Guest Opinion: Hydrogen may be the fuel of the future

Low fuel prices and increasing installation costs slowed investment in the nation’s energy infrastructure, leaving our production and distribution system in critical condition.

The effects of this short-sighted energy planning on the part of both government and industry has served the economy a series of energy crises: blackouts in California, $2-a-gallon-plus gasoline in the Midwest and fuel protests in Europe. Public uncertainty about energy has not reached this level since the OPEC-induced fuel shortages of the early 1970s.

Our prosperity relies heavily on good energy management, but once again we are scrambling for short-term solutions, potentially losing sight of the big picture.

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How dispatchable resources enable the clean energy transition

Platte River must prepare for the retirement of 431 megawatts (MW) of dispatchable, coal-fired generation by the end of the decade and address more frequent extreme weather events that can bring dark calms (periods when there is no sun or wind).

Above the din of the current crises, three trends are pushing us toward a new fuel: hydrogen. Although hydrogen has been used as a fuel for decades, and the term “Hydrogen Economy” was first coined in the ’70s, new technologies and old energy problems are driving the transition faster than most business leaders are aware:

” New vehicle technologies — Hybrid-electric drive trains, integrated digital-control systems and ultra-light composites are poised to revolutionize automobile performance, safety and durability. These new technologies will allow forward-thinking manufacturers to offer customization and services not economically feasible with contemporary automobile technology.

This revolution is already under way. Early hybrid-electric vehicles are on the market today, and those unwilling or unable to make the transition will find themselves outclassed by competitors applying superior technology.

” Distributed electricity generation — Deregulation in the electricity industry has broken the artificial dominance of the large centralized generating facility. Most new generating facilities installed in the past five years have been relatively small units. New, clean, efficient electricity generation devices, which are manufactured in factories and shipped to the point of use, are proving more profitable and reliable than the old “fires and wires” model.

” Growing concern for global climate change — Carbon Dioxide is a nontoxic byproduct of combustion of hydrocarbon fuels like gasoline, diesel, coal and even firewood. Current clean-air legislation does not address CO2 because it is not perceived as a public health hazard. But CO2 does increase the amount of heat trapped by the earth’s atmosphere, potentially altering our climate. After two decades of debate climatologists generally agree that human emission of CO2 and other gasses is accelerating worldwide climate change, causing more extreme and unstable weather.

This trend toward more violent weather has been recorded worldwide, affecting fragile crops, homes, roads, bridges and, ironically, the electricity grid. Governments and insurers have begun to recognize their exposure to climate change and have begun pushing for reductions in climate-changing emissions.

Why Hydrogen?

Hydrogen is a compressed-gas fuel that is handled with technology similar to that used for natural gas. It has three times more energy per pound than gasoline, contains no carbon and can be made from a variety of feedstocks. Natural gas looks to be our most competitive source of hydrogen. However, low-cost electricity (used to separate hydrogen from water in a process called electrolysis) and biomass are also promising.

Pure hydrogen can be burned in internal combustion engines, gas turbines or in an efficient electricity generator known as a fuel cell.

The most promising fuel-cell technology for automotive and home applications (called a proton-exchange membrane) requires pure hydrogen as fuel. PEM fuel cells’ performance and reliability are degraded by impurities in the fuel stream. The exhaust from burning hydrogen in a combustion engine is mostly hot water vapor and small amounts of nitrous oxide (a pollutant that causes smog). A PEM fuel cell running on pure hydrogen emits only hot water — no pollution at all.

New vehicle technologies are perfectly suited to application of fuel cells and hydrogen fuel. Since fuel cells are electricity generators, cars with fuel-cell engines are hybrid-electric, requiring both an engine that runs on fuel (the fuel cell) and electric motors to turn the wheels. Also, lightweight, aerodynamic and spacious composite-bodied vehicles have no difficulty storing enough hydrogen fuel on board for a reasonable driving range; adequate hydrogen storage is a challenge for ordinary steel-bodied, fuel-cell vehicles. Availability of production fuel-cell vehicles have been announced by eight major automakers for 2003 to 2005, among them Honda, Toyota, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp.

Many companies are finding the existing electrical distribution system too unreliable for high-tech computerized manufacturing systems, critical telecommunication services and e-business applications. Although very expensive today, back-up power generators based on clean, quiet, fuel-cell technology are becoming more popular.

This rising demand is driving research and development in new fuel-cell technologies, promising to drive down prices. The first facility-scale fuel-cell products are already on the market, with home electrical generators slated to enter the market in the next couple of years.

With the refinement of the fuel cell, hydrogen is likely to become the fuel of choice to power buildings, manufacturing facilities, neighborhoods, autos, boats and even laptop computers. Hydrogen promises to give energy companies flexibility to source fuel from a variety of sources and distribute it to almost any application. This feature alone could greatly improve the stability of energy prices.

The world’s largest companies, among them United Technologies, General Electric Co., Mitsubishi, Ford, GM, Shell Oil Co. and British Petroleum Co. Ltd., have combined investments of billions of dollars in the future of hydrogen. These giants of the energy and transportation industries have partnered with small research-and-development companies such as Ballard and Plug Power, which is positioning itself to be the “Intel” of the next big technological revolution.

For many informed companies, awareness of the hydrogen transition is already guiding decisions concerning alternative fuels. There are several options for new vehicle fuels, among them methanol, biodiesel, ethanol, liquid petroleum and compressed natural gas.

CNG is the most logical stepping stone to hydrogen. CNG is gaseous fuel requiring similar handling techniques to hydrogen and it can be readily converted to hydrogen in a common commercial process called steam-methane reforming. However, CNG is not a viable fuel for fuel-cell vehicles and normal natural-gas pipelines are not suitable for transporting hydrogen.

It is clear that investment in fuels other than hydrogen could possibly leave investors holding inferior technology when hydrogen-fueled products become viable. With the transition to hydrogen accelerating, it is wise to heed Royal Dutch Shell’s Herman Kuiper’s warning, “We are at the peak of the oil age but the beginning of the hydrogen age. Anything else is an interim solution.”

Jason Denner is a research associate at the Rocky Mountain Institute based in Aspen. He can be reached at (970) 927-3851.