2004.11.09 Hydrogen Economy of Bullshit

You may or may not have heard about what some sources are referring to as "The Hydrogen Economy". If you haven't, let me clarify it for you: It's a bunch of bullshit. Worse, it's a bunch of bullshit that may unfortunately come to be.

When you do finally hear about the so-called hydrogen economy, they're referring to what they hope most of the population will see as a better future for the mobile energy industry. They portray clean vehicles that run on hydrogen and harmlessly produce only water as exhaust, and everybody grinning madly because they're all so freakin' happy about it. If you have heard about the hydrogen economy, and seen the commercials and various other political mentions, you know what I'm talking about. Well, you know about the happy smiling part, anyway. If you're like most people, you're probably too dumb to know what else I'm talking about.

What else I'm talking about is that the happy-happy hydrogen economy is just stupid, in a great many ways. Let's start small, and work our way up.

FIRST, there's the stupid idea about running a vehicle on pure hydrogen. Sure, it works - it's been done. The problem is that it doesn't work all that well. Anyone with even moderate understanding of science knows that hydrogen is the lightest element, but what most people don't realize is that this means that it's actually very difficult to get enough hydrogen to fit in a reasonably-sized vehicle to have a suitable range with adequate power output. One way to get enough hydrogen to fit in a standard-size vehicle is to have it extremely compressed. I don't just mean compressed as much as those dangerous compressed acetylene welding canisters that have to be locked away from people for safety reasons, but actually much much more highly compressed. So, basically, everyone would have to ride around on top of something with bomb-like explosive properties, even if it wasn't filled with Hindenberg-bane flammable gas. Another way to get enough hydrogen to fit in a vehicle is to keep it super-cold such that it becomes a liquid... any idea how cold that is? Really really cold. To keep matter that cold, vehicles would need to run some pretty impressive refrigeration equipment, which currently wouldn't fit in a standard vehicle. You could also have enough hydrogen by having part of another molecule, but then you get to throw your "produces only water" aspect right over your shoulder.

SECOND, there's a small problem with storage. In addition to being the lightest element, hydrogen is also the smallest. So small, in fact, that it can actually fit through the molecular lattice of every solid known to man. That's right, there is no such thing as a hydrogen tank that doesn't leak. What's worse, the higher the pressure of the vessel, the worse it will leak, which makes the previous point a bit of an extra kick in the ass. You probably won't be told about this too much, because "they" might be hoping that you won't notice, and because "they" will actually have no reason to care about this all that much.

THIRD, there's the minor issue of where all this hydrogen comes from in the first place. Sure, there's lots of hydrogen around, but it's generally bonded to something - usually in happy threesomes with an oxygen. Currently, most hydrogen is actually produced from natural gas, from oil, and from coal. And, let me tell you, these aren't entirely happy-happy harmless water-byproduct only type processes. The funny part is that this so-called hydrogen economy is supposed to be as a replacement for the current hydrocarbon economy, when those hydrocarbons run out. Hydrogen can also be made by electrolysis, but boys and girls, that requires energy. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it's probably going to be coming from one of the many many coal-powered generating plants that are so effective at pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Still smiling? Well, I'm not done yet.

If you have even a couple brain cells to rub together, you should be wondering why anyone would bother trying to force a "hydrogen economy" into existence if it really is so stupid. Well, it's because that ambiguous "they" being referred to above are energy companies and political puppets owned by energy companies. These energy companies know that their strangle-hold on world industry will be in jeapardy as the hydrocarbons run out, or as environmental regulations get stricter. The most obvious way for the world to move on after running out or disdaining fossil fuels is to develop some alternate method of generating power (by the way, France and Japan are still bickering about who gets to be the site for the prototype fusion generator), and to just have everything run on electrical power. It makes sense because charge storage devices (batteries) are improving rapidly to feed the consumer electronics market, and because electric motors are so efficient. However, if everyone can just charge their vehicles at home on the existing power grid, that means the energy companies favourite cash cow - gas stations - become unnecessary. By trying to force everyone to accept hydrogen-powered vehicles, they will be addicting society to yet another fuel supply that they can't get without the energy companies making profit. That's why they're not going to care too much about the fact that your hydrogen tank is going to leak like a sieve, because you'll have no choice but to just buy more.

But do you want to know what really pisses me off? What makes me truly angry is that they're probably going to succeed. They're probably going to ram hydrogen cars down society's throat such that I won't even have an option to see what kind of great electric vehicles we could make instead. This is because they've already pulled this sort of lamprey-like manipulation off before, with gasoline. Race cars run on alcohol, why can't regular cars? Because anyone can make their own alcohol fuel, and that kind of industry got crushed by the energy companies. And we let "them" force that on us, because "we" are too freaking stupid to do anything about it.

And it's pretty clear that society isn't getting any smarter.