Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Conference 2007 Vancouver BC Canada
PEJ News - Jim Wight - From the opening speeches by Gordon Campbell and John Baird to the closing ceremonies it was clear that the only solution under consideration is the hydrogen fuel cell solution. There were many ideas, companies and technology presentations all very interesting. The general approach is to collaborate between governments, industry and the consumers in order to fast track development as fast as possible.
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Governments have jumped on this bandwagon as the path of least resistance. There is no objection from oil, gas and bio fuel industry who see that they can provide more hydrogen than anyone else. The tendency here is for the players to ignore that all these sources also produce greenhouse gasses. Even methane and methanol produce CO2. Other options were being discarded without discussion as if to suggest anything else were to be anti green.
In all fairness, the hydrogen/fuel cell industry is true to their business model and they have done there marketing well.. There is undoubtedly a strong future for the hydrogen fuel cell industry world wide. The technology is ideal for storing energy that can be used in peak demand periods or to even out grid input from uneven sources such as wind and solar.
Whether fuel cells will dominate the future energy scene or not it is more certain that hydrogen produced from clean sources will become increasingly in demand.
I was told that the maximum depth of a windturbine in the ocean is about 400 meters. That assumes that the wind turbine is built on a foundation that is on the bottom of the ocean. Supose I said that the wind turbines were on floating platforms anchored to the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps we will see a future of vast floating ocean wind farms being used to produce hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis of water. The hydrogen and oxygen would be easy to store and the containers would even be used as floatation until picked up by ship for transport to ports of distribution. A similar solution exists using solar energy. The big advantage of water is the ease and economy of hydrogen transportation on the water.
One person brought up the concept of hydrogen combustion and said that nitrogen based green house gas emmissions had been mostly mitigated. He was quickly dismissed as irrelevant with a pseudo efficiency argument. I talked with him later about the concept of electrolyzing water using wind or solar to get hydrogen and oxygen. I suggested a separate hydrogen and oxygen storage on a vehicle. The hydrogen and oxygen could be separately injected into the combustion chamber. The only output would be water, heat and kinetic energy. This is a totally clean process that could be implemented using existing technology in next years cars. Older cars could also be re-fitted to this system by replacing the carburetor with a fuel injection system and replacing the fuel tanks with hydrogen and oxygen tanks. The delegate I talked with agreed. No one else I spoke with had a reasonable objection to this model.
So why isn't everyone interested in this. We can't wait for new technology to be developed especially when the answer is at hand. Global warming won't wait. It seems that government and industry partners don't believe this. The concern is how to make the maximum amount of money out of global warming. High tech solutions that use expensive resources and require the complete retooling of the world industry has clouded peoples eyes with dollar signs. There are trillions to be made so don't stand in the way with a simplistic solution.
The largest impacts at present are to eliminate energy waste. 60% of the energy used by factories in the US is running electric motors. 65% of that could be eliminated by controlling the speed of motors. Most are on full or off.
The IPCC draft just came out recently stating that we only have 15 years to mitigate the global warming problem. The entire global warming issue has the potential to be hijacked by the almighty dollar into a pit of corruption designed to make us pay through the nose for even thinking about a clean environment. It doesn't cost a penny to legislate restrictions on energy production and use. We have to stop thinking that we need economic growth. Until we as a people learn to regulate our population and economic growth, everything else will only intensify our journey to self destruction.
Throwing money at the problem will stimulate industry to produce future commercial solutions like a store where I can buy my hydrogen powered car for the same cost as we are paying for gas and deisel vehicles today. That is beyond the 2020 deadline. There are immediate solutions to the dramatic reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere needed that only require government regulations to achieve. When governments stop talking about targets and plans and start talking about legislation we will know we are getting somewhere. During the second world war energy was rationed. The global climate changes and the security of our global environment requires at least the same seriousness and attention from our governments.
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