other staples. See also this article:
[http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1...](http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11050146)

Moving from growing food to growing biofuels is necessarily going to influence
the price of food - basically the prices of oil and of food staples are going
to move in tandem. And we should be very careful before we commit one fifth of
arable land to biofuels.

Ultimately this food crisis is caused by poverty, and there's no easy cure for
that.

~~~
gaius
That is simply not true! See Zimbabwe. Not long ago they were a huge exporter
of food, the "breadbasket of Africa" everyone called them. Now look at them.
Mugabe has brought them to ruin.

~~~
mdemare
Sure, Zimbabwe is a total disaster, but the current food crisis is world-wide:
in Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Haiti, the Philippines, Egypt. etc. The price of
rice has almost tripled in less than two years.

[http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cf...](http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11049284)

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tgdavies
The author claims that mining Hydrogen from the surface of the Sun would be
difficult, but ignores the solution of doing the mining at night.

------
mdemare
Great article which completely savages the myth that hydrogen cars are a
viable solution.

But then he goes on to recommend methanol and ethanol without at all going
into the problems associated with biofuels (effects on foods prices,
efficiency, effect on CO2 emissions, potential capacity, etc.) Can anyone
recommend an similarly well-researched article on biofuels?

~~~
angstrom
Yeah, it was sensible until the part where we're supposed to believe that corn
ethanol can save us. Aside from the fact that the net energy gain is almost
zero or less once you account for the fuel, fertilizers, and the fact that its
susceptible to drought, flood, and pests it really starts to make OPEC not
look so bad. The future is electric, hydrogen and ethanol are just more
problems looking for a solution.

~~~
chollida1
> The future is electric,

We'll that's a nice idea, but you didn't explain where we get electricity
from.

~~~
sratner
Nuclear reactors. See above.

~~~
lutorm
Nuclear power is only commercially viable because of huge subsidies (up to 80%
in the US) and because the state usually assumes the liability for disasters.
And even then, it's the most expensive form of power in wide use. I suspect
that with the same amount of subsidies, wind and solar would be very
competitive.

And as far as its environmental sustainability goes, even if we ignore the
fuel storage problem, look at what uranium ore mining looks like. Then imagine
what it would look like if the whole world was powered by it.

~~~
sratner
I don't know anything about economic viability of nuclear power, so I won't
comment. I understand that wind and solar both receive substantial subsidies
in the U.S. as well. There is also a possibility that were nuclear power as
trendy as wind and solar, it would receive more development unhindered by
politics, potentially leading to lower costs. This is of course pure
speculation.

As for the environmental impact and total carbon footprint, that of wind farms
is not small either. Vast areas of otherwise-usable land concreted, carbon
expended on building, maintaining and dismantling wind mills, backup power
required to buffer against weather conditions, and the like. I haven't seen
any comparison of various energy forms with all the costs included, but would
certainly like to take a look at one.

[edit:

A quick search led me to this: <http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/pnucpwr.asp>

It seems that while existing nuclear power plants (constructed over 3 decades
ago) provide marginally cheaper electricity than fossil fuel based
powerplants, _new_ nuclear powerplants are indeed not viable economically, at
least as compared to fossil fuels. The report suggests that including a carbon
emission tax of $100/tC will bridge that gap.]

[another edit:

A paper (<http://gabe.web.psi.ch/pdfs/Annex_IV_Dones_et_al_2003.pdf>) claiming
that total carbon footprint of nuclear power, from mining to waste disposal,
is in the range of 6-12g CO2-equivalent per kWh, mostly attributable to
mining, compared to 500g/kWh for natural gas and >1000g/kWh for coal.

Hydro weighs in at anywhere from 3 to 3000g CO2-equiv per kWh depending on
region (alpine hydro stations are clean, flooding tropical forests is not)
with weighted average somewhere in the 300g range, wind is at 14-21g/kWh
depending on weather conditions, and finally solar at 79g/kWh with potential
to fall to 30-40g with future technologies.

The concluding graph shows only [European] hydro beating nuclear in terms of
total carbon footprint.

Lots of other interesting reports on that site
(<http://gabe.web.psi.ch/research/lca/>), most offering similar results. One
2007 paper also considers land use, ecotoxicity, and radiation emissions,
allowing certain types of wind generators to approach nuclear in terms of
total environmental impact. Solar is still way off due to high levels of
inorganics and toxic non-greenhouse air pollutants. ]

~~~
lutorm
About the subsidies, I found this discussion interesting:
<http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/15/104213/829>

Thanks for the nuclear link. Haven't had time to digest the swiss documents.

------
Hexstream
Bush: " _The sources of hydrogen are abundant. The more you have of something
relative to demand for that, the cheaper it’s going to be, the less expensive
it’ll be for the consumer.... Hydrogen power is also clean to use. Cars that
will run on hydrogen fuel produce only water, not exhaust fumes.... One of the
greatest results of using hydrogen power, of course, will be energy
independence for this nation.... If we develop hydrogen power to its full
potential, we can reduce our demand for oil by over 11 million barrels per day
by the year 2040._ "

I didn't know political policies could be adopted based on theoretical,
unproven, futuristic techniques such as generation of power from hydrogen.

It's a bit like saying: " _With flying cars we could reduce the costs of road
maintenance by 90% by 2040!_ "

~~~
iamdave
I can't see anything in that quote that would cause anyone to think Bush is
talking about political policies. The words "demand", "consumer", "energy
independence" sounds more like economics to me.

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marijn
"[...] our addiction is enriching and empowering those who seek to destroy us.
We are funding, if indirectly, the madrassahs that teach vile hatred of
Western civilization and the backward cultures that create death-seeking
soldiers for Islam."

I hoped this was tongue-in-cheek for a moment, but it does not seem to be.
Credibility revoked.

~~~
ambition
He was repeating an argument made by hydrogen proponents.

~~~
marijn
Hm, re-reading the thing, you might be right -- though I'm still not sure.
Anyway, the whole piece seems to be setting up a straw man just to tear it
down. Is anyone really that naive about hydrogen?

~~~
watmough
Yes, I think we've all seen articles where a dignitary drives the Honda FCX
concept car, or other fuel cell vehicle up to a lone hydrogen pump, promised
as the 'first of many'.

Meanwhile, a thousand engineers pray that it doesn't pick that moment succumb
to metal fatigue and explode.

~~~
lutorm
Not to mention Arnold's hydrogen Hummer...

------
pragmatic
So gas then.

I have 2 vehicles that run on it right now and there is a lot of it around and
it can be synthesized. We aren't doing anything else with it (besides plastics
and such).

The universe has yet to provide us with an energy "free lunch."

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ghshephard
smanek - note that almost the entire article was about using Hydrogen as a
battery - the author pretty much quickly proved, and did not feel the need to
belabor the point, that hydrogen is incapable of being used as an energy
source. He also went on to show that it's pretty unlikely to ever be used as a
battery either.

I'd love to see the article that refutes this article though...

~~~
noonespecial
Yes, there's a lot of "left field" research in this direction that might yield
a breakthrough that would make H2 energy production and storage viable.
Buckyball materials for storing, bacteria that create it from sunlight to
create it, etc.

I have yet to see a really good synopsis of the promising research in these
various directions and a decent analysis of which ones have promise and which
are hype.

Anyone know?

