Gas lighter

I had the opportunity to drive the new Chevy Volt on Friday with an executive from the GM team that developed the car. It is very impressive, and a great thrill to get an insider's perspective.

Over time, my conversation with the GM executive turned to hydrogen fuel cells. She believes strongly that they represent an important piece of our energy future.

I have mentioned before that I am a bit of a hydrogen fuel cell skeptic. I have spent a fair amount of time in the past looking at this. I would love to be proven wrong - I hope to be proven wrong - but the research I have seen so far has not convinced me of the practical viability of hydrogen as fuel, and particularly as an efficient source of energy. But she is convinced, and asked me to send her some of the information that I have gathered over time, so that she can respond and show me why she is a believer. Here's part of what I sent:

While I believe that hydrogen has a role to play, it is not in and of itself a solution, because hydrogen is not a fuel, but rather a carrier, like a battery. The real fuel source is the energy used to source the hydrogen. As we touched upon, one of my main concerns is the sourcing of the hydrogen - specifically, getting to a hydrogen process with a low carbon footprint.

In an efficient model (is there one?), it takes about the same amount of energy to create hydrogen (use an energy source to separate hydrogen from a molecule) as the hydrogen "fuel" yields (when you restore it to it's pre-split state). Add to that the energy used to transport the hydrogen fuel to the distribution network (on top of the costs - economic and environmental) to getting the original energy source and the substance that you created the hydrogen from. At the end of the day, the hydrogen fuel has provided substantially less energy than was required for its creation and distribution. Because hydrogen isn't an energy source, it is a carrier.

Many environmentalists and conservatives are united in the belief that nuclear power is the answer to carbon-neutral sourcing and energy independence. Even ignoring the dangers, which I think are real and largely swept under the rug (to make the danger argument makes you a crazy person), I believe the pro-nuke argument is, at best, pie-in-the-sky. (I also don't think you can really look at any single region and the energy sources in that region; electricity is fungible.) Nuclear energy has numerous hurdles, and the obsession with it in certain political circles is, I think, largely cynical. Nuclear power is costly, too far off, with limited supplies of uranium, and it's not going to happen on any large scale. It's just not. Nuclear power plants take too long to build, even if they were favored from a policy standpoint. According to a McKinsey study, under the best possible scenario we get less than 100 megatons of CO2 offset by nuclear power by 2030 - less than 2% of current emissions. This is an issue that cannot wait two decades to address, in a nominal fashion. There is no way nuclear reactors can be built in sufficient capacity and timeframes to keep up with consumption needs at current growth rates.

Moreover, the premise behind the idea of "clean" nuclear energy "charging" hydrogen is that we have a clean source of the hydrogen itself from H2O via electrolysis. Which remains extremely inefficient.

As we discussed, the only currently practical source for generating large quantities of hydrogen is natural gas - which helps T. Boone Pickens' goal to reduce dependence on foreign oil, but isn't weaning us off of fossil fuels.

My view has been that, unless and until you can source hydrogen from water using solar power (or, arguable, wind, but I have issues there, too), I don't see hydrogen fuel cells providing and large-scale solution. And that doesn't take into account any atmospheric impact from pumping more water into the atmosphere, which I have never seen any studies on.

So, if you are going to use natural gas anyway, isn't it simply more efficient to use it directly as fuel, without the intermediaries?

Meanwhile, even if we are to overlook those issues, a fuel cell "tank" would need to be significantly larger (maybe 4x) than a gasoline tank to carry an equivalent amount of energy. That may or may not account for the supposed greater efficiency of a fuel cell engine - some claim it is three times more efficient, so you'd need less fuel. Others say that number is flat-out wrong, and it is only marginally more efficient. But even conceding that hydrogen is more efficient, there are other issues. See the articles below, which I will let speak for themselves.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/11963
http://www.oilcrisis.com/hydrogen/crea.htm
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/QuantumOfSolace.htm

So, where do I end up? I think hydrogen fuel cells may present an energy alternative that helps eliminate dependence on foreign oil. It may also be a cost solution, to the extent it relies on cheap energy (coal, ugh - and don't get me going on "clean coal"!), combined with greater efficiency (if you don't take the rest of the inefficiencies of the process into account).

I understand why scientists and engineers love the project. It's challenging, exciting, cutting edge, important. There is (or was) great research funding potential.

But my gut tells me that research into improved solar cells and better batteries is money much better spent in the short and medium term, rather than on fuel cells, despite how much I know engineers and auto manufacturers would like those research dollars, and would love to put those vehicles on the road sooner rather than later. But what of the front-end of the hydrogen process? I would keep pumping dollars into electrolysis research in order to make the process of sourcing hydrogen clean and efficient. Only then does a hydrogen-powered fleet make sense to me.