End of fossil fuel age?

Sesshoumaru

Here is an interesting article from the Gaurdian which some of you might be interested in reading.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,808799,00.html

Typedef

Hydrogen being used as renewable energy is the most exciting and promising field of energy production going today.

Why?
Because you extract hydrogen from water then 'burn' the hydrogen and the output? The output is water. Thus renewable energy.
The only issue is whether or not it is energy efficient (ie) does it cost more energy to extract the hydrogen from the water then you ultimately get from the 'burning' of the hydrogen?

That is the big issue that has to be resolved with hydrogen fuel technology, not to be confused with hydrogen batteries, which essentially store energy, hydrogen as fuel is in fact a renewable source of energy with an as yet unanswered question as to whether or not the process is ultimately energy efficient.


http://www.no2nice.org.
Do not let the process of Irish Referenda become subservient to a Supra National Federalist edict. Requantify Ireland's democratic voice and vote No the the Nice Treaty.

Cuidado con el gato baby

Sesshoumaru

Because you extract hydrogen from water then 'burn' the hydrogen and the output? The output is water. Thus renewable energy.

I don't think we are going to see cars with internal hydrogen cumbustion engines anytime soon. I think the great promise of hydrogen in the medium term is hydrogen fuel cells which provide electricity to drive electric vehicles.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/10/09/fuelcell/index.html

netwhizkid

Hi,
Hydrogen has huge potential, i think it should be used on alot of cars, But it has its drawback, a person can't exactly call into their local petrol station and say give me 10 gallons of hydrogen please, can they ?, my plan for cars would be people living in cities and large towns could use Battery Cars i.e Electric cars as they are only doing low milage anyway, as for the people of the country the hydrogen car would be more Efficent, as they generally are doing more milage. As for Electrical Generation windpower is the way to go, but that also has its drawbacks, Nobody wants windmills in their back yards, so as an alternative Nuclear Fusion, Which is clean, produces no nuclear waste, and cannot meltdown, but this technology is at an expiremental stage yet, scientests reckon in 40 years Nucler Fusion will be replacing Nuclear Fission, which is highly dangerous.

Regards netwhizkid

Sesshoumaru

a person can't exactly call into their local petrol station and say give me 10 gallons of hydrogen please, can they ?

Not yet but thats just a matter of investment in new filling stations and upgrading the existing ones. As for wind power, I think it has a significant role to play especially here in Ireland. But I think the idea of centralised power distribution will become ancient history in the future. New homes in the future will probably come equiped with the ability to produce their own power. Whether that is wind, solar, hydrogen fuel cells or all three.

Mailman

Well in the short term the car manufacturers don't care because they'll be striping Hyrdrogen from Hydrocarbons i.e. Oil/Petrol to satisfy the environmental requirments for selling environmentally friendly cars in California.

In the long term, we are still waiting for a break through but there has been some developements using algae that have looked promising and it will be more economical to use wind turbines if you know that you can sell the electricity to somebody at night when nobody else wants it and hydrogen generation through electrolysis seems to be a good candidate.

Who knows, maybe our massive wind resource will be, in years to come, just like the oil reserves beneath the desert in Saudi Arabia.

The Saint

Toyota and Honda have hybrid cars already in the markrt place in America. They seem cost around the same as ordinary cars and you can get a $2000 tax deduction on it. Why can these cars not be bought here and why is there no tax insentives for eco friendly cars here?

http://www.hondacars.com/models/model_overview.asp?ModelName=Civic+Hybrid

Typedef

Al Gore introduced a subsidy for hybrid cars that unfortunately the Bush Administration revoked, which was a shame as the hybrids are a step in the right direction.

http://www.heartland.org/environment/mar02/hydrogen.htm

The Bush administration will provide massive new funding to encourage American automobile manufacturers to research and develop hydrogen fuel cell cars, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced January 9 at the Detroit auto show.

The new initiative, termed Freedom Cooperative Automotive Research (CAR), will replace a Clinton-era program that encouraged the research and development of gasoline-electric hybrid cars.

"The long-term results of this cooperative effort will be cars and trucks that are more efficient, cheaper to operate, pollution-free, and competitive in the showroom," said Abraham.

Hydrogen fuel cells work much like a battery, producing energy from chemical reactions. With hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen is combined with oxygen, leaving water as its unused byproduct.

It depends on how you look at this one, the funding for hybrid cars was impacting the present, while the Bush Administration making funding available for hydrogen fuel cell cars will hopefully be good for the future, lets not debate the politics of the move here.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/10.17D.wh.elec.car.htm

White House Joins Fight Against Electric Cars
By Katharine Q. Seelye
New York Times

Thursday, 10 October, 2002

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 -- The Bush administration went to court today to support the automobile industry's effort to eliminate requirements in California that auto manufacturers sell electric cars.

President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., was the chief lobbyist for General Motors, one of the plaintiffs in the case. Mr. Card was also head of an auto industry trade association when California proposed to require electric vehicles, and has publicly opposed such a requirement.

Under California clean air rules, 10 percent of the vehicles sold in the 2003 to 2008 model years must be electric or "zero-emission vehicles." But the state, recognizing that the car companies were not ready to meet that goal, offered to let them sell hybrid vehicles, which run on gasoline and electricity, to satisfy part of the requirement.

Sesshoumaru

Toyota and Honda have hybrid cars already in the markrt place in America. They seem cost around the same as ordinary cars and you can get a $2000 tax deduction on it. Why can these cars not be bought here and why is there no tax insentives for eco friendly cars here?

You can buy at least one of those cars here the Toyota Prius. But as far as I know there are no tax deductions for owning a hybrid car. Also its damn expensive! €30440 for the standard model. Besides being a hybrid its a fairly standard saloon car. For that kind of money I wouldn't buy one.

Balfa

Aha.. i saw something about hydrogen-electrolysis power on tv a few years back, and recently i did a search on the net for it, but all i found was hydrogen fuel-cell stuff, which is nowhere near as useful/interesting. I was beginning to think i'd imagined the electrolysis thingy, so thanks for differentiating between the two, Typedef

Also, is it not true fuel-cell cars are actually less economical, because it takes more fossil fuel to generate the electricity at a power station and transmit it hundreds of kilometers to your home so you can recharge your car than it does to run the ould internal combustion motor?

Typedef

Assuming you derive your energy from fossil fuels, then yes, it is counterproductive to use electric cars.

However if you derive your energy from Hydro, Geo-Thermal, Solar, Wind or even Atomic energy then usage of electric cars to placate fossil fuel emissions becomes, not only logical, but desireable. Of course exchanging fossil fuel emissions for Nuclear waste is not much of a trade off, but for the other mentioned renewables I believe the argument is tenable.

Ryo Hazuki

give me 10 gallons of hydrogen please, can they ?

Actually I was watchin the discovery channel and saw a BMW in Germany that is powered by hydrogen. It pulled into a "gas" station and filled up using a gas pump whick locks onto the fuel inlet.

The water can be collected or just let out of the exhaust.

chernobyl

Crack pot theories aside, we really have no good alternative to fossil fuel other than Nuclear and that has proved very costly [sellafield] but in most parts of the world it appears effective but obviously, the risks..