More Fuel for the Hydrogen Debate

Hydrogen is easily the world’s most maligned alternative fuel. The most common manufacturing process for it generates huge amounts of carbon dioxide. It is difficult to transport in conventional pipelines. Almost no fueling stations exists. And hydrogen fuel cells today continue to cost an outrageous amount.

Critics far outnumber supporters and include noted researchers (Joe Romm),  respected CEOs (Sanjiv Malhotra) and former high-ranking government officials (Jim Woolsey).

But hydrogen advocates aren’t giving up. A report released this month from the Energy Information Administration points out some of the reasons why the proponents haven’t completely thrown in the towel. And make no mistake: Hydrogen advocates are still serious. At Copenmind, a conference in Denmark this month, Toyota executive vice president Masatami Takimoto sounded more optimistic about hydrogen than all-electric cars with lithium batteries.

The report, however, also indirectly underscores why hydrogen is such a long shot. In one part of the report, the authors hypothesize that hydrogen could cut fuel consumption better than plug-in hybrid vehicles and reduce petroleum consumption by 37.1 to 84.1 percent by 2050. Put another way, that’s 11 percent to 78 percent lower than petroleum consumption in 1990. The estimates take into account fuel consumption from a wheel-to-wheel perspective but don’t count transmission losses

It sounds great until you realize that the figures assume a huge uptick in hydrogen car sales. To hit those figures, hydrogen cars will have to account for 50 percent to 100 percent of new car sales at midcentury. (To hit the 84 percent mark, hydrogen cars would have had to start accounting for all car sales in 2038. It’s conceivable, but only under an Soylent Green-like apocalyptic future where everything else simply fails.)

Will these arguments convince skeptics? Probably not and to the EIA’s credit they don’t skim over the challenges: It even acknowledges that the emergence of plug-ins represent a serious challenge to the viability of fuel cells. Still, it makes interesting reading and does provide some food for thought.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Hydrogen right now plays a minuscule role in our energy budget. A little over 1 quadrillion BTUs of the gas get produceds in the U.S. a year. That’s about 1 percent of our energy budget. Most of it gets bought by the petrochemical industry.

• There are 1,212 miles of hydrogen pipeline in the country, mostly circulating at above-mentioned chemical plants. By contrast, there are 295,000 miles of natural gas. In other words, the infrastructure is small. Standard pipelines, hypothetically, could carry a mix of gases that includes 20 percent hydrogen.

• There are only 63 hydrogen stations in the U.S. Twenty five are in California. Two-thirds of these are located in facilities where the gas can be generated. The rest need deliveries. Thus, it is even easier to find E85 right now: There were 1,400 ethanol stations at the beginning of the year. (By contrast, wall sockets for charging plug-in hybrids are pretty much everywhere.)

• Fuel cells themselves – the devices that harvest energy from hydrogen by stripping away electrons – need to fall below $30 or so a kilowatt for the hydrogen economy to take off. They now cost around $3,000 to $5,000 at kilowatt. (Put another way, those fancy hydrogen fuel cell SUVs GM is test driving cost over a million each.). But, the price could come down to $100 per kilowatt if a manufacturer started producing 500,000 a year.

• Current manufacturing costs range from $1.21 to $6.75 per kilogram.

• A fuel cell also only has half of the lifespan of a conventional engine.

• Compared to all that, plug-ins look a lot easier. A plug-in with a 40 mile all-electric range would use about 65 percent to 75 percent less gas than a regular car. The cost of the battery of a plug-in will be about one-third of the cost of a battery for an all-electric car with a 220 mile range. (With all that, you’d think the debate between plug-ins and fuel cells would end, but no.)

• Even if they went into mass production next year, neither plug-ins nor hydrogen cars would have much impact on the air quality or fuel consumption by 2030. The average car stays on the road 16 years so we’ve got a lengthy turnover cycle ahead, barring any unusual rebate programs like the ones former Intel CEO Andy Grove is touting for plug-ins. (There’s another celebrity hydrogen skeptic.)

• But let’s end on a high note. By 2050, progress on emissions and fuel consumption would begin to roll under a future dominated by plug-ins or fuel cells. Assuming intense market penetration, plug-ins could reduce energy consumption by 26.3 percent and petroleum consumption by 38 percent. Highly optimized fuel cells could cut energy by 35.3 percent and fuel consumption by 68.5 percent. Emissions reductions with plug-ins also fall short of some fuel cell scenarios.

Again, a long shot but an interesting debate.