The Hydrogen Economy
- From: "lkgeo1" <lkgeo1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 5 Sep 2006 09:28:00 -0700
The Hydrogen Economy
After Oil, Clean Energy From a Fuel-Cell-Driven Global Hydrogen Web
by Jeremy Rifkin
More than a year after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
Towers and the Pentagon, the world is a more dangerous place than ever
before. And, at the heart of our collective fear is the struggle to
control oil, the one critical resource without which our global economy
and modern society could not exist. Can a combination of technological
innovation, global cooperation and strategic thinking take oil off the
international chessboard of power politics and replace it with the
ultimate energy carrier, lighter-than-air, and potentially
non-polluting hydrogen?
We heat our homes and businesses, run our factories, power our
transportation and light our cities with fossil fuels. We communicate
over distances with electricity derived from fossil fuels, grow our
food with the help of fossil fuels and produce our clothes and home
appliances with petrochemicals. Indeed, virtually every aspect of
modern existence is made from, powered with, or affected by fossil
fuels.
In recent months U.S. government concern over the availability of oil
in the Middle East has intensified because of the escalating violence
between Israel and the Palestinians, the prospect of war with Iraq, and
the likelihood of more terrorist attacks by the Al Qaeda network. Now,
an even deeper worry is beginning to surface.
Experts have been saying that we have another 40 or so years of cheap
recoverable crude oil left. Now, however, some of the world's leading
petroleum geologists are suggesting that global oil production could
peak and begin a steep decline much sooner, as early as the end of this
decade, sending oil prices through the roof. Non-OPEC oil-producing
countries are already nearing their peak production, leaving most of
the remaining reserves in the politically unstable Middle East.
Increasing tensions between Islam and the West are likely to further
threaten our access to affordable oil. Rising oil prices will assuredly
plunge developing countries even further into debt, locking much of the
Third World in the throes of poverty for years to come. In desperation,
the U.S. and other nations could turn to dirtier fossil fuels-coal,
tar sand and heavy oil-which will only worsen global warming and
imperil the Earth's already-beleaguered ecosystems.
Rethinking Homeland Security
As horrible as the attacks of September 11, 2001 were, they were
symbolic acts on the parts of the perpetrators, designed to destroy the
icons of American economic and military power. What has government
officials and business leaders in the U.S. and the European Union
really worried is the prospect that, next time, Al Qaeda terrorists
will strike at the heart of the system, the power grid itself,
crippling a large swath of the economy and paralyzing urban society.
How justified are the fears?
Unfortunately the power grids in North America and Europe are
increasingly vulnerable to disruption by terrorists. Even before the
September 11 attacks, government officials worried that American power
plants, transmission lines and the telecommunications infrastructure
could be targets for terrorists. In 1997, the President's Commission
on Critical Infrastructure Protection issued a warning that
cyber-terrorists' next target might be the computer programs at the
power switching centers that move electricity around the country.
Disrupting the electrical grid could wreak havoc on the nation's
economic and social infrastructures. Richard A. Clarke, who heads the
cyber-terrorism efforts of the Bush administration, warns of an
"Electronic Pearl Harbor." A combination of cyber-attacks and
physical attacks could lay waste to the nation's oil and gas
pipelines, power stations and transmission lines with devastating
effects on the economy.
Government officials are well aware of the vulnerabilities, but not
sure if a system so complex and expansive and so centralized in its
command and control mechanisms can ever really be completely secured
against terrorist attacks.
Because of all these factors, many, including Christopher Flavin,
president of the Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute, believe
that the future belongs to decentralized, renewable energy. Although
they acknowledge that fossil fuels will continue to provide energy, and
that a transmission and distribution infrastructure will still be
necessary to get hydrogen to retail customers, these experts see a
renewable future. Flavin points out that the market for oil is growing
at less than 1.5 percent per year, while the wind and photovoltaic (PV)
markets are now doubling in size every three years.
The "Forever Fuel"
While the fossil-fuel era is entering its sunset years, a new energy
regime is being born that has the potential to remake civilization
along radical new lines. Hydrogen is the most basic and ubiquitous
element in the universe. It is the stuff of stars and, when properly
harnessed and made from renewable sources, it is the "forever
fuel," notes author and alternative energy proponent Peter Hoffman.
It produces no harmful CO2 emissions when burned; the only byproducts
are heat and pure water. We are at the dawn of a new economy, using
hydrogen as the energy carrier, which will fundamentally change the
nature of our financial markets, political and social institutions,
just as coal and steam power did at the beginning of the Industrial
Age.
As Hoffman writes in his book, Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel
Cells and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet (MIT Press), hydrogen can
"propel airplanes, cars, trains and ships, run plants, and heat
homes, offices, hospitals and schools....As a gas, hydrogen can
transport energy over long distances, in pipelines, as cheaply as
electricity (under some circumstances, perhaps even more efficiently),
driving fuel cells or other power-generating machinery at the consumer
end to make electricity and water. As a chemical fuel, hydrogen can be
used in a much wider range of energy applications than electricity."
Chemically bound hydrogen is found everywhere on Earth: in water,
fossil fuels and all living things. Yet, it rarely exists free floating
in nature. Instead, it has to be extracted from water or from
hydrocarbons. Today, nearly half the hydrogen produced in the world is
derived from natural gas via a steam reforming process. The natural gas
reacts with steam in a catalytic converter. The process strips away the
hydrogen atoms, leaving carbon dioxide as the byproduct (and,
unfortunately, releasing it to the atmosphere as a global warming gas).
Coal can also be reformed through gasification to produce hydrogen, but
this is more expensive than using natural gas and also releases CO2,
which scientists hope to keep earthbound through a process called
"carbon sequestration." Hydrogen can also be processed from
gasoline or methanol, though again CO2 is an unwanted byproduct.
Although using steam to reform natural gas has proven thus far to be
the cheapest way to produce commercial hydrogen, global production of
natural gas is likely to peak sometime between 2020 and 2030, creating
a second energy crisis on the heels of the oil crisis.
There is, however, another way to produce hydrogen without using fossil
fuels in the process. Renewable sources of energy-PV, wind, hydro,
geothermal and biomass-can be harnessed to produce electricity. The
electricity, in turn, can be used, in a process called electrolysis, to
split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can then be stored
and later used in a fuel cell to generate electricity, with heat as a
useful byproduct that could be harnessed to heat homes, among other
uses. Fuel cells run only on hydrogen, but the gas can be derived from
many hydrogen-rich sources, including just about any fossil fuel, but
only through the use of renewable resources is the whole process
emission-free.
People often ask: Why generate electricity twice, first to produce
electricity for the process of electrolytic hydrogen and then again to
produce electricity and heat in a fuel cell? The reason is that
electricity can be stored only in batteries, which are cumbersome to
transport and slow to recharge, while hydrogen can be stored at much
lower cost. Internal-combustion engines capture only 15 to 20 percent
of the energy in gasoline, and the conventional electric power grid is
only 33 percent efficient. But as Amory Lovins' Rocky Mountain
Institute (RMI) points out, "Fuel cells can convert 40 to 65 percent
of hydrogen's energy into electricity."
The real question, then, is one of costs. Wind, hydropower and biomass
(generating power by burning plant material such as wood waste and
agricultural residue) are already cost competitive in many parts of the
world and can be used to generate electricity for the electrolysis
process. Wind power, for instance, is now the fastest growing new
source of energy; it averages six to eight cents per kilowatt-hour at
the wind generator, down from 40 cents in the early 1980s, though
collection and transmission costs must be added. PV and geothermal
costs, however, are still high and will need to come down considerably
to make the process competitive with the natural gas steam reforming
process now used most often in the production of hydrogen.
Origins of the Fuel Cell
Hydrogen fuel cells were invented by Sir William Robert Grove
(1811-1896), a larger-than-life figure of the type that proliferated in
19th century England. Grove proved that his fuel cells worked, but as
he had no entrepreneurial inclinations, and there was no practical use
for them at that time, the invention slumbered for over 130 years. It
came to life again in the 1960s, when General Electric developed
workable proton-exchange membrane cells for use as power supplies in
the Apollo and Gemini space missions. The cells were big and very
expensive, but they performed faultlessly, delivering an unwavering
supply of current as well as a very useful byproduct in space,
drinkable fresh water.
Fuel-cell technology can be compared to that of a car battery, in that
hydrogen and oxygen are combined to produce electricity. But while
batteries store both their fuel and their oxidizer internally, meaning
they have to be periodically recharged, the fuel cell can run
continuously because its fuel and oxygen are external. Fuel cells
themselves are stackable flat plates, each one producing about one
volt. The size of the stack determines the power output.
How does a fuel cell work? Pure hydrogen gas is fed to the anode, one
of two electrodes in each cell. The process strips the hydrogen atoms
of their electrons, turning them into hydrogen ions, which then pass
through an electrolyte (which, depending on the type of fuel cell, can
be phosphoric acid, molten carbonate or another substance) to the
second electrode, known as the cathode. This electron movement produces
electric current, the intensity of which is decided by the size of the
electrodes. At the cathode, the electrons are brought back together
with their ions and combined with oxygen to produce one of the fuel
cell's major byproducts, water. The other byproduct is heat, which
can be captured and reused in a cogeneration process.
Peer-to-Peer Energy Sharing
Commercial fuel cells powered by hydrogen are just now being introduced
into the market for home, office and industrial use. The major
automakers have spent over $2 billion developing hydrogen cars, buses
and trucks, and the first mass-produced vehicles are expected to be on
the road beginning in 2003.
The hydrogen economy makes possible a vast redistribution of
electricity, with far-reaching consequences for society. Today's
centralized, top-down flow of energy, controlled by global oil
companies and utilities, can become obsolete. In the new era, every
human being with access to renewable
energy sources could become a producer as well as a consumer-using
so-called "distributed generation." When millions of end-users
connect their fuel cells powered by renewables into local, regional and
national publicly owned hydrogen energy webs (HEWs), they can begin to
share energy-peer-to-peer-creating a new decentralized form of
energy generation and use.
In the new hydrogen fuel-cell era, even the automobile itself is a
"power station on wheels" with a generating capacity of 20
kilowatts. Since the average car is parked about 96 percent of the
time, it can be plugged in, during non-use hours, to the home, office
or the main interactive electricity network, providing premium
electricity back to the grid. As hydrogen visionary Amory Lovins
explains, "Once you put a fuel cell in an ultralight car, you then
have a 20- to 25-kilowatt power station on wheels. So why not lease
those fuel-cell cars to people who work in buildings where you've
installed fuel cells?"
It would work like this: Commuters drive their cars to work, then plug
them into the hydrogen line coming out of the natural gas reformer
installed as part of the building's fuel cell. While they worked,
their cars would produce electricity, which they could then sell back
to the grid. The car, instead of simply occupying space, would become a
profit center. "It does not take many people doing this to put the
rest of the coal and nuclear plants out of business," says Lovins,
who's been trying to do just that for decades. "The hypercar fleet
will eventually have five to six times the generating capacity of the
national grid."
The Next Great Economic and Social Revolution
This clean fuel could make obsolete our big-scale, polluting oil
network through a locally based system. The first thing to keep in mind
is that with distributed generation, every family, business,
neighborhood and community is potentially consumer, producer and vendor
of hydrogen and electricity. Because fuel cells are located physically
at the sites where the hydrogen and electricity are going to be
produced and partially consumed, with surplus hydrogen sold as fuel and
surplus electricity sent back onto the energy network, the ability to
aggregate large numbers of producer/users into associations is critical
to energy empowerment and the advancing of the vision of democratic
energy.
Empowering people and democratizing energy will require that public
institutions and nonprofit organizations-local governments,
cooperatives, community development corporations, credit unions and the
like-jump in at the beginning of the new energy revolution and help
establish distributed generation associations in every country.
Eventually, the end users' combined generating power via the energy
web will exceed the power generated by the utility companies at their
own central plants. When that happens, it will constitute a revolution
in the way energy is produced and distributed. Once the customer, the
end user, becomes the producer and supplier of energy, power companies
around the world will be forced to redefine their role if they are to
survive. A few power companies are already beginning to explore a new
role as bundler of energy services and coordinator of energy activity
on the energy web that is forming. In the new scheme of things, power
companies would become "virtual utilities," assisting end users by
connecting them with one another and helping them share their energy
surplus profitably and efficiently. Coordinating content rather than
producing it becomes the mantra for power companies in the era of
distributed generation.
Utility companies, interestingly enough, serve to gain-at least in
the short run-from distributed generation; though, until recently,
many have fought the development. Because distributed generation is
targeted to the very specific energy requirements of the end user, it
is less costly and a more efficient way to provide additional power
than is relying on a centralized power source. It costs a utility
company between $365 and $1,100 per kilowatt to install a six-mile
power line to a three-megawatt residential customer. A distributed
generation system based on renewable energy can meet the same
electricity requirements at a cost between $500 and $1,000 per
kilowatt. Generating the electricity at or near the end users'
location also reduces the amount of energy used because between five
and eight percent of the energy transported over long distance lines is
lost in the transmission. Europe's Hydrogen Investment
Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, the governing
body of the 15-nation European Union (EU), has unveiled the EU's $2
billion commitment to a renewable hydrogen-based energy economy. Jeremy
Rifkin, the author of this piece and an advisor to President Prodi, was
the architect of the strategic white paper that launched the
initiative.
The aim, Prodi said in U.S. remarks that were covered both by the New
York Times and the Wall Street Journal, is to bring industry, the
research community and government together to map out the hydrogen
future. President Prodi said that the EU's scientific effort will be
as important for Europe as the space program was for the United States
in the 1960s and 1970s. The EU has already committed itself to
producing 22 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010.
U.S. power companies are reluctant to make large financial investments
in capital expansion because, under the new utility restructuring laws,
they can no longer pass the costs of new capacity investment onto their
customers. And because the field is now very competitive, power
companies are reluctant to take funds from their reserves to finance
new capacities. The result is that they put stress on existing plants
beyond their ability to keep up with demand, leading to more frequent
breakdowns and power outages. That is why a number of power companies
are looking to distributed generation as a way to meet the growing
commercial and consumer demand for electricity while limiting their
financial exposure.
The energy revolution will advance on several fronts simultaneously.
Before the hydrogen network can be fully realized, changes in the
existing electricity grid will have to be made to assure both easy
access to the web and a smooth flow of energy services over the web.
That's where the software and communication revolution comes in.
Connecting thousands and then millions of fuel cells to main grids will
require sophisticated dispatch and control mechanisms to route energy
traffic during peak and non-peak periods. The Windsor, Colorado-based
Encorp has already developed a software program for remote monitoring
and control that would automatically switch local generators onto the
main grid during peak loads when more auxiliary energy was required.
Retrofitted existing systems are estimated to run about $100 per
kilowatt, which is still less costly than building new capacity.
The integration of state-of-the-art computer technologies transforms
the centralized grid into a fully interactive intelligent energy
network. Sensors and intelligent agents embedded throughout the system
can provide up-to-the-moment information on energy conditions, allowing
current to flow exactly where and when it is needed and at the cheapest
price. Sage Systems, for example, has built a software program that
allows utilities to set back thousands of customers' thermostats by
two degrees with a single command over the Internet if the system is at
peak and over-stressed.
Hydrogen Safety
The issue of hydrogen safety inevitably arises, largely because of the
spectacular fire that killed 36 people and destroyed the German
dirigible Hindenburg. That 1937 disaster put an immediate end to
zeppelin travel and saddled hydrogen with a nasty reputation it still
carries with it today.
However, The Hindenburg was actually not hydrogen-fueled. The buoyant
gas, used because helium was not available to the increasingly
bellicose Nazi regime (the famous German airship bore a swastika on
each side of its tail), filled 16 cells in the airship's body and
gave it lift. Was the hydrogen on board The Hindenburg responsible for
the fire? Conventional history has made that case, but retired NASA
engineer Addison Bain, a hydrogen specialist, thinks otherwise. After
several years of research that included tracking down surviving pieces
of the Hindenburg's cotton skin, Bain says that the on-board hydrogen
certainly fueled the fire, but played no role in igniting it. The
culprit, he says, was the highly flammable cellulose-doping compound
used to coat the fabric covering and make it taut.
Nonetheless, there are some who speculate that hydrogen is simply too
dangerous to ever be safely used for cars. Peter Voyentzie of Danbury,
Connecticut's Energy Research Corporation, which makes large
stationary fuel cell power plants, is skeptical about automotive
applications. "Hydrogen is a strange beast," he says. "It's the
smallest molecule, and it leaks out of everything. You also can't see
it burn. In a car, it has to remain stable through collisions and
constant agitation. That's a lot to expect."
But hydrogen may still be safer than gasoline. When spilled, it simply
escapes upward instead of puddling and presenting an ignition hazard.
It's odorless, its flame is invisible, and it emits very little
radiant heat. People standing next to a hydrogen fire might not even be
aware it's there. Even in diluted form, hydrogen will burn easily,
but unless you're in physical contact with the fire, it won't hurt
you. Remember, too, that fuel cell cars don't burn the fuel, though a
spark generated in a crash could set it off.
The safety of hydrogen storage tanks for cars is also a concern, with
regard to auto accidents. Hydrogen's safety problems shouldn't be
minimized, but they shouldn't disqualify the fuel from consideration.
Like gasoline, hydrogen can be dangerous. And, also like gasoline, we
can learn to use it as safely as possible.
Empowering the Poor
Incredibly, 65 percent of the human population has never made a
telephone call, and a third of the human race has no access to
electricity or any other form of commercial energy. The global average
per capita energy use for all countries is only one fifth that of the
U.S. The disparity between the connected and the unconnected is deep
and threatens to become even more pronounced over the next half century
with world population expected to rise from the current 6.2 billion to
nine billion people. Most of the population increase is going to take
place in the developing world, where the poverty is concentrated.
Lack of access to energy, and especially electricity, is a key factor
in perpetuating poverty around the world. Conversely, access to energy
means more economic opportunity. In South Africa, for example, for
every 100 households electrified, 10 to 20 new businesses are created.
Electricity frees human labor from day-to-day survival tasks. Simply
finding enough firewood or dung to warm a house or cook meals in
resource poor countries can take hours out of each day. Electricity
provides power to run farm equipment, operate small factories and craft
shops, and light homes, schools and businesses.
Making the shift to a hydrogen energy regime, using renewable resources
and technologies to produce the hydrogen, and creating distributed
generation energy webs that can connect communities all over the world,
holds great promise for helping to lift billions of people out of
poverty. Narrowing the gap between the haves and have-nots requires,
among other things, narrowing the gap between the connected and the
unconnected. It also presents a significant challenge: developing and
harnessing renewable energy sources for hydrogen in countries with no
current infrastructure.
As the price of fuel cells and accompanying appliances continues to
plummet with new innovations and economies of scale, they will become
far more broadly available, just as was the case with transistor
radios, computers and cellular phones. The goal ought to be to provide
stationary fuel cells for every neighborhood and village in the
developing world. Villages can install renewable energy technologies to
produce their own electricity, using some of it to separate hydrogen
from water and store it for subsequent use in fuel cells. In rural
areas, where commercial power lines have not yet been extended, because
it is too expensive, stand-alone fuel cells can provide energy quickly
and cheaply. After enough fuel cells have been leased or purchased and
installed, mini-energy grids can connect urban neighborhoods as well as
rural villages into expanding energy networks.
The HEW can be built organically and spread as the distributed
generation becomes more widely used. The larger hydrogen fuel cells
have the additional advantage of producing pure drinking water as a
byproduct, a significant consideration in village communities around
the world where access to clean water is often a critical concern.
Distributed generation associations (DGAs) could be established
throughout the developing world. Cooperatives, lending institutions and
local governments might then view distributed generation energy webs as
a core strategy for building sustainable, self-sufficient communities.
Breaking the cycle of dependency and despair, becoming truly
"empowered," starts with access to and control over energy.
National governments and world lending institutions need to be
pressured to help provide both financial and logistical support for the
creation of a hydrogen energy infrastructure. Equally important, new
laws will need to be enacted to make it easier to adopt distributed
generation. Public and private companies will have to be required to
guarantee distributed generation operators access to the main power
grid and the right to sell energy back or trade it for other services.
And new investment will be needed to confront the remaining technical
problems, which are daunting but certainly solvable.
The fossil-fuel era brought with it a highly centralized energy
infrastructure, and an accompanying economic infrastructure, that
favored the few over the many. Now, on the cusp of the Hydrogen Age, it
is possible to imagine a decentralized energy infrastructure, enabling
individuals, communities and countries to claim their independence,
while accepting responsibility for their interdependence as well.
In the early 1990s, at the dawn of the Internet era, the demand for
"universal access" to information and to communications became the
rallying cry for a generation of activists, consumers, citizens and
public leaders. Today, as we begin our journey into the Hydrogen Era,
the demand for universal access to energy ought to inspire a new
generation of activists to help lay the groundwork for establishing
sustainable communities.
Were all individuals and communities in the world to become the
producers of their own energy, the result would be a dramatic shift in
the configuration of power. Local peoples would be less subject to the
will of far-off centers of power. Communities would be able to produce
many of their own goods and services and consume the fruits of their
own labor locally. But, because they would also be connected via the
worldwide communications and energy webs, they would be able to share
their unique commercial skills, products and services with other
communities around the planet.
By redistributing power broadly to everyone, it is possible to
establish the conditions for a truly equitable sharing of the Earth's
bounty. This is the essence of the politics of re-globalization from
the bottom up.
Looking Forward
A more sustainable and equitable future made possible by a worldwide
hydrogen web looms on the horizon, but it is as yet woefully
unrealized. California, the incubator of the American hydrogen
industry, has only two hydrogen filling stations, and there are less
than 12 in the entire U.S. There are only a few fuel-cell cars, all
million-dollar prototypes. Although the auto industry is making rapid
progress in developing automotive fuel cells, it has lobbied heavily
against fuel cell-enabling clean car legislation, particularly in
California. A lawsuit filed by an industry association has delayed by
two years implementation of a law that would have required clean car
fleets in California by 2003.
At the same time, incredible progress is being made. The federal
FreedomCAR program, designed to promote fuel-cell vehicles, was
announced in January 2002. The government's efforts could be hijacked
by big energy concerns (see sidebar), but federal funding for hydrogen
research has won qualified support from environmentalists. And much is
happening on the state level, too. Ohio, for example, just opened its
first hydrogen pumping station, and plans three more as part of a $100
million, three-year fuel-cell initiative announced by Governor Bob
Taft. Last April, Governor John Engler of Michigan announced a plan
called NextEnergy that includes creation of a 700-acre state-owned
campus that will be a tax-free high-tech center for hydrogen
innovation. Carmakers are also making commitments: Honda, for instance,
says it will have 20 to 30 fuel-cell vehicles on the road for testing
purposes in the next two years.
Although national marketing of home-based fuel cells for decentralized
power generation is planned by Plug Power and other companies, there
are remaining cost problems (see sidebar) and many other questions
remain. Will we fill up our hydrogen cars at home-based systems,
developed by Stuart Energy, Avalence and others, or will the corner gas
station become the corner hydrogen station? From what energy sources
will hydrogen be made? Agreement on the broad outlines of a national
and international hydrogen infrastructure is desperately needed. Will
the new regime be imposed from the top down, or the bottom up?
The hydrogen economy is within sight. How fast we get there will depend
on how committed we are to weaning ourselves off of oil and the other
fossil fuels. What are we waiting for?
JEREMY RIFKIN is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the
author of such works as The End of Work, The Biotech Century and The
Age of Access. His latest book is The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of
the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth
(Tarcher Putnam), from which this article is excerpted.
Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to E/The Environmental Magazine!
CONTACTS
FreedomCAR
Foundation on Economic Trends
Phone: (202) 466-2823
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?171
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