The fact I hear so many people out there chanting this as it will SAVE US in the future really annoys me about the ignorance of society, all of a sudden everyone is an expert on energy. Sorry to burst your bubble but there will be no switch to hydrogen. Hydrogen is not a fuel, it’s an energy transfer medium. It must be made from either water or natural gas. The rate of energy loss in hydrogen is as high as 80%. You would need a fuel tank the size of your car to get the same energy as a tank of gasoline. Not to mention the transport/storage issues (compression/liquefaction/pressure/leaks, etc)
Bottom line is hydrogen has a very low energy density, and is a net energy loss. That is, it’s EROEI is very negative 0.2:1.
Originally posted 2009-08-04 12:40:41.
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Skeptics understand this and have questioned the wisdom of the concept for many years. It is big oil, specifically Exxon/Mobil that is pushing this new product line in conjunction with BMW and some other German car brands. It is their intention to get the price of gasoline well over $5 a gallon so their hydrogen highway plan will fly.
Because Hydrogen lobbyists have a lot of money.
Natural gas run through a fuel cell (with the hydrogen removed by an internal rectifier) is over 60% efficient. ICE’s are around 20% efficient. The first internal combustion engines ran off hydrogen. They were switched to a plentiful waste product (gasoline) of the oil refining industry only because it was cheaper at the time. Any petroleum fuel is just an energy transfer medium- from sunlight tens of millions of years ago. No matter what some might like to believe, the earth is running out of oil and it will not be around forever; we’d better use what’s left for better purposes than burning. People who refuse to face reality and demand to continue doing something that isn’t possible really annoy me.
I am not sure you have all your facts right but you do bring up the problem of changing the infrastructure to a hydrogen based economy would be enormous. However, the one advantage it does have is that if you get your hydrogen from the electrolysis of water and get your electricity from nuclear, solar, hydro-power..etc, it would have zero carbon emissions. The safety concern is also very real.