Jutsuka

Ahem! Fusion anyone? It's not going to happen soon but if some more effort was put into the project on an international scale we could get very possibly begin to exhange all current powerplants within 50 years.

Thor Q. Mada

Hydrogen makes only sense if we can make it electrically and this preferrably via nuclear powerplants and fusion (wind and hydroelectric are marginal as compared to the amounts needed). We should devote all our efforts to that.
Hydrogen is not a power source. It is a power carrier.
The way the government wants to make it through LNG (methane)and fuel cells is pretty bad because it releases large quantities of CO2.
Of-course if we make electricity through alternative sources such as fusion, the oil companies are not going to be happy. Trust me, I am not a conspiracy person, but as an engineer I can only say that we are not following the good path to the future.

Jat

How about Cold Fusion? Don't you know, the government is trying to cover up the fact that it works...

theyeti

The so-called hydrogen economy doesn't solve any of the fundamental energy problems that we face. As has been pointed out, hydrogen is not a new source of energy, it is simply a new delivery mechanism for the same energy that we have now. And there will always be a loss of energy when converting from one form to another, so it's not clear that there's any gobal benefit to using hydrogen; only a localized benefit by moving the pollution elsewhere.

There are two ways to produce hydrogen. One is through electrolysis, which can use any source of electricity, but is extremely wasteful. The other is through direct extraction from fossil fuels, though this will have to wait for better technology before it becomes economically feasible. And it still doesn't solve the problem of CO2 being produced. So for the forseeable future, all a hydrogen economy is likely to do is to change our dependancy on oil into a dependancy on oil plus coal. Not to mention the fact that this will take a good 20 years just for the technology, and perhaps another 20 for the infrastructure.

Now if we were to recieve our power from clean energy sources, and if we could produce it cheaply enough to absorb the inevitable loss from conversion, then hydrogen will be a great way to utilize that energy for cars and other uses. But this just underscores what the real issue is: we first need a way to produce clean energy cheaply. The hydrogen is at best merely the icing on the cake. We could for example ramp up our wind generating capacity to about 20% of demand at the cost of about 4 cents per kWh, which is only slighly more expensive than coal. In fact, some analysts have calculated that wind is cheaper than coal if the external costs of pollution and such are taken into account, but since the coal companies don't pay for that, they have an unfair advantage. Issuing pollution credits in order to reward clean energy sources could allow wind power to reach its potential, as could new tranmission lines or direct subsidies. So we could reap an immediate benefit by switching to cleaner sources now rather than working towards technology that won't materialize for twenty years and is of dubious benefit to begin with. And while I don't have any figures on hand, as I understand it Bush has acutally cut funding for research into clean energy sources, thus undermining the very approach that needs to be taken to solve our environmental and energy needs to begin with. In addition, this new hydrogen "initiative" was a pre-existing program that he merely hyped up as his own to make it seem as if he was taking a bold step in favor of the environment. The real issue -- that of renewable energy -- remains unaddressed in favor of a placebo that can be safely ignored for the remainder of the Bush presidency. This is, I expect, what many environmentalists are upset about.

theyeti

theyeti

The environmental movement doesn't receive any government funding at all. It is a political lobby that is funded entirely by private sources, and is nearly always at a disadvantage to industry funded groups.

There are scientists and engineers who do environmental research, but their work does not consist of political lobbying, and their skills are equally applicable to a wide range of problems. Many of them work with private industry hoping to capitalize on the market for clean energy and other environmentally friendly goods and services. So they are neither unscrupulous nor do they have any incentive to use scare tactics. In other words, you are flogging an excessively lame straw-man, and imputing devious motives to people whose work you know nothing about.

theyeti