acronos

Usually I can see what the real, usually unstated, motivations are behind political movements. However, I have a very hard time understanding why the environmental movement is attacking the hydrogen economy. It seems to address all the things I thought they were concerned about. Can anyone help me out?

LymanLover

Maybe you could help us out by giving us some examples of environmentalists that attack the hydrogen economy, and then we'll see where it goes from there?

Kinross

This weeks issue of Science there is an article about the possible effects of large amounts of hydrogen being leeked into the environment.

I don't know if that link is viewable to everyone else because I have a subscription but the abstract is:

Potential Environmental Impact of a Hydrogen Economy on the Stratosphere
Tracey K. Tromp,1 Run-Lie Shia,1 Mark Allen,2 John M. Eiler,1 Y. L. Yung1*

The widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells could have hitherto unknown environmental impacts due to unintended emissions of molecular hydrogen, including an increase in the abundance of water vapor in the stratosphere (plausibly by as much as 1 part per million by volume). This would cause stratospheric cooling, enhancement of the heterogeneous chemistry that destroys ozone, an increase in noctilucent clouds, and changes in tropospheric chemistry and atmosphere-biosphere interactions.

Loren Pechtel

1) Hydrogen is a means of transporting power. It's not a root source of power. It won't get rid of the powerplants!

2) Many eco-nuts have the notion that all technology is bad. Therefore something which can avoid what they are griping about yet permit high tech is terrible.

3) I don't know if they have a point about hydrogen in the stratosphere or not.

acronos

What I just read that made me want to ask the question was:
Hydrogens future up in the air

I think, after thinking about it some more, that I have answered my own question - or, at least, I have formed an opinion.

1) Bush is funding it at the expense of other environmental agenda's - the environmental movement is heavily dependant on government financing, and no one reacts well to a pay cut.
2) Since the environmental movement needs government funding some unscrupulous researchers, I'm not saying all, use scare tactics to keep it in the public conscious. Hydrogen isn't very scary - yet, but it will be once they get their hands on it as this article shows.
3) Hydrogen doesn't appeal to the doom and gloom pessimistic mindset that typically fortifies the environmental movement. It clearly doesn't require enough sacrafice.

Yes I am stereotyping. No I don't really think I can back this up to the satisfaction of environmentalists who DO meet the stereotype, and the one's who DON'T are not likely to be too impressed either. Yes there is probably some straw men in there. However, I obviously think there is some truth too. I'm not really willing to defend it though. I really did post this because I was stumped at this article and numerous other opinions I've seen.

acronos

You are quite right. However, it could get rid of oil burning cars that are surely less environmentally frendly than power plants which is better than nothing right? However, there are certain areas of the country that are better at generating power than others. Niagra falls and the nevada desert have resources that are unavailable to the rest of us. Surely we could significantly clean up power plants too by more efficiently "transporting power." Wouldn't this appeal to most environmentalist's? I guess another question is, what is cheaper, energy on the roads or piped underground or energy on the power grid that already exists?

Derec

Hydrogen has a greaty potential, especially in transportation. It will provide emission free cars for example and does not require fossil fuels to operate.

However, as has been pointed before, it is not an energy source, and primary energy will have to be used to produce hydrogen, and any energy conversion step is inherently lossy.
Also it has some disadvantages usch as difficult storage and transport.

Some people envision a "hydrogen economy", where almost all energy is handeled in form of hydrogen. This does not only include hydrogen as a car fuel but also fuel to power up your house. Instead of a power line consumers would get hydrogen to convert to electricity/heat in a fuel cell. This aspect, I think, is unrrealistic. There is no real reason to replace our power grid with a system to transport hydrogen on such a large scale.

I don't know very much about the stratosphere water scenario but I do not think that will be such a big problem. The amounts of elemental hydrogen escaping would be relatively low and most of hydrogen would react with oxygen to form water within the troposphere.

UMoC

Loren Pechtel

I agree that hydrogen would clean things up a lot. The question is why the eco-nuts were against it.

Loren Pechtel

Why would it react in the troposphere unless it happened to be caught in a lightning bolt or some such high energy event?

echidna

Speak for yourselves, but over here the Australian economy mainly runs on methane.