One of the persistent questions about replacing our dependence on fossil fuels with a reliance on hydrogen is how to make the transition. Energy visionary Amory Lovins lays out a scenario to accomplish that shift in manageable steps.
1. Install fuel cells as power sources in buildings where uninterrupted electric power is crucial, such as hospitals and data centers. The fuel cells would run on hydrogen extracted (or “reformed”) from natural gas, which is already supplied to the buildings.
2. Next, sell cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells to companies based at those buildings. The same natural gas reformers that supply hydrogen to the building’s fuel cells would also provide hydrogen for the auto fleet. When the cars are parked at the building, they can earn back much of their cost by serving as electric generators and selling power to the grid.
3. As reformers enter mass production, they come down in price, and can be installed at filling stations which are on the natural gas mains. This would create a widespread network of places where hydrogen is available.
4. Once the demand for hydrogen grows to a certain threshold, different sources will begin to compete with each other for the market: renewable or off-peak electricity would be used to split hydrogen out of water molecules, competing with hydrogen from natural gas.
5. A market could even develop for bulk hydrogen, reformed at the wellhead. The advantage here is that the by-product — carbon dioxide — could be injected back into the fuel-bearing strata to enhance the recovery of gas from the field. In addition, the deep injection of carbon dioxide would earn the owners a credit for sequestering carbon, which they could sell as markets develop for averting carbon emissions.
For a fuller explanation of these ideas: [sorry this link is no longer available]
For those of you who don’t know of Amory Lovins, please visit: www.rmi.org to learn more.
From Tidepool.org
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