[Leanan]

No, I don't think hydrogen is the future. It may be part of the future, but it's not the future.

According to David Goodstein (a CalTech physicist and the author of Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil):

There’s a lot of talk about hydrogen because of the president’s initiative—the governor of California has also announced an initiative. I think what people don’t understand about hydrogen is that it is not a source of energy. You have to use energy to make hydrogen—it’s just a way of storing and transporting energy. And with today’s economics and today’s technology, it takes the equivalent of six gallons of gasoline to make enough hydrogen to replace one gallon of gasoline.

Remember, the energy crisis won't be due to lack of oil. It will be due to lack of cheap oil. Cheap oil is what we've built our society on. Hydrogen will never be cheap energy.

As for his comment about electric cars...I think he's right. There won't be electric cars. I suspect there won't be any cars at all. They just won't make sense, without cheap oil to fuel them. Asphalt is made of oil. Tires are made of oil. Our highways are funded by fuel taxes, a lot of them paid by the trucking industry. Once oil is no longer cheap, it just won't make sense to maintain the current road system. Instead, we'll go to a mix of public transportation and maybe the good old horse. Nuclear train to the nearest stop, then rent a horse to get you the rest of the way.

[JLK]

Hydrogen will ultimately become the portable energy carrier of choice after first oil and later natural gas become unavailable due to depletion. It has its advantages and its disadvantages, but it is better than any of the alternatives. Yes, it takes energy (electricity) to make hydrogen from water. This electricity could come from any source, but in the mid term most of it will likely come from nuclear reactors, and specifically breeder type reactors.

[Leanan]

Why hydrogen? Why not methane or ethanol?

[rowante]

Hydrogen because it can be made from coal or nuclear. Ethanol comes from plant material which for industrial production consumes oil and natural gas.

If we switched to hydrogen we would slow down the enevitable slide but only if it is produced from coal or nuclear electricity. Countries like the US do not have coal and nuclear electricity production on a big enough scale to replace petroleum with hydrogen as a transport fuel to my knowledge. Also clean coal burning is only in prototype stage in the US. Australia has made great in-roads in this technology but mass burning of coal will still result in tons of mercury and CO2 being released into the envirnoment. Not good.

[Pops]

But as leanan said:

“Remember, the energy crisis won't be due to lack of oil. It will be due to lack of cheap oil. Cheap oil is what we've built our society on. Hydrogen will never be cheap energy.”

If the number given is true (I don’t know) – 6 gal of gas to produce 1 gal of gas equivalent, I fail to see the point.

If gas is 20 bucks per gallon and hydrogen is $120 or even makes it down to $60 or $30 after we built the conversion plants, pay off the nuke plants, update the electric grid, add hydrogen pumps at the gas stations – a scary thought on it’s face, and perfect a way to prevent the vehicle tanks from going up like the Hindenburg in a crash…

Why would I own a hydrogen car if it’s still $30 a gallon? Why would I still own a car for that matter - can you imagine what that car will cost to manufacture with “cheap” oil at $300/bbl?

[MrPC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rowante', 'C')ountries like the US do not have coal and nuclear electricity production on a big enough scale to replace petroleum with hydrogen as a transport fuel to my knowledge.

[JLK]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'B')ut as leanan said:

“Remember, the energy crisis won't be due to lack of oil. It will be due to lack of cheap oil. Cheap oil is what we've built our society on. Hydrogen will never be cheap energy.”

[Pops]

JKL, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I’ll be brief.

I understand the difference between carrier and primary source, in fact that is my point.

We will not have cheap electricity.

I believe MrPC illustrated that - he ran out of envelope before he could finish his calculation.

[k_semler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leaf', '
')university students, (and I'm sure well trained scientists) have actually demonstrated that the worlds, so called "energy crisis" is actually just bull ****. We have the tech power to use hydrogen atoms to fuel our civilization indefinitely. well at least until our sun runs out of it...........

[Falconoffury]

http://manila.servlet.net/fuelcellfolly/

There's an article that will explain fuel cells and hydrogen. Some interesting points I found was that Toyota and Honda are manufacturing fuel cell vehicles at a rate of 1 per month. These vehicles cost $1 million dollars each and they require platinum, which is a rare element.

Anyone who thinks we will replace 200 million gasoline cars with hydrogen cars is living in a dream world. Some geologists think peak oil is 15 years away, while others think it's 5 years. There is no way we will be able to adapt our entire society in time.

[MrPC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('k_semler', 'C')an I use hydrogen to produce Nitrogen to use in fertilizers

[k_semler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrPC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('k_semler', 'C')an I use hydrogen to produce Nitrogen to use in fertilizers

[MrPC]

Yes, traditional soil nigrogenation means do exist and can improve crop yields above what would be achieved by planting in an otherwise untreated field. However, they can't compare with the yields achieved by artificial fertilizers, and certainly can't sustain such a high global population.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ydrogen because it can be made from coal or nuclear. Ethanol comes from plant material which for industrial production consumes oil and natural gas.

[k_semler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrPC', 'Y')es, traditional soil nigrogenation means do exist and can improve crop yields above what would be achieved by planting in an otherwise untreated field. However, they can't compare with the yields achieved by artificial fertilizers, and certainly can't sustain such a high global population.

[Aaron]

For example, nuclear Plant Hatch in Georgia withdraws an average of 57 million gallons per day from the Altamaha River and actually "consumes" 33 million gallons per day, lost primarily as water vapor, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

http://www.cleanenergy.org/programs/water.cfm

[Leanan]

We won't be swimming in horse manure. Fertilizer will be too valuable to swim in.

That, I think, is the real crisis we face. If push comes to shove, we can do without cars. We can even do without electricity. We can't do without fertilizer.

Back in the '60s, people predicted that we'd soon be facing Malthus' doom. Heck, my dad became an agronomist for that reason; his advisors all told him that feeding the world would be the major problem of the future.

It hasn't happened...yet. The reason was the "Green Revolution," that used technology to triple food production. Especially petroleum-derived nitrogen-based fertilizers.

But we're hitting the limits of the Green Revolution now. Even though we still have relatively cheap and plentiful oil. World food production has fallen for five straight years. Because the weather is growing less predictable, the soil is becoming exhausted, and water is becoming scarcer. The UN predicts that by 2050, we'll only be able to feed half the world's population. (And that's assuming oil doesn't peak.) CNN's finance show, "Lou Dobbs Tonight" ran a story not long ago about how Canada and the U.S., the only major food exporters left in the world, will soon not have enough to export. Again, that's assuming oil doesn't peak.

Without oil, the problem becomes much, much worse. Yes, there are organic sources of nitrogen available. There are nitrogen-fixing crops. We could remove the heavy metals from sewage sludge and use that. We could produce it using massive amounts of energy. But it won't be enough. And it will be too expensive for many farmers to afford.

Without petroleum-derived nitrogen-based fertilizers, we would be hard pressed to feed our current population, let alone any increase due to immigration or birth rates. We certainly wouldn't have anything to export, though many people depend on our exports. Moreover, without cheap oil to run farm equipment, and without the transportation system to ship food cheaply, most of us will probably be forced back to a rural lifestyle. One in which most of our time is spent farming. (In Cuba, mentioned in another thread as a country that survived an oil crash, people spend 2/3 of their time farming, and people who farm have three times the income of those who do not.) Without oil, we simply can't expect 2% of the population to create enough food for everyone. It will be like it was before industrialization, when 90% of the population were farmers.

And that might actually make our problems worse. The population bomb everyone worried about so much in the '60s and '70s has been defused. Oh, we're still growing, but not nearly as fast as predicted. Birth rates are falling all over the world. And a big reason why is industrialization. Rural families have lots of kids, because it's free labor. Even in China, rural families are exempt from the one-child policy. In the city, it's a different story. With families crammed into small apartments and few jobs suitable for kids, it just doesn't make sense to have a large family.

But if we go back to a rural lifestyle, suddenly having lots of kids will make economic sense again. For individuals, anyway, though not for society as a whole. I suspect it will mean a further drop in our standard of living, and likely a high death rate from disease, violence, and starvation.

[Pops]

Good post Leanan.

I too had read of recent falling production. Per capita global consumption of both food and oil indicates to me however that we may have diverted the population bomb but we haven’t defused it by a long shot.

Although we’re a little off topic, without constraint, world population will double in the next 40 years and as you say we can barely feed those alive today. Starving to death 6 b people doesn’t sound like we’ve averted the problem.

Lots of good points!

(Edited for spelling)