My post yesterday on the drop in hydrogen fuel cell funding by the US government (Hydrogen: Happy trails time?) is getting a lot of hits over on The Energy Collective, and there were a couple of comments by Garry Golden that deserve a more thoughtful reply than a quick comment. So I’m taking the slightly unusual step of replying at length here and then posting a link to my response on TEC (which will likely run this post).
As I write this, Garry has made two comments, and I’ll quote from them and respond to each. I’m going to make my best good-faith effort to be true to the spirit of his comments; any mischaracterization is solely my fault and accidental, and I apologize in advance.
Lou, No flaming intended here- no personal attack intended- as I know how these conversation descend quickly. But these types of posts frustrate me to no end. Too much Joseph Romm’s paradigm-bound speak here that puts all things hydrogen into the ‘freak’ camp. And hints of attempts to characterize all people who speak reasonably about the potential of hydrogen as wackos. I grow tired of this from Romm – especially when the Case for Plugins is weak and completely aligned with all the challenges of H2. Hard to store, ‘not a fuel’, carbon footprint depends on how you produce, it.
Just to be clear: I certainly don’t put the pro-HFC people in the freak or wackos camps. I reserve those for the Apocalypticons and Cornucopians.
I disagree that the case for plug-ins is “completely aligned with the challenges” of HFCVs. Even ignoring things like the Tesla (which I consider to be little more than a techno parlor trick, thanks to the price), real world EVs and PHEVs will be on the market in the US from major manufacturers in one to two years. And those will be units for sale, not on a lease (like the Honda FCX, which is an enormous per vehicle money loser). That says all we need to know about PHEVs and EVs making it over the first major market hurdle, i.e. mass produced at affordable (which is not to say cheap) prices, and HFCVs not being there yet.
The only thing keeping PHEVs and EVs from selling like crazy right now to at least a certain segment of the US population (more on this below) is the price of the batteries. We know how to do everything else in the car, and at an affordable price. We know how to make the batteries physically perform, too, but not at a low enough price.
HFCVs face more hurdles. They need better fuel cells and better on board H2 storage, both at dramatically better prices than anything we have right now, before we even get to the refueling infrastructure.
As for refueling, there are only two ways to make mass quantities of hydrogen. We can reform it from natural gas, which creates a lot of CO2 we then have to either sequester or release into the air, neither of which is a good answer. Or we can use electrolysis to make it from water, which takes a lot of electricity. However we make it, we then have to compress, distribute, and dispense the hydrogen, all steps that take more energy. I know I’m long past the point of sounding like a broken record, but I think that any serious discussion of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel has to start with Ulf Bossel’s “E21″ paper, Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense? [PDF]. He goes into quite a bit of detail on the energy losses for both EVs and HFCVs from the original flow of green electrons all the way to the wheel, and calculates that EVs get exactly three times the number of miles per unit of green electricity as an HFCV fueled via electrolysis.
In my opinion, that’s a showstopper. Assume that we can get the entire hydrogen infrastructure for free, plus we can make and sell the vehicles for the same price as an EV or PHEV. We’re still stuck with the exceedingly nasty problem of climate chaos and how we clean up our electricity supply (which we’d have to do no matter what happens with the transportation sector if we’re to get to an 80% CO2 emissions reduction by 2050). That means we’ll need to get as much out of every green kWh as possible, whether it’s fueling a data center or a car or municipal street lighting. And that’s where the factor of three becomes a back breaker.
Whether you or I or anyone else is tired of worrying about how we fuel the production of hydrogen is irrelevant. (And for the record I am quite tired of worrying about the seemingly endless interdependencies we run into when talking about energy and environmental issues in the context of economics and (ugh!) politics.) Unless someone can come up with a zero or nearly zero CO2 source of hydrogen that makes the entire grid-to-wheels system as efficient as PHEVs or EVs, HFCVs won’t be able to compete.
Infrastructure costs for plug ins? How much will it cost to build wall sockets for our vehicle fleet? Are we really betting on ‘plug ins’ as the solution. Which automaker has stated this as the final end state platform? None that I have recorded. We are the beginning of electrification and hydrogen has a role in delivering electrons. At the end of the day next generation electric propulsion systems will integrate batteries, fuel cells and capacitors. Not one device is likely to provide the right size, cost, performance, et al for vehicle applications.
To make use of a few million PHEVs or EVs right now we need precisely zero infrastructure investment in the US. As I’ve pointed out many times on this site, there’s a huge market for 100 to 150 mile/charge EVs in the form of the Nth car in a two (or more) car household. We will certainly see a diversification of transportation solutions, as you point out, but saying that there’s a high infrastructure cost for getting PHEVs and EVs into the game just isn’t true, just as we shouldn’t assume the cost of a coast-to-coast hydrogen infrastructure is a prerequisite for HFCVs, something I said in my original post.
Why does hydrogen necessarily have a role in delivering electrons? We can make the technology work, and might, with a lot of hard work and some luck, be able to drive the vehicle cost down enough to be affordable. But that doesn’t mean it’s a worthwhile option in the long run. That’s like arguing that corn-based ethanol should be a major component of our liquid fuels sector because we make a lot of it today. As my wife is fond of reminding me, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. (Don’t ask.)
First, yes there is an electric grid. But those sockets were/are built for appliances in homes, not vehicles. (They weren’t even built for mobile devices- hence the headaches of finding a recharge plug in airports or cafes) Access to wall sockets is overstated. I live in Brooklyn and actually don’t have a garage. And if we took a snapshot right now of all the world’s parked vehicles- how many would be within 10 feet of a socket (upgraded or not)? I can see EVs for managed fleets– but not the mass market. This is one of my great frustrations is that people assume we can just bring on EVs without spending money on infrastructure. Startup darling Better Place and Shai Agassi have demonstrated that car companies and govts (local/national) do want a viable infrastructure before they invest in EVs. Better Place is estimating that the Bay Area alone (stations/switch out stations) will cost $1 billion. Then run estimates BP has priced for Israel, Denmark, Australia and Hawaii. It’s not free. EV grid access is not ubiquitous. And (again, not trying to flame or get emotional) but how can we have this conversation without statement of reality. The grid was not built for roadside assistance.
Again, this is putting an artificially high barrier in front of PHEVs and EVs. And adding recharging outlets in places like airports, hotels, parking decks, business and university parking lots, etc. can happen in a piecemeal fashion much easier than can adding hydrogen refueling capacity. Once plug-in vehicles are on the road in appreciable numbers, many organizations will find they have an incentive to provide their visitors or employees with recharging facilities. Some will be free (employee benefits), some will be discounted or subsidized (airports and government offices), and some will be full grid price plus a markup (whoever can get away with it). And don’t underestimate the value of quick charging, as I first wrote about in March of 2008 (The revolution is in the second plug). That allows the centralization of recharging stations and a much cheaper infrastructure build out, while still allowing those with easy access to an overnight plug to exploit that option, as well.
2) In terms of EVs and batteries pulling ahead of H2 Fuel cells- I don’t see it. We are in Year 0 or Year 1 of the EV age. There are no commercially viable product lines out there. Just a handful of promising platforms. But there is no declared winner in electric propulsion support systems. I think EV advocates miss the challenges of moving vehicles- and pricing out costs of batteries over next 5 to 10 years as fuel cells (via membrane price reduction) offer a more competitive and higher performance system. We are early on in a multi-decade long transition- and I cannot say that batteries have ‘won’. Not at all. It’s just that the combustion engine has lost. And we can all celebrate that!!! H2 (solid state storage via MOFs, hydrides is actually progressing nicely. And nanostructured catalysts to produce H2 via reforming or low temp electrolysis are moving forward.
Of course there are no winners, and I would certainly not claim that there are what I would consider widely available and successful PHEVs and EVs on the market as I type this. But for the reasons I’ve mentioned above, I think they’re far closer to being ready for prime time than HFCVs, and will ultimately out-compete them. I don’t know what the technologies you mention will deliver in the future, but again, we can’t escape two realities: Whatever we come up with has to result in a mainstreamable grid-to-wheels system that matches plug-ins for efficient use of our scarce green electricity supply and also puts us on a track for the scale of greenhouse gas reductions we need. If that happens and hydrogen turns out to be a major part of the answer, then great! I’ll be the most obnoxious, relentless supported of HFCVs one could imagine, simply because the demonstrated facts would demand it. I don’t have any skin in the game regarding which mixture of solutions works for us, I just want us to find at least one combination that can provide the functionality we want and at a bearable price in terms of dollars and environmental impact.
A very thoughtful, well reasoned and measured response there Lou. I’d personally love to have a fuel cell vehicle etc. if it was actually as cheap and efficient (from electricity generation to vehicle to wheels) as EV/PHEV will be, but I don’t see that as a possibility.
While there wasn’t alot of investment in battery technology over that last decade for vehicle use as federal money was poured into fuel cells – now I think we’ll see alot of money go consistently into vehicle class batteries and it should be fun to watch how much better (cheaper/durable/capacity) the batteries will be by 2020 compared to 2011.
To me, the real kicker will be the ability of consumers to upgrade the batteries as newer ones come out. You buy a shiny new BEV in 2011, and then 4 or 5 years later you can upgrade to a larger capacity pack that will increase your range and possibly provide better quick charge capability.