Study: Hydrogen Could Replace All Oil in 50 Years
A new study shows that hydrogen-powered vehicles have the potential to eliminate the use of all petroleum from American transportation in the next 50 years.
This story from TradingMarkets.com says the National Research Council study also recommends biofuels should be used in the meantime:
In a press call with reporters, the Department of Energy’s Mike Ramage analyzed the findings of the study, which focused on the best case outcomes for the use of hydrogen energy by the year 2023. Best case means that “technical hurdles are solved – vehicles are cost- effective, and that consumers will buy them,” Ramage said.
“In the best case, by 2023 hydrogen could be economically competitive,” Ramage said.
In the short term, over the next 15-20 years, Ramage urged the continued use of biofuels, noting that they “would have most likely impact on oil reduction and carbon dioxide reduction.” However, as technology allows hydrogen to maximize its potential, hydrogen will overtake biofuels and have a “dominant effect” on the industry, Ramage said.
“Hydrogen by itself in this best case scenario could eliminate 60 – 70 percent of oil and carbon dioxide from transportation system by 2050,” Ramage said. Combined with biofuels and other environmentally friendly solutions, Ramage said “you could potentially in the best case eliminate all oil from U.S. transportation.”
Ramage adds hydrogen fuel cells are only a decade away from being commercially-viable. The article goes on to say that a diverse renewable energy plan is needed that uses all available resources.
5 Comments »
James
Where is the energy to make the liquid hydrogen going to come from? No one seems to like to answer this question…
chipperfish
The beauty of hydrogen is that it can be used to store the renewable energy created through windpower which is generated during off peak periods.
That power is otherwise lost.
Ricky
Good point James. The problem is not designing cars that can burn hydrogen, but the amount of energy needed to separate hydrogen from the chemical compounds in which it is bound in order to use the hydrogen as fuel.
SacramentoE85
We will burn coal, petroleum, and use some wind power in generating the hydrogen. Net effect: still using fossil fuels (even producing and maintaining the wind turbines uses fossil fuels, as do solar cells), though we will be reducing pollution in large congested cities. Hydrogen and biofuels both contain these aspects. They are better than continuing to burn petroleum in our vehicles, but not perfect. The person who can patent the economical solution to stopping all pollution, while not using fossil fuels in any way will be both wealthy and a hero(ine). However, no one is likely to do this. Nuclear is another possibility, but politically that is not likely to occur. How can we tell other nations to cease their nuclear development while building our own? If so, those nations will continue and we will have a whole lot bigger problems to deal with than pollution. We need to continue to develop biofuels and hydrogen technology to slow the damage (both environmentally and economically) that fossil fuels pose, and perhaps an even better long-term solution will come about. Somehow we need to harness regular atmosphere (what is available around your vehicle), and use that to propel our vehicles, while not increasing the use of fossil fuels to create the vehicle. That doesn’t seem likely. Anything else, though, will require fossil fuels or nuclear as a source of energy for the final product.
SacramentoE85
Though, there is one theory I have held, which would take a long time to accomplish (unless we make a massive effort now). Corn ethanol returns 1.6 times the energy consumed, and sugar ethanol 8 times the energy consumed, for our vehicles. Additionally, some ethanol refineries are using waste materials to run their operations, reducing or eliminating their use of fossil fuels (potentially all could do this). That means that if all vehicles, ships, etc. that were involved in the production of fertilizers and crops were using ethanol or other energy-positive biofuels, and our vehicles also used biofuels, we would come out ahead on energy and not be using fossil fuels. If all vehicles switched to ethanol, they could be tuned with higher compression ratio engines, which would equal or eclipse the fuel economy of petroleum-driven engines. In the U.S., we would need to turn many other types of plants and waste into ethanol as well, as corn can only provide part of our needs. At the same time, the coproducts will provide plentiful livestock feed and food ingredients. This is only possible due to corn, sugar cane, and other plants absorbing energy from the sun.
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