Why Hydrogen is No Solution - Scientific Answers to
Marketing Hype, Deception and Wishful Thinking
Seeing One Car Run on a Fuel Cell or Hydrogen Gas Does
Not Make It a Solution for Anything, Especially If
You Invest More Energy in the Hydrogen Than You Get
from Burning It or If You Make More Greenhouse Gas
at the Hydrogen Factory or If You Can't Afford to Ship
or Store It
by Michael
C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com.
All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed
or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit
purposes only.
[August
18, 2003, 1930 PDT, (FTW) -- For months
FTW has been besieged by misguided activists arguing
that hydrogen
is a real solution to the world's energy crisis. Sadly,
these critics have been sold a bill of goods as deceptive
and dangerous as Enron's cooked books, the intelligence "justifying" the
Iraqi invasion, and oil reserve figures quoted by oil
companies and government agencies. Hydrogen's problems
are not difficult to understand and require little
more than common sense applied to well-documented and
easily understandable scientific fact.
There are no easy "magic
bullet" solutions to the realities of Peak Oil and
serious and irreversible natural gas shortages. Perhaps
one of the most dangerous courses is to accept widely-hyped
solutions without critical judgment and then waste
the days and hours needed to look for real answers.
Just because someone shows you a car that runs on hydrogen
today, whether by burning the gas or by using a fuel
cell to produce electricity, does not mean that they
have shown you a solution. Spending more money or energy
on a demonstration model than is produced from the
resulting engine's output is a deception - nothing
more. Snake oil salesmen have been around as long as
mankind and there will be no shortage of unprincipled
hucksters making a buck as the world begins to starve
and freeze. Unfortunately, there will also be a bumper
crop of gullible victims, easily led to the slaughter,
who could have made other, more mature choices. Arguing
that hydrogen burned in a car engine produces no greenhouse
gases ignores the fact that those same gases were produced
at the plant that made the hydrogen to begin with.
The truth is that Peak
Oil and its implications will kill the human race a
long time before global warming does. Just ask the
innocent civilians who died on 9/11, the tens of thousands
of civilians massacred in Afghanistan and Iraq and
all those who will continue to die in the Empire's
sequential war for oil - the war which Dick Cheney
told us will not end in our lifetimes.
Hydrogen proponents need
to answer FTW's 9 Questions for Evaluating Alternative
Energy Sources at:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/052703_9_questions.html.
Beyond that, they need only read the following two
excerpts from FTW stories to understand that any rescue
by a "hydrogen economy" is about as likely as George
W. Bush withdrawing US troops from Iraq and
saying it was all a mistake. - MCR]
PART
I -- Excerpted from "Much Ado About Nothing" - Published by FTW Dec. 5, 2002. written by
Dale Allen Pfeiffer
Spencer
Abraham's Hydrogen Dream
The
media was all aglow recently with Spencer Abraham's
announcement that the U.S. now has a roadmap for making the
transition to a hydrogen economy. Secretary of Energy
Abraham announced the plan at the Global Forum on Personal
Transportation held in Dearborn, Mich. In his presentation, he touted the
line that hydrogen produced from renewable resources
can provide unlimited energy with no impact on the
environment. Secretary Abraham noted that the transition
to hydrogen would be a long-term process, which will
require the participation of both industry and government.
As
a first step, in January 2002 Secretary Abraham,
along with officials from the automotive industry
and Congress, unveiled a FreedomCAR partnership to develop hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.26
The
National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap is available on the
internet in pdf form (http://www.eren.doe.gov/hydrogen/pdfs/national_h2_roadmap.pdf).
This roadmap glows with positive energy. In all areas
of production, delivery, storage, conversion and applications,
the document beams about what we can achieve if we
put our minds to it, but inevitably winds up by saying
that we have a long way to go in order to make it a
reality.
The
document does mention the various challenges to each
area of fuel cell development, but makes little of
the obstacles and instead comes off sounding like a
pep talk. Buried in the text, they admit "The
transition to a hydrogen economy... could take several
decades to achieve."27
The
document speaks of wind, solar and geothermal production,
biomass, nuclear-thermo-chemical water splitting, photoelectrochemical electrolysis,
and bioengineering. But they admit that all of these
processes will require a great deal more research.
The
intention is to bootstrap the move by first developing
small "reformers" that will run on natural
gas, propane, methanol or diesel. But the authors admit
that even this technology requires further refinement
for improved reliability, longer catalyst life, and
integration with storage systems and fuel cells.
The
document also includes a short list of people who
are in charge of various areas of development and
transition. The list includes: Frank Balog of
Ford Motor Company, Gene Nemanich of ChevronTexaco Technology Ventures, Mike Davis
of Avista Labs Energy,
Art Katsaros of Air Products
and Chemicals Incorporated, Alan Niedzwiecki of Quantum
Technologies, Joan Ogden of Princeton University
Systems, and Jeff Serfass of
The National Hydrogen Association.28 This team will ensure that the new technology remains firmly
in the hands of the top corporations.
The
document is at least 80 percent public relations. While
admitting that in all areas there are serious problems
to be overcome before we will be able to make a transition
to hydrogen fuel cells, nowhere does this document
take a serious look at the obstacles. Instead, this
paper paints a pretty picture of our hydrogen future
and leaves the details to future research and investment.
So let us look at a few of the difficulties of developing
a hydrogen fuel cell economy.
First
off, because hydrogen is the simplest element, it
will leak from any container, no mater how strong
and no matter how well insulated. For this reason,
hydrogen in storage tanks will always evaporate,
at a rate of at least 1.7 percent per day.29 Hydrogen is very reactive. When hydrogen gas comes into contact
with metal surfaces it decomposes into hydrogen atoms,
which are so very small that they can penetrate metal.
This causes structural changes that make the metal
brittle.30
Perhaps
the largest problem for hydrogen fuel cell transportation
is the size of the fuel tanks. In gaseous form, a
volume of 238,000 litres of
hydrogen gas is necessary to replace the energy capacity
of 20 gallons of gasoline.31
So
far, demonstrations of hydrogen-powered cars have
depended upon compressed hydrogen. Because of its
low density, compressed hydrogen will not give a
car as useful a range as gasoline.32 Moreover, a compressed hydrogen fuel tank would be at risk of
developing pressure leaks either through accidents
or through normal wear,
and such leaks could result in explosions.
If
the hydrogen is liquefied, this will give it a density
of 0.07 grams per cubic centimeter. At this density,
it will require four times the volume of gasoline
for a given amount of energy. Thus, a 15-gallon gas
tank would equate to a 60-gallon tank of liquefied
hydrogen. Beyond this, there are the difficulties
of storing liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen is cold
enough to freeze air. In test vehicles, accidents
have occurred from pressure build-ups resulting from
plugged valves.33
Beyond
this, there are the energy costs of liquefying the
hydrogen and refrigerating it so that it remains in
a liquid state. No studies have been done on the energy
costs here, but they are sure to further decrease the
Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of hydrogen
fuel.
A
third option is the use of powdered metals to store
the hydrogen in the form of metal hydrides. In this
case, the storage volume would be little more than
the volume of the metals themselves.34 Moreover, stored in this form, hydrogen would be far less reactive.
However, as you can imagine, the weight of the metals
will make the storage tank very heavy.
Now
we come to the production of hydrogen. Hydrogen does
not freely occur in nature in useful quantities, therefore
hydrogen must be split from molecules, either molecules
of methane derived from fossil fuels or from water.
Currently,
most hydrogen is produced by the treatment of methane
with steam, following the formula: CH4 (g) + H2O
+ e > 3H2(g) + CO(g). The CO(g) in this
equation is carbon monoxide gas, which is a byproduct
of the reaction.35
Not
entered into this formula is the energy required to
produce the steam, which usually comes from the burning
of fossil fuels.
For
this reason, we do not escape the production of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases. We simply transfer
the generation of this pollution to the hydrogen
production plants. This procedure of hydrogen production
also results in a severe energy loss. First we have
the production of the feedstock methanol from natural
gas or coal at a 32 percent to 44 percent net energy
loss. Then the steam treatment process to procure
the hydrogen will result in a further 35 percent
energy loss.36
It
has often been pointed out that we have an inexhaustible
supply of water from which to derive hydrogen. However,
this reaction, 2H2O + e = 2H2(g)
+ O2(g), requires a substantial energy investment
per unit of water (286kJ per mole).37 This energy investment is required by elementary principles of
chemistry and can never be reduced.
Several
processes are being explored to derive hydrogen from
water, most notably electrolysis of water and thermal
decomposition of water. But the basic chemistry mentioned
above requires major energy investments from all of
these processes, rendering them unprofitable in terms
of EROEI.
Much
thought has been given to harnessing sunlight through
photovoltaic cells and using the resulting energy
to split water in order to derive hydrogen. The energy
required to produce 1 billion kWh (kilowatt hours)
of hydrogen is 1.3 billion kWh of electricity.38 Even with recent advances in photovoltaic technology, the solar
cell arrays would be enormous, and would have to
be placed in areas with adequate sunlight.
Likewise,
the amount of water required to generate this hydrogen
would be equivalent to 5 percent of the flow of the Mississippi River.39 As an example of a solar-to-hydrogen set up, were Europe to consider
such a transition, their best hope would lie in erecting
massive solar collectors in the Saharan desert of
nearby Africa. Using present technology, only 5 percent
of the energy collected at the Sahara solar plants would be delivered
to Europe. Such a solar plant would probably cost 50 times as
much as a coal fired plant, and would deliver an
equal amount of energy.40 On top of this, the production of photovoltaic cells has a very
poor EROEI.
The
basic problem of hydrogen fuel cells is that the second
law of thermodynamics dictates that we will always
have to expend more energy deriving the hydrogen than
we will receive from the usage of that hydrogen. The
common misconception is that hydrogen fuel cells are
an alternative energy source when they are not.
In
reality, hydrogen fuel cells are a storage battery
for energy derived from other sources. In a fuel
cell, hydrogen and oxygen are fed to the anode and
cathode, respectively, of each cell. Electrons stripped
from the hydrogen produce direct current electricity
which can be used in a DC electric motor or converted
to alternating current.41
Because
of the second law of thermodynamics, hydrogen fuel
cells will always have a bad EROEI. If fossil fuels
are used to generate the hydrogen, either through
the Methane-Steam method or through Electrolysis
of Water, there will be no advantage over using the
fossil fuels directly. The use of hydrogen as an
intermediate form of energy storage is justified
only when there is some reason for not using the
primary source directly.42 For this reason, a hydrogen-based economy must depend on large-scale
development of nuclear power or solar electricity.
Therefore,
the development of a hydrogen economy will require
major investments in fuel cell technology research
and nuclear or solar power plant construction. On top
of this, there is the cost of converting all of our
existing technology and machinery to hydrogen fuel
cells. And all of this will have to be accomplished
under the economic and energy conditions of post-peak
fossil fuel production.
Based
on all of this, I submit that Secretary of Energy Spencer
Abraham does indeed have ulterior motives for his Hydrogen
Energy Roadmap. First, I suggest that this distant
goal will help to pacify the public once they begin
to suffer from the effects of fossil fuel withdrawal.
Secondly, this project will allow the elite to transfer
more money from the general public to the pockets of
the rich. Third, in the words of Karl Davies, this
proposal will deflect a stock market collapse once
news of declining oil production becomes generally
recognized.
Tied
to this, it will brace stock prices of the auto corporations
and oil majors to help them survive well into the era
of oil depletion. And finally, the idea that we are
working on a transition from fossil fuels to a hydrogen-based
economy will help to destabilize OPEC, hopefully making
it easier to deal with that organization and the Arab
oil states.
ENDNOTES TO EXCERPT
(The
full original story is at: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/120502_caspian.html)
26 Energy
Secretary Abraham Gives Major Address on the
Future of Personal Transportation. Government Press
release. http://www.energy.gov/HQPress/releases02/novpr/pr02.htm
27 National
Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, November 2002. United
States Department of Energy. http://www.eren.doe.gov/hydrogen/pdfs/national_h2_roadmap.pdf
28 Ibid.
29 Hydrogen FAQ. Stanford University. http://www.formal.stanford.edu/pub/jmc/progress/hydrogen.htm
30 "The World will End not with
a Crash, but in a Whisper...." by Ian Forrest, 10-03-98. University of California. http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/global/sensem/Forrest98.htm
31 Ibid.
32 Op. Cit. See note 23.
33 Ibid.
34 Op. Cit. See note 24.
35 Ibid.
36 Energetic Limits to Growth, Jay Hanson. Energy Magazine, spring 1999. http://www.dieoff.com/page175.htm#_edn21
37 Op. Cit. See note 24.
38 Renewable Energy: Economic and Environmental
Issues, David Pimentel et al. BioScience,
Vol. 44, No. 8, September 1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page84.htm
39 Re: Hydrogen and Solar Energy Question, Message 25271, EnergyResources List. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources/message/25271 Also
message 25245 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources/message/25245 and
other messages in the string Hydrogen and Solar Energy
Question.
40 An Outline of the Global Situation,
the Sustainable Alternative Society, and the Transition
to it, Ted Trainer. University of N.S.W. http://www.dieoff.com/page190.htm
41 Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Vehicles. California Consumer Energy Center. http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/transportation/future/hydrogen.html
42 Op. Cit. See note 23.
Part II --
Excerpted from FTW's exclusive report on the
May, 2003 conference of the Association for the Study
of Peak
Oil (ASPO) in Paris.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/053103_aspo.html.
One conclusion generally accepted by almost every attendee
was that hydrogen, contrary to popularly accepted comfort
promotions by writers like Jeremy Rifkin, was not a solution
either in the near or long term because of intensive
costs of production, inherent energy inefficiencies,
lack of infrastructure and impracticalities. Speaking
for Daimler Chrysler, which paid lip service to Peak
Oil yet acknowledged that it had done extensive research
on hydrogen vehicles, Dr. Jorg Wind told the conference
that his company did not see hydrogen as a viable alternative
to petroleum-based internal combustion engines.
"We use fossil fuels to make hydrogen. That does not
result in a significant CO2 reduction. We predict that
by 2020 only 5% of fuel use will be hydrogen and that
infrastructure and the political framework is the most
important factor. In order of relevance and likelihood
from the standpoint of the auto industry Wind stated
that we would see improved conventional vehicles, starter
hybrid vehicles, electric hybrid vehicles and, finally,
fuel cell vehicles as solutions, but he had little optimism
that fuel cells would ever amount to a significant market
share. In a telling left-handed acknowledgement of Peak
Oil, Wind noted that one third of all diesel fuels currently
used in Germany were
biodiesel relying on recycled waste and or plant feedstock.
He was particularly critical of ethanol stating that
it was not energy efficient.
French presenters confirmed that ethanol was only viable
in France due
to a three hundred per cent government subsidy to farmers.
Otherwise it was a net energy waster.
When asked by FTW if Daimler-Chrysler
had estimated the costs for infrastructure changes and
capital investment to produce fuel cell vehicles Wind
stated that the company did not know these costs. The
implication was that having evaluated the technology
involved in the vehicles themselves the company didn't
consider it worthwhile to undertake further financial
evaluation.
Wind elicited groans from the audience when he asserted
that everything was customer driven and that corporations
bore no responsibility for the shortage of practical
solutions to the looming crisis.
Hydrogen's Lead Financial Balloon
Pierre-Rene Bauquis, Vice President of the French Energy
Institute, associate IFP professor and former special
advisor to the president of TotalFinaElf, confirmed prior
research by FTW citing hard scientific
data showing that hydrogen is not a practical solution.
As a member of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy he
made no secret of his advocacy of nuclear power. And
it is quite probable that if Total or any other oil company
could make a profit from hydrogen they would rush to
do it, especially since they know that they are running
out of their current product.
Noting that one half of all oil is used for transportation,
Bauquis insisted that renewable energy sources would
not solve the problem and stated flatly that "Hydrogen
is not the fuel of tomorrow." He noted that the first
internal combustion engine, built in 1805, was a hydrogen
engine and that it was quickly discarded because of the
problems hydrogen poses with transportation, storage
and efficiency.
Bauquis observed that, "Commercial production of hydrogen
is two to five times the cost of the fossil fuels used
to make it. Transportation is impossible. It is two times
as costly to transport hydrogen as it is to transport
electricity. The storage costs for hydrogen are one hundred
times the cost of liquid petroleum products."
He was equally unforgiving when it came to ethanol. "To
replace forty per cent of the oil in use you would need
three times the currently available farmland just for
feedstock."
Bauquis drew some groans from the audience when he insisted
that the "Chernobyl" disaster was a hoax perpetrated
by Green Peace which had grossly exaggerated the number
of deaths resulting from the 1986 nuclear accident but
his observations about hydrogen are consistent with a
wide number of scientific studies from a number of differing
political and economic interests. He did acknowledge
that perhaps in several decades, so-called green or white
hydrogen (produced by electrolysis rather than from methane)
might become feasible but only as a result of nuclear
energy to power the conversion process.
One audience member elicited boisterous audience laughter
by asking another presenter, "Now we have one situation
in the market in which we get conventional fuel, namely
oil, we burn it in a combustion engine, and we do work. Now
what I understand the hydrogen defendants are promoting,
led by Mr. Jeremy Rifkin, is a hydrogen economy consisting
basically in getting the conventional fuels again and
producing alternative/solar energies or clean energy… or
a wind generator …to produce electricity to then split
the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen and then
compressing the liquefied hydrogen for transportation
and storage and then injecting the hydrogen into the
fuel cell to produce electricity to do work in the machine. Do
you really believe that this is efficiency?"
The
PARTY'S OVER
Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
By Richard Heinberg
Now Available!
HERE
