The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Opinion on various energy carriers and their utility in a renewable energy future:

Mr. Beyer,

I must agree with you in regards to a hydrogen economy as currently proposed, fueled by centralized production plants running on the same old fossil fuels. This approach does nothing but move the point where carbon and other pollutants are dumped into the atmosphere.

Certainly many biomass fuels are very useful and these include both the methane and methanol you mention, ethanol, vegetable oils and biodiesel, as well as waste wood, fall leaves, and other plant "waste".

Looking at transportation energy carriers, biodiesel (www.biodiesel.org) is the most likely to make fast inroads into the existing transportation infrastructure because it can be used in existing diesel engines as-is provided that the seals used in the engines are the more modern types that biodiesel does not act as a solvent upon.

Hydrogen has it's own attractions because of the lack of emissions in the exhaust stream. While biomass fuels as energy carriers do not release carbon that has been buried underground for eons, simply recycling carbon pulled out of the atmosphere by the plants they rely on, these fuels also have other combustion byproducts that are not very desirable such as fomeldahyde, particulates, and nitrous oxide. Of these, hydrogen only produces nitrous oxide. Granted, many biomass fuels produce far less of such pollutants than current petroleum use does. Any displacement of petroleum by these fuels is desirable.

Moving beyond transportation, hydrogen is desirable for several reasons. It can be piped through a similar infrastructure to the existing natural gas pipelines, and once delivered, is able to produce either heat or electricity or both plus basically distilled water, and a byproduct of it's production would be oxygen for use in hospitals, industrial welding applications, etc.

My personal belief based on years of reading on these subjects is that the end result will be some mixture of all of the above, as well as wind, hydro, and both ocean thermal energy conversion and wave power systems will lead us out of the age of petroleum and coal. I very sincerely doubt our energy future will ever be limited to one specific mode or source.

In the end, hydrogen will find it's natural place where it is the best tool for the job at hand, as will the forms of energy transport you mention and others I have brought into the discussion. Diversification in our energy infrastructure is something I perceive to be a positive goal in many respects, but in the end, it is economics and technical capability that will determine to what extent any specific technology or fuel is used in a given application or region. Politics may distort the picture for a time, but in the long term even that will bow to economic forces.

I would like to thank you sir, for the interesting discussion and the frank viewpoint. It is my intention to promote all renewable energy technologies, even though I have the strongest fascinations with wind and hydrogen.

Sincerely,

Dan Stafford



Jim Beyer wrote:

Great Lakes Zephyr,

I was interested in hydrogen power and researched it fairly carefully. After some work, I found that a hydrogen economy would not make sense, and will not give us better access to alternative energy sources, nor will it help with global warming issues. Others (The National Academy of Sciences, Former Under Secretary of DOE Joseph Romm, and 1994 Nobel Prize Chemist George Olah, to name a few) have also come out being critical of hydrogen, but do not clarify what an alternative strategy might be.

I can clarify such an alternative strategy.

The alternative is methane, also a gas, or methanol, a liquid. Both can be created from alternative/renewable sources, and both have already been integrated into our energy system, at least much more than hydrogen. Both also have much greater energy densities than hydrogen, an important feature of any proposed fuel. I personally prefer methane over methanol, but can understand the arguments for a liquid fuel.

A hydrogen infrastructure would be very costly to develop, with no added benefit compared with methane/methanol. Even worse, the hydrogen economy, as proposed, favors FOSSIL FUELS over alternative energy sources (wind, solar, biomass) for hydrogen production. A system of CH4/CO2 would favor the alternative sources over fossil fuels. The system is explained more fully in our press release:

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2003/10/prweb84970.htm

Sincerely,

Jim Beyer