Les Jones

Science > Hydrogen Fuel

Rich reviews Jeremy Rifkin's "The Hydrogen Economy." It's not a very positive review, and I'm not surprised. I saw Rifkin speak at UT in the '80s, back when he was demonizing genetic engineering (and plugging his book, "Algeny"). His main tactic was to keep going and going - over the time alloted him by his contract with the Events Committee - so that by the time the contractually-obligated question and answer session came up, most people had already gone home.

For the sake of anyone who doesn't already know: hydrogen isn't an energy source. You can't drill for hydrogen. You can only take other forms of energy (coal, oil, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, etc.) and use them to create elemental hydrogen (H2) from more complex compounds (such as water) that contain hydrogen. Once you have the elemental hydrogen, you can run this reaction:

2(H2) + 1(O2) -> 2(H20) + energy

which is an exothermic (energy-releasing reaction.) But to create elemental hydrogen, you have to run the opposite, endothermic (energy-consuming) reaction:

2(H20) + energy -> 2(H2) + 1(O2)

The people pushing hydrogen generally want you to believe that the energy to produce elemental hydrogen will come from renewable resources, like wind and solar. That's crazy.

Wind, solar, and hydroelectric output electricity. The simplest, most economical use for electricity is to supply power to homes and businesses using our existing electrical grid. Only after we have enough renewable energy to do that should we move to hydrogen as a fuel source for cars. Using hydrogen in cars will require replacing existing vehicles and building a massive refueling infrastructure. It's not worth the effort until our other energy needs are taken care of.