Volume 22, Number 1 January 1993
COMMENT
The Hydrogen Energy Economy
In the months since suggesting the Forum study on the hydrogen
energy economy (October 1992), I have begun a more detailed study
myself. This is essentially a progress report. The field has grown
to where a six-month part-time study by a single individual is not
enough to cover it adequately, though some preliminary conclusions
appear reasonably firm.
Briefly, there is essentially universal agreement that
hydrogen is an environmentally benign, versatile, renewable,
transportable and storable fuel, probably unique and indispensable for
the vast energy storage needed to permit solar, wind, and other
renewables to contribute significantly to the world energy economy and
ultimately to break our dependence on fossil fuels. There is
widespread agreement that transition to the hydrogen economy is
inevitable, but a large range in estimated times for the transition to
come about. The optimistic time scale is decades, pessimists
(realists?) implicitly estimate large fractions of a century or more.
My own feeling is that decades could suffice if the hydrogen economy
becomes a national priority. Industry might swing it alone in a few
extra decades. The transition would be costly, and I believe this is
the major hurdle. Other impediments, technical and scientific, should
be surmountable with determined techno-scientific effort. This would
probably be expensive and protracted, but small in cost compared with
that of constructing the needed infrastructure.
There is widespread agreement that transition
to the hydrogen economy is inevitable,
but a large range in estimated times
for the transition
Thousands of papers have been published by research workers
the world over, many in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy,
others in standard journals or journals devoted to solar, or other
alternative energy sources, in conference proceedings, specialized
monographs and various texts. The range, quality and diversity are
enormous. Physics, engineering, economics, photobiology,
photoelectrochemistry, industry and government programs are some of
the major headings and each splits into many sub-headings. Activity
is international, extensive, diversified, often sophisticated and
ingenious, sometimes naive and repetitious (like R&D in general!),
generally laboratory-scale or theoretical and rarely coming near, even
in theory, to realistic pilot-plant scale. I do not believe cost
alone should be blamed for the limited practical progress to date. To
it should be added tradition, inertia, inability of specialists to
appreciate alien areas, lack of communication between fields which
developed independently but which need to be combined in this effort,
the natural reluctance of an enterprise to invest prematurely in areas
lacking proven markets, the inability of such markets to develop
without supporting infrastructure, and the difficulty of developing
such infrastructures if the markets to support them do not yet exist.
This list can be lengthened. But society has been able to get off
dead center in similar situations in the past (e.g., development of
nuclear energy, the TV industry and the computer revolution, earlier
the rise of the automotive, petrochemical, and electrical industries,
and still earlier the steel and chemical industries and the industrial
revolution itself).
How can we get the transition to the hydrogen economy started?
In cases of rapid transition, like atomic bombs/nuclear energy there
have been strong pushes and pulls, respectively the need to win World
War II and to provide what was at first thought to be cheap, clean,
almost inexhaustible energy. Large federal funding was decisive. In
the case at hand push and pull are fragmented, the funding climate
hostile, and lower cost alternatives still available in most cases (a
very important cost factor). One is tempted to conclude that the
transition will be evolutionary, doomed to slowness until both pushes
and pulls become unified forces, and the differential cost between
hydrogen and its fossil competitors is reduced to where it is no
longer a powerful obstacle. I believe, however, that significant
synergies can reduce hydrogen cost, increasing the pull of
proliferating applications while the push of pollution abatement,
petrochemical shortages, global warming worries, etc. and their
consequent costs (including those of energy security, foreign exchange
problems, etc.) is sure to increase. Current niche applications for
hydrogen will increase in number as costs go down, and quantitative
increase in demand will lead to economies of scale in hydrogen
production. This auto-catalytic cost reduction, one hopes, will
culminate in hydrogen becoming a major fuel and increasing important
chemical feedstock.
The search for significant synergies thus assumes major
importance. Fortunately they seem to be real and to involve such
major segments of the economy that the vast cost would be both
justifiable and supportable, hopefully on a pay-as-you-go basis. Many
synergies can be studied, funded in different ways, and implemented in
independent parallel efforts on widely differing time scales. They
range from here-and-now to pie-in-the-sky scenarios, from those
capable of supporting themselves almost from the start to those
involving very long range investment. With proper planning these last
could perhaps be significantly, if not totally, supported by the
self-supporters. Bold imagination and creative vision will surely be
needed in many segments of a gigantic long-range enterprise,
comparable to, if not exceeding, what occurred in nuclear energy or
the computer revolution.
A synergetic example
Consider the following example of a synergetic scenario.
Electric utilities, say in the Great Lakes--St. Lawrence Seaway
region, in response to public concerns, wish to change over from
fossil fuels to renewable primary energy sources (with nuclear energy
a default possibility). Suppose solar energy is deemed impractical
because of excessive cloud cover, bad weather, cost of real estate,
first cost of photovoltaic cells, intermittent sunshine, maintenance,
etc., so wind power is considered. Suppose wind power generator
manufacturers can provide reliable 25 KW units on a cost-effective
basis, and that the utility wants 750 MW. This would requite 30,000
units, and what do we do when the wind isn't blowing? So we consider
lining both sides of the St. Lawrence Seaway with wind generators,
perhaps with additional units on islands, on stilts, or floating,
generating hydrogen whenever there is more wind-power available than
needed, using hydrogen fuel-cells to generate electricity when the
wind isn't blowing and to meet peak demands.
The utility concludes the cost will be very high, braces
itself for battles with rate-determining bodies and decides to wait
and see what public opinion, the political climate, tax policies
etc. will be when the brownouts get worse.
Meanwhile the fertilizer and liquid hydrogen industries are
feeling uncomfortable because they get their hydrogen from stripping
methane, thereby generating CO2, a greenhouse gas. They also see the
possibility of short supplies of CH4 because it is needed for home
heating, for natural-gas-powered autos, buses, etc., and because CH4
is a much cleaner fuel than coal, oil or biomass. They consider a
joint effort to find a clean (say electrolytic) source of H2, and find
the electric utility receptive to the idea of making it a threesome.
They invite Seaway people to their brain-storming sessions and find
there is interest in lengthening the shipping season and the hope is
expressed that wind power might warm the water enough to make the ice
crackable by ordinary ships for a few extra months, and perhaps by
ice-breakers throughout the winter. The utility likes that very much
as Niagara Falls then wouldn't freeze up and hydro power would be
available all year long. Back-of-the envelope calculations suggest it
might actually pay to keep the water flowing!
So we consider lining the St. Lawrence seaway
with wind generators, generating hydrogen
when there is more wind than needed,
using fuel-cells to generate electricity
when the wind isn't blowing.
Enthusiasm spreads, and local utilities along the Seaway, as
well as individual land-owners and farmers ask why they can't put up
their own wind-machines and feed into the grid whatever power they can
spare whenever they can spare it. Local, federal and Canadian
governments all see how attractive the possibility is, and work to
expedite the enterprise. The suggestion is made that the icebreaker
should be nuclear powered, so that its cooling water can help keep the
Seaway open, and its reactor can operate at full power the year round
to generate even more hydrogen. A US-Canada Seaway Consortium is
formed, the US takes the Savannah out of mothballs to serve as the
first ice-breaker (after some minor modifications), Quebec Hydropower
becomes a member of the consortium as does a new Bay of Fundy Tidal
Power Authority. The structure of the Seaway Consortium is kept open
and flexible, so that the number of affiliated wind machines, mostly
owned by individuals, soon exceeds 105.
The price of power and hydrogen go down, niche applications
grow (H2-powered airplanes is one of the first, with inroads soon made
on trains, ships, and buses) and break-throughs in solar-cell cost and
efficiency soon result in solar panels festooning all wind machine
towers. This in turn via economics in scale revolutionizes housing,
where solar "power roofs" power fuel-cell-driven family cars. The
coal mines take on new life, for cheap H2 catalytically converts coal
to CH4 which becomes the basis of a new petrochemical industry of
organic and nitrogen-organic compounds (the last more than doubling
the size of the ammonia industry). The oil industry, down-sizes but
invests in coal and hydrogen. This, plus new chemicals and materials
based on oil, keeps even small oil companies viable.
The US and Canada become integrated in power and H2, and soon
Mexico joins in. Hydrogen becomes an important export. Central and
South American join the consortium, Europe and China set up their own,
North Africa joins Europe and the grid soon spreads over the rest of
Africa. The European and Chinese consortia also grow, meet in Russia
and join, Indian, South-East Asia, Australia and Oceania join them,
and the Old and New World consortia later join across the polar
regions. Pollution, global warming etc. become dim memories, Mother
Earth regains her health and everybody lives happily forever after.
How's that for a rosy scenario? The most fantastic part is
not scientific or technical. It is that people will do what is in the
best interest of all rather than virtually eating each other alive!
Another scenario
There are many other nice scenarios (I omit all nasty ones).
For example, one could create islands, maybe floating, of modular
construction and indefinitely extendible. We could start out,
perhaps, with a nuclear reactor producing hydrogen by electrolysis,
and other things (such as NH3) could follow. Multiple flash
distillation of hot reactor coolant would be a source of fresh water
for a thirsty world (ditto H2 fuel-cell "ash") and the brine would be
a source of chemicals and deuterium. The NIMBY effect would be
eliminated. The island would process its own waste and either store
it or convert it into vitreous ceramic used for underwater structures.
It could grow to be a center for farming the sea, for providing
nesting sites for sea birds (constructed for convenient guano
harvesting), and egg-laying sites for sea-turtles. One can add
modules as desired for geophysical studies, mining sea resources,
biological, ecological, astronomical, atmospheric, oceanographic and
other studies. Wind/solar power modules could be added on
indefinitely. The islands could become self-sufficient and great
places to live, provide independence of land in the sense that they
wouldn't drown if polar ice melts on account of global warming, could
become foci of international friendship, and ultimately lead to a
means of supporting a large part of our exploding world population.
This "Project Noah" obviously is long-range and a good theme for
science fiction. But the ocean is pretty much the last terrestrial
frontier, both more attractive and more accessible for habitation than
space. Though now fanciful, this scenario can be as real as we want
to make it.
Make up your own further scenarios! Though it is premature to
say the hydrogen energy economy will solve all our problems, it looks
too good for the idea to be left gathering dust.
Jerome Rothstein
Emeritus Professor Department of Computer & Information Science The
Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio 43210-1277
If we look at the world as a whole, it is not at all clear
that advances in science and technology have translated into
sustainable advances in quality of life for the majority of the human
race.
Considering all the benefits that have accrued to
industrialized society over the past 50 years because of science - and
the benefits are innumerable - it is still difficult to draw a
correlation between scientific and technological capability on the one
hand, and quality of life on the other. If you consider criteria such
as infant mortality, life expectancy, literacy rates, equality of
opportunity for all citizens, and hours spent in front of a
television, the US ranks considerably lower than many nations that are
less technologically "advanced," and less economically "prosperous"
than we are.
My friend Greg burst into my office the other day shaking his
head and asking "What are physicists good for, Hobson? Why would
anybody want to hire one? What is special about physics?" He
complained that PhD programs prepare graduates who do things that only
physicists care about, graduates who settle into other departments
where they prepare other students to do the same thing. How can we
change this barely self-perpetuating closed system? Even relatively
small reforms, such as the Introductory University Physics Project's
recommendations for bringing introductory physics into the twentieth
century (let alone the twenty-first!), are difficult. The system has
great inertia.
Greg is a successful quantum optics experimentalist. He loves
physics. He is one of our department's best teachers. Despite having
every reason to feel good about the future of physics, he doesn't. He
is not an isolated case. Judging from recent surveys conducted by
Leon Lederman and others, evidence of low morale in the entire
scientific community has been building steadily lately. ]
The malaise is all around us. Despite my department's strong
research program, we have trouble keeping up enrollments, and finding
enough good English-speaking graduate students to fill our teaching
assistantships. The superconducting super collider, perhaps symbolic
of physics research, was nearly derailed by Congress. The National
Science Foundation is backing out of basic research and into
market-directed research and education. High school physics
enrollments remain stuck at 20%. The American Physical Society finds
it hard to hold together even a single yearly general meeting. Leon
Lederman writes of "Science: the end of the frontier?"
Another friend and colleague opines that in a few more years
physics will be, like ancient Latin and Greek, a dead language. The
uses of physics will never die, for they are profitable. But true
physics, "natural philosophy," the search for natural truth and
understanding, is ill, perhaps mortally.
We can name a lot of reasons for this: the end of the cold
war, world competition, the economy, industrial belt-tightening,
Congressional belt-tightening, and so forth. But these don't go to
the philosophical center of the problem. It isn't easy to see the
center, but we all need to search for it and suggest solutions.
Physics hangs in the balance. Indeed the "endless frontier" of
science hangs in the balance, for physics is at the cutting edge of a
malaise that extends to other sciences.
Somewhere near the center lie such ancient sins as ego,
narrow-mindedness, and self-centeredness.
An editorial in Science (6 March 1992) proclaims "It is the
conviction of scientists that more basic research will profit not only
the globe, but also the specific countries in which it is carried out.
The former is essentially obvious." In light of the science-related
problems that exist today, beginning with overpopulation, I'm not even
certain that scientists still agree that this is obvious. And it is
clear that many thoughtful non-scientists seriously doubt that the
marginal effect of more basic research is beneficial. The hubris of
the quoted statement is common among scientists. It reflects an
egotistical failure to listen and take seriously other non-scientific
points of view.
Just as science has walled itself off from the world at large,
so each science, each academic department, and even each specialty
within physics (quantum optics, for instance), has walled itself off
from each other. We have become, literally, narrow-minded. It is a
problem inherent in science. Around the time of Galileo, scientists
discovered the advantages of specialization. We have found such
rewards in "analysis," in studying the individual pieces of the
puzzle, that we have forgotten what the pieces are pieces of. We
study the pieces themselves, without cultural context, without social
context, without history, often even without scientific context, and
our pieces become irrelevant to the public and sometimes, if we ask
ourselves honestly what it all means, to ourselves.
At the end of a 12-year "me first" epoch, it is not surprising
that universities, physicists, and the physics profession, have tried
to get from physics what they could for themselves. But the
self-centeredness of physics, and science, begin much earlier,
probably right after World War II when universities discovered the
benefits, to themselves, of research. Prestige, and out-of-state tax
dollars, came from research. Unsurprisingly, physicists and physics
followed the trend. Teaching and public service were out, pure
research was in. The pull of defense and other dollars opened wider
the split represented by the official division of the university
physics community into a research association and a teaching
association an unwholesome kind of specialization in which teachers
remain satisfied with rusting lectures that are stuck in the Newtonian
era and mired in gadgets and trivial details, while researchers seem
not to notice that non-physicists neither care about nor understand
their research projects. There was, and is, an attitude that the
physics profession should put their energies, and other people's
money, into fundamental questions of physics simply because, like
Mount Everest, they are there. But many other things are "there" too,
and they are things the rest of humankind cares more about:
overpopulation, for example.
Congressman George Brown, Chair of the House science and
technology committee and one of science's best friends in Congress,
has recently written on these matters. Excerpts from one of his
articles are reprinted above. His strong words are worthy of our
attention.
Science is changing, because the world is changing. US
physics is catching the front end of these changes, as they affect
science. It is not easy to see what the issues really are, but it is
clear that the questions must be approached on a deeper level than
"How much money can we get for basic research?" or "How can we
convince the public that they need the SSC?" We might ask, instead:
What is basic research really good for globally, what kinds of basic
research are good for that purpose, and how can we measurably confirm
that prediction? And: Is humankind likely to need the information
likely to come from the SSC anytime soon, or could we as well wait and
let a future generation discover this information?
The answers are even murkier than the questions. It would
help if physicists were more interested in the physics outside their
own specialty, if APS and AAPT were united in a single organization,
if physicists focused more on teaching and on non-scientists, if
physicists were more sensitive to large cultural trends, and if
physicists took societal questions seriously as part of their
professional lives. But it is easier to suggest such answers than to
carry them out. For example, university physicists who focus more on
teaching do so at a cost in pay and prestige, because that is the way
we have set up the system. That dilemma illustrates the problem. And
such dilemmas are what caused Greg to burst into my office the other
day.
