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BoingBoing.net is reporting today on a tabletop “hydrogen power station” that produces hydrogen from water using a standard power outlet and costs around $200. While this may sound wonderful on the surface, it merely illustrates how the notion of a “hydrogen economy” is mostly a myth, especially as it pertains to powering vehicles.
Let’s get one thing perfectly clear: hydrogen is not a energy resource. Hydrogen does not exist naturally in any sufficient quantities to make it a viable energy source, at least on this planet. To get hydrogen in any useful quantities, it must be extracted from natural gas, water or biomass, and all of these result in a net loss of energy. It is more efficient to use these fuels in their original forms.
Hydrogen is more like a battery, an energy storage medium. Unfortunately, (for practical purposes) it is a very impractical battery, with an extremely low energy-to-volume ratio. According to Wikipedia, “The energy density per unit volume of both liquid hydrogen and compressed hydrogen gas at any practicable pressure is significantly less than that of traditional fuel sources, although the energy density per unit fuel mass is higher.”
To be fair, fossil fuels are only energy storage mediums as well, but their energy was accumulated over millions of years, and is readily extracted now in a compact form. Neither hydrogen nor fossil fuels are energy sources, because the energy does not come from them, it came from the sun, the only really abundant energy source we have (not including nuclear and geothermal, which are very small players to date).
The BoingBoing article cites the Navy’s research into hydrogen-powered drones as proof of hydrogen’s future usefulness as an energy carrier. It seems more likely, however, that hydrogen is being tested in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to take advantage its light weight, and not for its ability to store a large amount of energy. The Science Daily article seems to back this up by noting the vehicles light weight and extremely small motor, only .75 horsepower, compared to traditional UAVs.
The only way that hydrogen can become truly worthwhile is if someone comes up with a way to create it from renewable energy sources, i.e. wind/solar, and store it is a form compact enough that it is comparable to current battery technology, while managing to preserve our extremely limited freshwater resources.
I’m sorry, hydrogen fans, but any way you slice it, the hydrogen economy is a myth, at least on this planet.
What do you think? Is a hydrogen economy worth pursuing? Post your opinion in the comments.
Update:I would like to clarify that, when this article refers to the “Hydrogen Economy”, it is mostly referring to the use of hydrogen to power vehicles, not other uses of hydrogen. As several readers have pointed out, there are plenty of other uses for hydrogen, and it certainly has its place as part of a basket of solutions to replace fossil fuels. These include industrial applications, such as powering fork lifts, or commercial applications, such as fuel cells for office buildings.
My central point is that hydrogen is not practical to use in powering automobiles at this time, and isn’t likely to be any time soon. Even if there comes technology that can support powering cars with Hydrogen on a practical level, it still doesn’t make sense to convert natural gas and water to hydrogen on the scale needed for these applications.
Update 2/18/10: For those of you who just can get enough of the pro/con hydrogen discussion, there’s a lively debate going on at reddit.
Update 2/19/10:As several readers have pointed out, my characterization of both hydrogen and natural gas as being “energy stores” and not “energy sources” is somewhat confusing and muddies the waters. (I will admit that sometimes my over-analytical brain wants to point out things that are interesting but tangential, and, in this case, quite semantic in nature.)
I therefore, stand corrected. For the sake of this dis discussion, both hydrogen and natural gas can be considered energy “sources”. You simply need to draw your system boundary in such a way that you only view the system after energy is stored in the medium. The main difference is that natural gas is stable under normal conditions, and hydrogen is not, reacting with other elements unless outside measures are taken.
In any case, all of this detracts from the more important debate about how efficient it is to store energy as hydrogen and then use it to power vehicles, etc., instead of some other method.
Resources:
The Global Energy Crisis – We’re Running Out Of Ancient Sunlight
The Myth of the Hydrogen Economy
The Five Myths of the Hydrogen Fueled Vehicle
2010 Transportation Predictions: What is the Reality? (TriplePundit)
Future of Fuel Cells Hinges on Asia Action (TriplePundit)
U.S. faces era of water scarcity
Water Scarcity – The U.S. Connection (waterproject.org)
Water scarcity clouds California farming’s future (Reuters)
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Steve Puma is a sustainability and technology consultant. He currently writes for 3p as well as on his personal blog, ThePumaBlog, about the intersection of sustainability, technology, innovation, and the future. Steve holds an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School and a BA in Computer Science from Rutgers University. You can contact Steve through email or LinkedIn, or follow him on twitter.
February 08, 10 at 14:01 pm UTC | uberVU - social comments writes:
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by ecoelectrons: Hydrogen is not the Fuel of the Future http://bit.ly/aH05Un...
February 09, 10 at 10:01 am UTC | Hydrogen is not the Fuel of the Future « CrackerBoy writes:
[...] is not the Fuel of the Future 2010 February 9 by Bill Hydrogen is not the Fuel of the Future |Triple Pundit Let’s get one thing perfectly clear: hydrogen is not a energy resource. Hydrogen does not exist [...]
February 15, 10 at 4:10 am UTC | GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability show for Feb 15th — GreenMonk: the blog writes:
[...] 12 : 10 Tom Raftery : http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/02/hydrogen-is-not-the-fuel-of-the-future/ [...]
February 15, 10 at 10:42 am UTC | ThePumaBlog » Blog Archive » GreenMonk Energy and Sustainability Podcast Mentions my TriplePundit Article writes:
[...] clean energy podcast by Tom Raftery of Spain. At about 11 minutes, in Tom makes some comments on my hydrogen article. He mostly supports my debunking of the hydrogen economy, although he does give a good example of [...]
February 15, 10 at 21:26 pm UTC | Interesting Reading #419 – breaking the squid record, saving your own kid, eliminating the 12th grade, becoming frugal and much more… – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks writes:
[...] Hydrogen is Not The Miracle Fuel of the Future – “BoingBoing.net is reporting today on a tabletop “hydrogen power station” that produces hydrogen from water using a standard power outlet and costs around $200. While this may sound wonderful on the surface, it merely illustrates how the notion of a “hydrogen economy” is mostly a myth, especially as it pertains to powering vehicles…” [...]
Comments
February 26, 2010 at 14:28 pm UTC | Steve Puma writes:
jsmbythebay: Thanks for commenting. Excellent points, all. I would also agree with your critisism of my point that natural gas and hydrogen are both not energy sources. It really does confuse the issue.
While, according to my definition, natural gas may only be a store of energy, it is more of a matter of semantics, because, in reality, natural gas does occur on this planet as a “source” of quite a bit of energy, even if it is a limited source. I stand corrected.
February 27, 2010 at 8:07 am UTC | Rob Bryan writes:
We'll just have to agree to disagree. It actually makes very good sense to “waste energy to convert salt water into clean water into hydrogen” for the purpose of energy storage, IF you have excess, but intermittent energy that you can't put in the vehicle. As we have heard for a few decades, the sun doesn't shine all the time (but it does) and the wind doesn't blow all the time (and it does also). What will “last mile” trucking use for energy (if we even ever get to the point where we make smarter longhaul choices). It would take an exponential leap in battery technology to move a 40,000lb load from Denver up to Vail.
You are right of course that it takes more energy to split water than you get recombining it. 2nd law or something like that. Maybe the reason we see it differently has to do with our current methodology of energy production. Where I live, I see numerous large PV installations and small and large wind generators everyday. I appreciate how unusual that is. But it's easy to see, that as fast as Boulder County is moving to the new power economy, in a short time, 5-10 years or less, there will be a plethora of excess, but intermittent energy. What will we do when we have excess intermittent energy? Turn off the wind generators? I don't think so, I think we'll find ways to store the energy.
Now if you make some reasonable assumptions about fuel cell and electric motor efficiency gains as several others have noted, and onboard HP storage technology, I think it looks very different.
One other point is that carbon neutral really isn't a good enough goal to prevent a bleak future. Maybe if we ALL could go neutral right away but there will always be CO2 producing activities. Methane, at 8-20 times the greenhouse effect is another very difficult to deal with problem. o some of us have to get to carbon negative asap. Biofuels recycle it at best. An offshore wind generator producing H2 is neutral and I bet there's some interesting chemistry that could be applied to move it even farther towards negative.
March 26, 2010 at 18:46 pm UTC | Michaelzed writes:
More info here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/hydroge...
April 13, 2010 at 8:52 am UTC | pc to ipod transfer writes:
I think hydrogen fuel is worth studying for. It can have a good and bad results if studies about it is not enough
April 13, 2010 at 8:57 am UTC | pressurized walls writes:
natural gas is a good investment. It can also contribute in preserving our environment because of less pollution it can create.
April 30, 2010 at 11:59 am UTC | internet marketing firm writes:
Hydrogen does not exist naturally in any sufficient quantities to make it a viable energy source, at least on this planet.
May 02, 2010 at 7:41 am UTC | Rob Bryan writes:
Tidal energy is another non-solar energy source.
May 05, 2010 at 12:29 pm UTC | ny escorts writes:
not only are the dangers huge, but we dont have a constant supply of it
May 05, 2010 at 19:29 pm UTC | ny escorts writes:
not only are the dangers huge, but we dont have a constant supply of it