This was written for a state government department a year or so ago.
How can the state’s and the Federal government be so at odds on the
environment and energy policy?
Whatever happened to hype?
We live in a hydrocarbon world. Eight out of ten of the world’s biggest companies are dependant on hydrocarbons.
But within fifty years the focus of the world’s energy needs will be a
clean non-polluting fuel, hydrogen. The hydrogen economy will be born.
In theory the hydrogen economy will eliminate fossil fuel pollution and
greenhouse gases and end the world’s dependance on oil reserves in the
politically unstable Middle East.
Indirectly hydrogen is the source of most of the world’s power through
the burning of oil, natural gas or coal. But these processes produce at
the very least the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, responsible for
global warming.
When hydrogen burns its only by-product is water and heat. Anyone can produce hydrogen from electricity and water using simple technology but it is expensive and pointless unless there is clean, cheap energy available.
Globally billions is being spent investigating the viability of the hydrogen. In February US President George Bush announced in his State of Union Address a $1.2bn initiative to develop commercially viable hydrogen powered fuel cells – in which hydrogen combines with oxygen to produce electricity, water and no greenhouse gases – to power cars, trucks, homes and businesses. His aim is that by 2020 hydrogen cars and hydrogen infrastructure will be available to every citizen.
Iceland, which pollutes more per capita than anywhere else, has already implemented a plan to switch to hydrogen over the next 30-40 years with the help of its ample supply of hot rocks.
Investments in renewable energy, which provide the cleanest way to make hydrogen, have high fixed costs. According to figures submitted to the recent Council Of Australian Governments Energy Review, electricity from coal costs about $35 per MWh compared to natural gas at $40, hot rocks at $40-$60 and wind at $80.
Although the federal government has not signed the Kyoto protocol to reduced greenhouse emissions, it has affirmed its commitment to the hydrogen economy by commissioning a $1m National Hydrogen Study. In May the Department of Industry Tourism and Resources is sponsoring a conference entitled The Hydrogen Economy – Challenges and Strategies for Australia.
But to abandon coal, from which over 90 per cent of electricity generated, will be difficult as there is an 800-year supply of brown coal and 290 years worth of black coal. Thanks to these supplies the country enjoys some of the cheapest electricity in the world.
According to BP unless fuel cells can cut costs from US$500 ($1,000) per Kw to US$50 ($100) per Kw fuel cells will be uncompetitive in vehicles. For power generation, fuel cells are nearly three times the cost of building a gas turbine power station.
Dr Bruce Godfrey is managing director, Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd, a Melbourne company at the cutting edge of fuel cells, says: “My view of the hydrogen economy is that it is about 30 to 50 years away… In the short term the hydrogen economy for me is a great distraction from what should be the main game in much more efficiently generating using and supplying energy with today’s conventional fuels.”
The Australian Institute of Energy (AIE) in February launched its Hydrogen division with the aim of promoting hydrogen technology. Luigi Bonadio, acting secretary of the division, says when talking about the hydrogen economy to people in the energy sector they lose interest. He says that the petrochemicals sector’s stance is to wait and see what happens overseas. “Unless big petrochemicals industries and the coal industry gets behind hydrogen as a concept in a large way – by investing large amounts of money – the hydrogen economy remains a fanciful idea.”
Like Godfrey he thinks that a number of energy sources will fuel Australia in the future. Bonadio says: “The hydrogen economy is an ideal we are striving for but it’s a long way off.”
In the book published late 2002, The Hydrogen Economy, US shaper of public policy Jeremy Rifkin says that the fuel will help bring the creation and distribution of energy back from being global to a local level. Also known as embedded generation, bringing energy generation to the local level is one of the recommendations of the Council of Australian Government’s (COAG) energy market review chaired by the Hon Warwick Parer.
Inevtiably, explains Godfrey, fuel cells will be used in embedded apllications for industrial sites, large commercial buildings, shopping centres, new housing estates or hospitals.
He anticipates that son 2kw fuel cells the size of a dive tank will be available to power the home, which should be sold for no more than $500 to $1,000. But there is problem getting hydrogen, which powers the cells, to the end user as it cannot be pumped down the existing gas mains.
Distribution is likely to be through local refuelling stations, but still there are obstacles overcoming Hydrogen storage. Liquid hydrogen takes up four times the space of the equivalent amount of petrol. As a gas it takes five times the space. Storage in metal hydrides or tiny carbon nano tubes may offer a solution.
In the interim natural gas, piped to the homes, can be cheaply be converted into hydrogen and, depending on the process used, some greenhouse gases. This makes natural gas the transition fuel on the road to the Hydrogen Economy.
Already hydrogen is being used to power plenty of buses and cars. BMW is investing, not in fuel cells but compressed tanks of the gas powering the internal combustion engine. Most others manufacturers, including General Motor and Toyota, are focusing on fuel cells.
Starting this year fuel cells will be trialed for two years in DaimlerChrysler buses in Perth, although the technology is not yet commercially available. Bonadio says a heap of money has been investd in fuel cells with no commercial return. He says “These units are not cheap.”
Godfrey fuel cells are on the cusp of becoming viable. He says that over the next 20 years fuel cells will develop from being used in low volume niche applications, where the user will pay almost anything to get a special to mass produced items available in Bunnings.”