Yes, I’m obsessed with hydrogen fuel cells and the onslaught of private and governmental efforts to somehow, someway, force this technology to be a major part of our transportation future.
One resource I can’t recommend highly enough is the European Fuel Cell Forum, and their page of reports. While you’ll find more hard facts and analysis in those reports than you can shake an empty gasoline can at, the best single item is paper E21, “Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense?” (12 pages, 459KB PDF), which was published in Proceedings of the IEEE, October 2006. In particular, the hydrogen vs. electrons flow chart on page 10 (page 1835 in the original publication and the PDF) presents as simple and dramatic an argument as one could imagine for why hydrogen is a techno-boondoggle of massive proportions, even if the the author, Ulf Bossel, doesn’t stoop to using such expressions.
Another critical paper comes from Michael E. Webber, “The water intensity of the transitional hydrogen economy”, which is packed with analysis I’ve seen nowhere else and makes the widespread use of hydrogen for transportation seem all the more ridiculous. (Just to be unmistakably clear, the “ridiculous” part is my own interpretation of the numbers, not Webber’s.)
For a short treatment of the Webber paper, see this summary on PhysOrg.com.
And let me not forget one of the seminal works in this area, Joe Romm’s book, The Hype About Hydrogen, which very clearly makes the point that we can’t afford to use vast amounts of electricity generated with renewable sources to make hydrogen when we will so desperately need those electrons to displace as much coal-fired generation as possible. One of the primary battlegrounds between peak oil and global warming will be electricity generation, once we begin to electrify transportation and look for other, non-petroleum, ways to gas up.
So, if hydrogen for transportation is an absurdity wrapped in an inanity, masquerading as a boondoggle, why give it any more attention?
First, as long as policy makers insist on throwing money at this pipe dream, it’s in everyone’s best interest to understand what’s going on and try to influence elected representatives to stop doing that. Those funds can be much better spent somewhere else, as in battery or renewable energy research.
Second, there’s the whole question of electrohydrogenesis. “The what?”, you ask? Isn’t that some kind of thing Scotty made with transparent aluminum? No, it’s the breakthrough that’s been widely talked about recently in which a professor, Bruce Logan, and his team at Penn State University figured out a way to use a trickle of electricity and some bacteria to generate hydrogen from cellulose and other materials.
On this front, see:
So, wait–has someone found a way to use biology to make a loophole in the economics of hydrogen as a transportation fuel?
The key point here is that I said “economics”, not “energy”. As I never tire of pointing out, the economy allocates resources based on relative prices–this car is cheaper than that comparable one, so customers flow toward the cheaper alternative, etc. This is why we continue to manufacture, use, and dispose of a truly breathtaking number of batteries in the US every year. Each one of those penlight, C, or D size cells delivers an amount of electrical energy that is only a very tiny fraction of the amount of energy needed to make and distribute it. From a purely energy flow standpoint, this product is an abysmal failure. But they’re an economic success simply because people are willing to pay this exorbitant fee for a tiny amount of portable, convenient electricity.
Could the same thing happen with hydrogen? Could we find a way to leverage some nearly free resource, like sunlight + bacterial action, to make hydrogen make sense? As best I can tell from reading the above material: No. Or at least not yet.
Check the second page of the Cheng/Logan paper above, and you’ll see that the best efficiency they report is 82%, when using lactic acid as a feedstock. Plug that percentage into the Bossel flow chart mentioned above, beginning at the “Electrolysis” step, and you see that you still get killed by the compression, transportation/transfer, fuel cell, and vehicle efficiencies. (In the original Bossel analysis, 100 kWh of energy turns into a mere 23 kWh at the wheel. Using the Cheng/Logan efficiency value (82%) only gets you up to about 25 kWh at the wheel, compared to 69 kWh for an EV. Ouch. And that’s not even taking into account all the energy needed to deliver the feedstock to the hydrogen plant.)
The problem that I have with all of this, and the reason why the hydrogen dream will likely die a very protracted death, is that it’s such an enticing proposition. You make this gas, which people think of as being “kinda like natural gas”, something they have considerable familiarity with, and you run your car on it and it emits only water. For most mainstreamers that’s about one step short of commuting to work with your very own personal jet pack.
But… won’t governments, like California and their “hydrogen highway” initiative, and car companies “force” the matter? Won’t they keep rolling out fueling stations and vehicles until people just use them, even if it make no sense economically? Only if there’s a colossal failure to develop cheaper batteries for EV’s or longish (> 30 miles) battery-only ranges in plug-in hybrids. If the battery guys can accomplish even a fraction of what the hydrogen guys are saying they must do to make hydrogen viable, then hydrogen will be ridiculously out-competed in the marketplace. As Ulf Bossel points out, hydrogen is competing with the energy sources needed to make hydrogen, and will therefore always be more expensive.
Faced with such a challenge, I do what any self-respecting economist and contrarian would do: I try to conjure up a scenario that everyone else has overlooked that could conceivably make sense. And you know what? I can’t find one. Generate the hydrogen inside a wind turbine, at the gas station, or in your home, as long as you’re making it with electrolysis (which is the only acceptable answer for sustainability reasons), you’re cooked. The cost to split water, handle the hydrogen before you use it, and then use it in a 50% efficient fuel cell in a car are too high a hurdle to get over, when you can move and use electrons vastly cheaper.
Once again, I think we’re on a path to plug-in series hybrids, which will immediately and dramatically reduce the oil consumed by any one driver. A shift in the liquid fuels provided to such vehicles–cellulosic ethanol, biodiesel made from bacteria fed on coal plant CO2 emissions, etc.–further reduces the petroleum consumption and CO2 emissions needed to move vehicles. As battery technology improves, the plug-in range gets longer, and we transition to ever greater electrification of transportation.
So, let me ask you all one simple question: What have I overlooked? If you see a loophole for hydrogen to work, tell me.
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November 28th, 2007 at 12:02 am
The only thing I can see is this. As you note, breakthroughs are needed for both hydrogen and for batteries to be cost effective fuel stores for transportation. Maybe the technologies will be such that the hydrogen breakthroughs happen and the battery breakthroughs don’t. It’s not the way I’d bet but we can’t rule it out. So until one or the other has advanced to the point where it makes economic sense, we should continue to pursue both.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Hal: I’m not even that optimistic.
For one thing, batteries need basically one breakthrough: Lower cost ways to make things already in production, like the batteries in the Tesla sports car. Hydrogen has a whole series of extremely tough problems, from the longevity of the fuel cells to low-temp operation to all those losses along the hydrogen food chain.
Second, some of those hydrogen problems, like the energy costs to compress and transport/transfer the hydrogen before it can be used are so basic that I don’t see how you can possibly get around them. As shown in Bossel’s paper, the post-electrolysis losses (right up to the wheels) for hydrogen are still about 67%(!).
November 28th, 2007 at 9:36 am
They can control the creation and distribution of hydrogen which makes it profitable. That is why it is pushed so hard. Simple economics. These companies know oil is not the fuel of the future and they want to keep making money. Where is the money in an electric car that gets charged from solar panels?
November 28th, 2007 at 10:21 am
bob: The problem is competition. There will always be companies, whether startups eager to break in or newcomers struggling to hold on to or build market share, who will sell EV’s simply because they’ll be attractive to consumers because they’re much cheaper to operate. This is why I’ve been harping on the whole “when will some car company be desperate enough to embrace the disruptive technology (EV’s)” shtick forever on this site. And we’re seeing it happen in Mitsubishi and their iMiEV due in 2009, a huge company that’s struggled in the US market for years. Subaru, Nissan, and others are on the EV bandwagon, as well.
Once a few companies offer extended-range plug-in hybrids or EV’s and customers learn that plugging in their car overnight is less hassle than dealing with gasoline (or hydrogen) fill ups, hydrogen will be seen as a really dumb and expensive idea.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:31 am
Hydrogen will be seen as a really dumb and expensive idea. But they push it because it is something you have to keep buying. Once you pay off a car, even an EV it is yours for the rest of the vehicles life. People want to see hydrogen be the next big thing becuase the money is in the continued sale of fuel. Just like xerox makes its money selling toner, not copiers.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Bob,
You make an interesting point (which begs the questions who are They? and what People?). But more to the point, why does a car company care if you buy hydrogen or electrons? I understand why the oil companies might care…furthermore shouldn’t the power companies be an equal size counterweight to the oil interests (presumably your They)?
November 28th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
One size does not fit all
One problem I keep seeing over and over is the notion that we only need to wholesale replace one fuel source with another and if that fuel is “green” and is cheap enough for the consumer and profitable enough for the same people selling to us now we are golden and can go about business as usual. I say we’re not really looking at alternatives other than the fuel itself.
Why do we need one type of fuel for everybody everywhere? Why does the infrastructure and metering become the deciding factor? Hydrogen or not, I don’t want to see us dependent on anything that has to be piped, shipped, or trucked to all corners of the globe. Why can’t fuel choices be more flexible based on many factors including what can be produced on the spot? Hydrogen is one of those fuels that for some locations can be produced at the filling stations we already have. No need for infrastructure if you can run a pipe 10 meters from your “refinery”. There are places right now that based on local resources can produce hydrogen and or other fuels on the spot or nearby that can compete with everything else current and proposed.
Yes, vehicles would be more varied fuel wise but so what? They might cost more than they do now? So what, the cost of fueling them is going up and will keep going up so why not pay more for the car but less on the fuel instead? The main thing we need to do that would make the biggest difference the quickest is to drive less and there are many ways to do that now and in the future.
I try not to mix my feelings about hydrogen with the dubious intentions of big corp that are pushing for hydrogen. It makes sense in a lot of ways for some applications in some places. No one fuel should be king.
But I’m not very confident that the best choices all things considered will be the choice we make. Heaven forbid that a future fuel could be made by local entities instead of giant corp.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Vikingsson: Of course one size does not fit all–I’ve said perhaps 8,734 times on this site that we’re headed for an age of diversified energy sources. So no one, especially me, is claiming that hydrogen can or should be “the” solution for everyone.
My point is that I can’t see where it’s the right solution anywhere.
Read some of the articles I linked to, and you’ll see that generating hydrogen at gas stations doesn’t begin to solve the problem, unless those gas stations have zero-cost electricity that they can’t even sell to the grid at market rates. Sure, hydrogen can be produced that way, as you said, but that doesn’t mean it will be competitive enough with alternatives to make sense.
And it’s not a matter of local entities vs. a giant corporation. It’s a matter of the basic physics driving economics. Again, I strongly suggest you read some of the papers, especially those by Ulf Bossel. It’s as ringing a condemnation of any technology I;ve ever seen.
As I’ve said many times and again in this particular posting, I think we’re headed for plug-in series hybrids using liquid fuels with the highest biofuel content we can manage, and that the battery size will increase over time as quickly as costs allow. Unless someone can convince me that there’s a role to play for hydrogen, that is, which was the whole point of this post. I’ve spent a lot of time staring at this problem from all angles, and I just can’t find a way to make hydrogen work in transportation.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Thank you for replying. I stumbled on this site after following some good news about hydrogen. So no I haven’t read many of your other articles and frankly I’ve read more than I care to this year to do much more for a while. I would say that I’ve read just as much pro hydrogen as against. I still think it has great potential and is more than worthy of some real world testing.
I don’t know of anywhere that has zero cost electricity or zero cost anything but that doesn’t stop someone from trying. Perhaps Iceland is a place where hydrogen makes sense. They have very low cost and very clean sourced electricity. They have a lot of incentive because of zero fossil fuel resources and very high costs to import. They also have a tiny population so if they are the only ones to do it then they won’t be replacing the car fleet with hydrogen. But they are at least giving it a try and exploring the technologies instead of just writing papers. They can and will however replace the fishing fleet with hydrogen power and that makes a lot of sense for them and is a significant replacement of their fuel.
I like hybrids and plugins but I also dream of much better batteries. The batteries need to be much lighter too and that is where hydrogen comes back into the picture at least for some places. I don’t say H2 is the answer but I’m beyond cynical when it comes to any answers I’m currently hearing. The best answer still is to consume less and that isn’t on the agenda with the current economic structure of perpetual growth and consumption rates.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I wanted to respond to the conspiracy theory here that “they” are pushing hydrogen so they will continue to have something to sell, and keep people from being self sufficient. IMO it is a myth that EVs and solar rooftops will make people self sufficient. Rather, you may well have a solar rooftop but you will still be on the grid. You will buy electricity from the grid when you need it and perhaps sell electricity back into the grid when the sun is bright and you aren’t using much. But it won’t make sense to be disconnected (unless you have to be in which case you will pay much more for battery storage).
Even if we never get good batteries and there is some breakthrough that makes hydrogen vehicles work better, you may still have rooftop solar and still be feeding electricity into the grid, only now it is being used to produce hydrogen.
The point is that the situation is really much the same as far as self sufficiency. In the long run we will get energy from renewable sources (and possibly nuclear). That means solar, wind, some hydro, maybe tides and geothermal and so on. It may work out that rooftop solar is a cost effective contribution to this mix. But whatever the sources are, the energy will probably be first generated in the form of electricity. The question of how this electrical energy is most cost-effectively delivered to and stored in vehicles is *independent* of how generation is being done. Rooftop solar is as much a part of the picture of a hydrogen economy as it is of a pure electricity economy.
So the conspiracy theory doesn’t make sense, because both hydrogen and electric vehicles are equivalent in terms of self sufficiency and home power generation.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Hal: Interesting way to look at the situation, and one I hadn’t thought of.
In general, I think you’re inarguably right. The way I would put it is: In the future you’ll still use electricity. Rooftop solar PV will be cheaper than fossil fuel generation in an increasingly large portion of the country (as solar gets cheaper and we price FF more appropriately), so we’ll use more of it. Add in the simplifying effects of PPA’s (those “we own the solar cells on your house, you buy the electrons from us” contracts), and solar PV gets an even bigger push as an end-user technology.