Hydrogen Power: The Ultimate Economic Solution

I'm still on semi-sabbatitcal from writing essays - trying to see if I have a book or two in me.  Nonetheless, every once in a while, I am overwhelmed with an urge to write about some issue.  This is one of those.   I believe it's time to revisit the issue of converting from oil to hydrogen fuel cells.  If any of you are interested in reading the essays I wrote on this issue in 2004, let me know - I'll post them all if there seems to be a demand. 

Joe

The Issue

            The United States is struggling with an epic economic crisis, due in great measure to our dependence on Middle-Eastern oil.  Like the rest of the western world, oil is the life blood of our economy.  Oil is also the life blood of terrorism, nearly all of which is perpetrated by radical Muslims who are sponsored by Middle-Eastern oil money.  We buy our oil from people who use the money we pay them to sponsor the terrorists that attack us; and, we are so dependent on the oil that we can’t stop buying it.  Economists agree that the loss of Middle-Eastern oil would almost certainly result in the economic collapse of the western world. 

            Washington may not publicly admit it, but one fundamental reason we are fighting wars in the Middle-East is to preclude the hijacking of that region’s oil reserves by radical Islamic fundamentalists.  These militant radicals believe they are on a mission from God to destroy America and the West, and their best strategy is to take over the entire Middle-East and hold the oil hostage.  Imagine all the Middle-Eastern oil controlled by Ahmadinejad and his cronies.  Nearly all of our national military, economic, and geo-political strategies include maintaining our supply of Middle-Eastern oil. 

            As this is written, much of the Middle-East is in turmoil from the so-called “Arab Spring” – more than a half dozen popular uprisings.  Those of us who love freedom see Islamic democracies emerging throughout the region, and it just might happen.  Amen.  But, the outcomes are far from certain - every one of those budding democracies will be butting heads with well organized and well armed Islamist fundamentalists. 

            So, will the Middle-East ultimately embrace democratic ideals, or are we doomed to perpetually funding both sides of an interminable war with extremist Islam?  Who knows?  This much is certain.  With the future of western civilization as we know it riding on the outcome, it behooves us to find a way out of this nightmare.

The Answer

            Fortunately, a much more predictable and stable option is at hand.  What if we didn’t need the Middle-Eastern oil?  What if we could reduce our dependence on oil to a tiny fraction of the present level, a fraction that we could easily supply from our own reserves?  This may sound like a pipe dream, but there is a clear, available, and practical option that will accomplish that very thing:  Hydrogen Fuel Cells!

            Currently, an enormous percentage of our energy is supplied by engines and generators that are powered by burning fossil fuels, primarily oil, gas and coal. Sometimes we burn them directly and more often they are first refined into gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc.  Hydrogen fuel cells do not burn anything.  They are not engines that burn hydrogen – in fact, they are not engines at all.  Hydrogen fuel cells are batteries that produce electricity directly.  That electricity can power vehicles, heat and cool buildings, and power all your electrical appliances and lights.  Hydrogen fuel cell batteries work by combining hydrogen and oxygen, and the only byproducts are electricity and water.  Hydrogen is one of the two elements in water (H₂O), the most common material on earth, and oxygen is already free and available – it’s in the air that we breathe.

The electricity produced by hydrogen fuel cells can do almost everything that internal combustion engines, furnaces, air conditioning compressors, and other motors now do.  Hydrogen fuel cells could replace the engines in all modes of transportation except trains, ships, and airplanes, and we have plenty of our own oil resources to provide their fuel for hundreds of years. 

Are hydrogen fuel cells a pipe dream?  Absolutely not!  We already have the required technology.  We already know how to do it.  We can begin the switch from oil to hydrogen fuel cells right now.  The only thing lacking is an infrastructure to make, transport, and deliver the hydrogen.  That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is.  We need to replace our gasoline and oil infrastructure with an infrastructure capable of supplying hydrogen.  Fuel trucks, gas stations, pipelines, tanks, and all the other fuel-related stuff would have to be replaced because hydrogen is much more volatile than gasoline or oil. 

In 2004, I wrote a series of essays about converting our economy from oil to hydrogen.  My conclusion was that we could become completely independent of Middle-Eastern oil in 5 - 10 years (we might already be there if we had begun then).  But, I also concluded that the cost of converting to a hydrogen economy would be overwhelming.  I estimated that the cost would exceed $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars).  In 2004, that number seemed too big to even consider.  How does it seem now?  President Obama spent more than that on stimulus programs that didn’t seem to stimulate anything but the government.  If he had used that money to convert our fuel infrastructure to hydrogen, it would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and automobile companies would already be cranking out hydrogen fuel cell powered cars.  Yes, the technology to build fuel cell cars is available right now.  The only reason they don’t build them is that there’s no way to get the hydrogen fuel. 

Ok, it’s all a little more complicated than that.  First of all, there’s the issue of getting the hydrogen out of the water.  Separating hydrogen from oxygen in water requires electricity – lots of it.  So, to get the hydrogen fuel, we will need to generate even more electricity than we currently do. Where do we get the electricity?  All the electricity we need can be provided by clean, safe, nuclear power, supplemented by alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric.  All of this technology exists this very minute.  We can do it, beginning right now, but the transition will be a monumental undertaking.  Ok, I know that nuclear power is scary – Chernobyl, the Japanese tsunami reactor, etc.  But, in spite of these tragedies, nuclear power remains the safest means of producing electricity.  20% of our electricity now comes from nuclear power.  We have the largest Navy in the world, nearly all of which is nuclear powered.  And, do you know how many Americans have been killed by all this nuclear power?  Exactly none!

And, what about Chernobyl and Japan?  Chernobyl was built and run by the Soviets – the only thing the Soviets didn’t manage to screw up was vodka, so you can forget them building and running safe nuclear power plants. The nuclear plants we build in America are completely different and safe.  The only serious mishap we have ever had was Three Mile Island, and do you know how many people were killed or injured in that incident?  Exactly none.  Our plants are so safe that even a major mishap harmed no one.  And Japan?  Well, I hope that disaster taught us not to build nuclear plants in a tsunami zone, and, if we must, at least put the cooling water pumps on the roof instead of the ground where the flood would render them useless.

Obviously, there are other issues.  The current political and regulatory roadblocks are a nightmare, and even if we manage to navigate the regulatory swamp, it will take 5 – 10 years to get all the hydrogen infrastructure and nuclear plants built.  15 years is probably a more reasonable estimate.  Meanwhile, as soon as OPEC figures out that we will soon become independent of their oil, they’ll likely try to sink our plans by threatening everything from raising the price of oil to cutting us off. 

So what do we do?  We begin by recognizing that some of the largest coal and natural gas reserves on earth are right here in America.  Furthermore, the northern Rocky Mountains and our offshore shelves hold huge stores of oil.  We have enough oil to easily last us 20+ years, gas to last 100 years, and coal to last hundreds of years more.  If we undertake a crash program of developing these resources as well as building new refineries, we could be independent of Middle Eastern oil in just a few years.  And, that would give us plenty of time to convert to hydrogen and nuclear power.

Beyond a doubt, there would be years of hardship while we undertake the conversions, but the end result would be an immeasurable gift to the future.

An America Without Oil

Think of the benefits of no longer being dependent on Middle Eastern oil.  Energy, the life blood of our economy would become plentiful.  Everything depends on energy, and stable sources of hydrogen and electrical energy would ensure a stable economy.

Furthermore, the environmental benefits are too wonderful to imagine.  The four greatest sources of man-made pollution are industry, sanitary waste disposal (sewage), solid waste disposal (garbage), and the extraction, refining, distribution, and burning of fossil fuels, especially for transportation and power generation.  We already know how to deal with the first three:  stack scrubbers and other pollution control measures have cleaned up 95% of industrial emissions; we have the technology to address sewage disposal (although funding remains a huge barrier for most State and local governments); and, the advent of modern composite and double liner systems in the past 25 years has reduced garbage-generated pollution to a tiny fraction of its former levels.  Therefore, if we could only stop fossil fuel related pollution, we would reduce man-made pollution to levels unseen since the advent of the industrial age.

And, imagine Radical Muslim terrorists going broke.  Without funding, Islamist terrorists would join the ranks of all the other wacko fringe groups, and they would soon fade into a dim memory.

In every way:  geo-politically, environmentally, and economically, the world would be such a better place if we were not dependent on oil.   Let’s begin the transition to hydrogen fuel cells, right now!

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