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Energy / Hydrogen Fuel Cells
It takes considerable energy (typically electricity driving electrolysis) to make the hydrogen
that becomes the fuel for fuel cells.
Each time you change one form of energy into another form, such as electricity into hydrogen
fuel, you lose energy.
Fuel cells are an expensive way to fuel transportation when electricity is in short supply.
Unless we solve the primary energy problem ... how to make electricity without plentiful cheap
oil and coal to burn ... there won't be fuel cells.
Fuel cells are not part of the "energy crisis" solution. They are simply a portable storage
device for energy derived from some other primary process.
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CATO
Hydrogen’s Empty Environmental Promise
by Donald Anthrop
Donald Anthrop is professor emeritus of environmental studies at San Jose State
University and the author of more than 60 papers and articles on energy and water
resources.
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Politicians on both the Left and the Right have increasingly embraced subsidies for
hydrogenpowered fuel cells as a promising way to move America away from reliance on
petroleum. Although advocates concede that such technologies are at least several
decades away from penetrating the market in any significant manner because of cost
considerations, less attention has been paid to the environmental implications of such a
transition.
Given current technology, switching from gasoline to hydrogen-powered fuel
cells would greatly increase energy consumption even if the hydrogen were
extracted from water rather than from fossil fuels. That’s because it takes a
tremendous amount of electricity to harvest hydrogen and to deliver it to consumers.
Moreover, a transition from gasoline to hydrogen would nearly double net greenhouse gas
emissions attributable to passenger vehicles, given the current fuel mix in the electricity
sector.
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I have learned to have very modest goals
for society and myself, things like clean air,
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being pushed around, work that suits one's
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satisfying nookie.
Paul Goodman
