I apologize in advance to those among you who are not futurists or policy wonks, but this topic has been on my mind this week. I am wondering where we are going to end up in ten or twenty years in terms of transportation fuels and infrastructure. If you really think it over, you might decide this is interesting too.
Over the past few years we have been pretending that gasoline will last forever, while paying lip service to the idea that it will someday be replaced with hydrogen. Both these ideas are questionable. Gasoline will definitely not last forever because there are no more dinosaur swamps out there to make more of it. Hydrogen is questionable. For it to become the norm of transportation, we will have to figure out how to build a hydrogen car that costs less than $100,000, and we will have to build an entire new infrastructure of hydrogen service stations.
Over the past couple of years ethanol has been trumpeted as the solution. You can fuel a vehicle with ethanol blended with a bit of gasoline, but first you have to produce the billions of gallons of ethanol required and install tanks of E85 everywhere. One problem is that we currently do not grow enough corn to make the ethanol. If we use all the corn we produce to make ethanol, there will not be enough left to feed the cattle and chickens that we depend on for meat. One possible solution would be to develop factories to make ethanol from cellulose plant fiber- that could happen.
Finally electricity. Hybrid vehicles obviously have a following, as they travel farther on a gallon of gasoline than a pure internal combustion vehicle. If we manage to improve batteries to the point that plug-in recharging would enable our cars to drive a couple hundred miles between charges, we could leave out the gasoline entirely and convince many people to have an electric car for commuting and save a gasoline car for any out-of-state trips.
It is a complex process in which investors and corporations vie with the federal government, and the consumer has the final say by rejecting ideas they do not like. Cheapness was a major factor in the acceptance of the gasoline car back in 1900, despite the fact that they polluted terrribly and many thousands of people soon died driving them every year. But with global warming and international conflicts fueled by oil, there is more to it than the cheapest method. Any guesses which technology will prevail? Guess right and invest accordingly and you could end up rich.
My Thanksgiving today is for the fact that we are beginning to think about and talk about this topic. We are 20 years late, but better late than never.
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Comments: 8
Actually, the price of hydrogen autos will be competitive as they are mass produced. Hydrogen fuel cell technology is not complicated, and existing technology already is capable of being mass produced. The problem is in the second point you make - that of building the infrastructure, which might not be so difficult as it initially sounds. One advantage of hydrogen filling stations is that hydrogen does not have to be shipped by tankers. It can be produced on-site.
I have been strongly recommending these websites for information on hydrogen. If you have the time, please watch the PBS video segments (3 segments).
ECD Ovonics, a company founded by Stan Ovshinsky, has been developing a technology called the "hydrogen loop." Basically, that is creating hydrogen by using solar energy - or you could say storying solar energy as hydrogen.
Ovshinsky has invented a metal alloy that "soaks up hydrogen like a sponge," and this does away with the need for storing hydrogen as a gas under high pressure.
Additionally, Ovshinsky has developed solar collectors that are more pliable than traditional solar panels, and that are more efficient under low light conditions. They are highly adaptable, and can be used as roofing material. This type of solar collector is produced "by the mile."
For information re: ECD Ovonics:
http://www.ovonics.com/
Solar division:
http://www.uni-solar.com/
PBS video featuring Ovshinsky and ECD Ovonics technology:
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1506/video/watchonline.htm
My original opinion was that plug in electrics might be the way to go, but it is a tough call. You could be right about hydrogen. I just finished reading "Internal Combustion" by Edwin Black, and in his final chapters he does predict that hydrogen will be the eventual winner. He argues that hydrogen derived from solar energy is the only truly sustainable means of powering transportation- I do agree with him that we will need to avoid the wrong turn of powering hydrogen from coal or some other unsustainable, CO2 producing fuelsource.
In case you wondered I also consider ethanol to be a wrong turn. I realize that viewpoint is very unfashionable, but ethanol from corn is being over hyped in the USA. It cannot be produced without the use of a great deal of fossil fuel. There is collusion going on now between the politicians of corn producing states and General Motors and the current U.S. administration, both of whom prefer to continue a fuel based car rather than push for an early move to hydrogen or electric cars. Why? Because foreign carmakers especially Japanese have all the advantages in those technologies.
Personally I believe we are going to have to get moving on this problem. We do not have the luxury of making sure that all the people who get rich from the new technologies are Americans. If we had gotten serious earlier, we would be the world technology leaders in renewable energy. But since we fought to hold onto our petroleum economy, we are going to have to play catch up.
Having said that -- look at what corn ethanol is really doing.
1) It is an oxygenator for gasoline which dramatically reduces air pollution.
2) It produces less greenhouse gases than gasoline.
3) It reduces oil imports from the Middle East.
4) It boosts rural economies.
5) It reduces our trade balance.
6) It still produces DDG and DG which is used as animal feed.
7) And most IMPORTANTLY it prepares the infra-structure for celliose Ethanol and Methanol which:
A) Will be able to go most of the way toward complete substitution of gasoline.
B) Act as a major carbon sink dramatically reducing green house gases.
C) Build the soil rather than deplete it.
D) Dramatically reduce the usage of fertilizer and pesticide.
Couple the increased use of Ethanol, Methanol from corn, sugar cane, prairie grass and urban waste such as garbage and yard clippings -- with more efficient engines, lighter vehicles and increased use of mass transit and we are well on our way to a solution.