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Case Against the Hydrogen Economy: 4X More Expensive Than Electron Economy

thewatt.com — There's a lot of hype over the "hydrogen economy", and billions have been spent pursuing it. However, it turns out that converting energy into electricity to electrolyze water to make hydrogen just to convert the hydrogen back to electricity using a fuel cell is four times as expensive as simply using batteries; the laws of physics set the limits.

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  • Berkana, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If any of you remember one of the articles that launched the hype on the "hydrogen economy", and may likely have coined the term, it was this issue of WIRED magazine, the legendary hype masters:

    http://www.wired.com/wired/reprints/hydrogen.html

    I recommend everyone watch the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" (http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/ ) . The hydrogen fuel cell (which we now know is a dead end) is partially responsible.
  • Berkana, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Quoted from the article for those who want to skim rather than committing to read:
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    Ulf Bossel: Hydrogen is an artificial, synthetic fuel. It has to be made from other energy. If you look at renewable energy, most of it is harvested as electricity, some as biomass and some as solar heat, but basically most of the renewable energy is harvested as electricity. Hydrogen has to be made artificially by splitting water by electrolysis. This requires more energy than you will ever recover from the hydrogen. However, hydrogen has to be compressed or liquefied for handling, it has to be distributed, and then reconverted back to, guess what, electricity. That means electricity derived from hydrogen has to compete with its original energy source, electricity. If you go through a hydrogen chain, you find that after the fuel cell only 25% of the original electricity is available for use by consumers. A hydrogen economy is a gigantic energy waste. We cannot afford this in the future. Therefore, three of four renewable energy power plants are needed to balance the losses within a hydrogen economy luxury. Because of the losses, electricity derived from fuel cells and hydrogen must be four times more expensive than power from the grid.

    Ben Kenney: So, you might as well just keep it in grid form.
    . . .
    Ulf Bossel: . . . With the same amount of electricity, original electricity, be it from wind solar energy, with the same amount of electricity you can drive an electric car three times farther than a hydrogen car. On 100 kWh of electricity you can drive an electric car 120 kilometers while a hydrogen fuel cell car of similar size can do only about 40 km. If we want to have mobility and a sustainable future, we have to go for electric cars and not for hydrogen cars because we electric cars are less costly to operate. It is not the vehicle technology, but a question of energy cost of the fuel. Hydrogen must always be much more expensive than electricity needed to split water by electrolysis etc. That is a very clear picture. I have analyzed the situation to illustrate how much water and electricity is needed for certain hydrogen jobs. If you take the Frankfurt Airport and Frankfurt Airport is perhaps comparable to the airport at Montreal. About 50 jumbo jets leave Frankfurt every day, each charged with 130 tons of kerosene. If you replace kerosene by hydrogen on a one-to-one energy base, each plane needs 50 tons of hydrogen. As a side remark: 50 tons of liquid hydrogen occupy 720 cubic meters of space, while 130 tons of kerosene take only 160 cubic meters. We need totally different airplanes for hydrogen. But that is another story. To fill the 50 jumbo jets one needs 2,500 tons of liquid hydrogen every day. 22,500 cubic meters of water, the water consumption of a city of 100,000, must be split by electrolysis. For this one the continuous electricity output of about eight nuclear power plants is needed. Now, if the entire traffic at Frankfurt Airport was all done with hydrogen, one would need the water consumption of the City of Frankfurt plus about 25 nuclear power plants. Using hydrogen for all public air and road transport in Germany, it would take the power output of about 400 nuclear power plants plus enormous amounts of water. You need nine kilograms of water to make one kilogram of hydrogen. The Rhine river and all other rivers would be dry in the summer because the water is used to make hydrogen. So, we are really approaching limits and we have to talk about these limits before we talk about a hydrogen economy.
    ________________________

    The article is excellent. I recommend reading the whole thing, rather than just skimming. Or, listen to the podcast.

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