Welcome to The Hydrogen Revolution
The hydrogen is going to be the preeminent energy source of the new millennium. It will change the way we live.
“Cleaner greener and quieter energy”
The hydrogen is going to be the preeminent energy source of the new millennium. It will change the way we live.
BP's hopes for a carbon-free future face big test in Essex
Terry Macalister
Monday May 10, 2004
The Guardian
Tomorrow BP will try to kick-start a faltering hydrogen revolution in Britain when it makes a last-ditch attempt to win planning permission for the first refuelling station of its kind in Europe, at Hornchurch, Essex.
Despite government hopes that hydrogen and fuel cells could offer a carbon-free future after the oil runs out, local residents have stopped BP's plans, fearing a Hindenburg airship-style explosion.
A fleet of buses is already cruising the streets of London using the greenhouse gas-free fuel but they have not been able to refuel - as planned - at a specially built £750,000 hydrogen fuel station. BP is being forced to bring in canisters of hydrogen gas from a depot in Hackney, east London, but will reduce costs tenfold if it can use liquid hydrogen at Hornchurch.
"We have a hearing before planning officers from Havering council on May 11," said a BP spokesman, who was unwilling to predict what the outcome would be.
Enthusiasm for hydrogen and the fuel cells it can power have come and gone, and come back again. Among the current optimists are a small British firm, ITM Power, which is hoping to raise up to £20m through a stock market flotation by convincing investors it has developed and patented "the keys to unlock the hydrogen economy".
The company's claims might be dismissed by the sceptics as the stuff of dreams but ITM has some heavyweight executives on board, including Stephen Massey, the former chairman and chief executive of Prudential-Bache International, and Donald Highgate, a visiting director of studies at Cranfield University.
ITM has hired Durlacher to help bring to market the company which claims to have developed new materials and unique production methods to produce low-cost fuel cells which could use hydrogen.
But there have been many false dawns on the road towards the hydrogen economy, as the long-established fuel cell manufacturer Ballard Power can testify.
The Vancouver-based firm, formed by the now-departed geophysicist Geoffrey Ballard, was one of the new wave firms that rode high during the technology boom.
The company's shares have since plunged from $130 (£72) to $11 and the business has been burning up $114m a year on research and development. It produced a net loss of $125m during 2003 and is struggling to reduce its cash spend.
The difficulties since the technology bubble burst in March 2000 have led to serious cost-cutting, with more than a quarter of the staff being discarded along the way.
It has also led to top-level board changes, with Dennis Campbell being brought in 18 months ago as president and chief executive to shake things up.
His job is to refocus Ballard away from the endless research to fast-track commercialisation by bringing to market some more of the 1,700 patents it holds.
It is with practical advances in mind that Mr Campbell was recently sitting in the appropriately futuristic offices of London mayor Ken Livingstone.
Ballard is involved with the zero-emission bus which is using the capital's roads as part of a two-year, pan-European project using fuel cell transport.
"These buses are the greenest, cleanest and quietest ever," Mr Livingstone had purred at a press launch, surrounded by partners from DaimlerChrysler, BP and the Energy Savings Trust.
But does this mean anything if these vehicles cost eight times as much as a normal diesel one? "This is no PR stunt. This is a huge step forward with a working bus showing the public there is a very viable alternative to those diesel buses pounding the streets," said Mr Campbell.
The best thing about hydrogen, the Ballard executive says, is that, despite the fact there are no emissions, there are no sacrifices, either.
There is general agreement about the need for further technology breakthroughs - such as the one claimed by ITM - for fuel cells to be small enough, light enough and yet produce sufficient punch to make them a viable alternative to diesel or petrol. BP's planning difficulties are an added complication.
Despite this, Mr Campbell is optimistic, pointing out that General Motors has said it should be ready to turn out mass-produced hydrogen cars by 2010.
"Fuel cells today are an investment in the future. This is technology that will change the world. Our job is to make this happen quicker," he says.
Ballard has already provided the fuel-cell power train for 50 passenger cars and 30 buses, and a further 150 are expected on the roads before the end of 2005.
But the Canadian firm is not just interested in new forms of transport, it is most hopeful about creating more immediate revenues out of smaller portable, stationary and power products such as its Nexa model, which can create standby and uninterruptible energy at home or in the workplace.
The recent round of power blackouts from New York and Toronto to Turin and even parts of London have pointed up the fragility of the existing electricity network powered by coal or nuclear fuels.
One of Ballard's AirGen units would set someone back $6,000, which might have seen prohibitive in the past. But this will keep personal computer, lights and heat on when the national grid fails.
Mr Campbell is also keen to stress there are other advantages of fuel cells over internal combustion engines or even rechargeable batteries. They are not only clean and efficient electrochemical devices they also have no moving parts, which makes them quiet, reliable and long lasting.
The company produced revenue of $120m in 2003, up from the $90m of 2002, and has been promised a possible C$55m (£22m) equity injection by Ford and DaimlerChrysler if it is needed.
But still no one knows whether fuel cell technology will win out against rival power sources such as wind or solar, so there are still plenty of "ifs" and "maybes" for companies at the cutting edge of new technology.
Ballard admits this: "If we experience significant cost overruns on any of our programmes, if the corporate restructuring is more costly than we anticipate, or if the cost savings realised from the corporate restructuring are much lower than our estimate ... [then there will be] changes or delays to our commercialisation plans," it warns in its annual report.
Mr Campbell is, however, as convincing as any environmentalist on the desperate need for the planet to find alternatives to fossil fuels and their unwanted greenhouse gases. "Look at total fuel consumption. It's 20m barrels a day in the US, 11m of those are imported and two-thirds used for transport. There are 200m cars for 250m people," says the Ballard boss.
"China uses 5m barrels of oil and has 18m cars but is heading to become one of the world's largest car markets. Imagine what would happen if we saw the same per capita car usage in a nation of 1.3bn people?"
Mr Campbell has the laid-back charm and easy patter of the Ford Motor executive that he once was, but there is urgency in his mission which extends beyond concerns about the environment.
This is because Ballard not only wants the hydrogen revolution to take off, it also desperately needs it to. As Mr Campbell puts it: "If we can't make this fuel cell technology happen with car companies, then there is no future for Ballard."
ITM - which stands for ion transfer materials - remains convinced that it too can finally make the materials that powered the Apollo spacecraft to the moon cheap enough for everyday use, thus finally ushering in the hydrogen economy.
Chief executive Jim Heathcote - another former Prudential man - says: "I know it's a big claim but we have been working on this for 10 years. We really believe we have developed new materials and processes that can cut costs dramatically."
It is not just costs that could determine the future. Fuel cells can be powered by traditional fossil fuels such as oil or gas, but the holy grail is pollution-free hydrogen, which is still regarded with suspicion by those who remember the Hindenburg disaster.
Things have moved on in terms of safety since 1937, as BP will be explaining to planning officers tomorrow in the latest test for Britain's carbon-free future.
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The petrol-driven car as we know it, is on borrowed time.
There is a quiet revolution taking place in the car industry that will fundamentally change the way we live. Imagine cities without smog. Without oil tankers. With less noise. And all because the new vehicles will be powered on the most common element of all - hydrogen, a constituent part of water.
The world's car manufacturers are spending millions on prototypes of hydrogen cars that they expect to start replacing the petrol car with sometime in the next decade. And they promise it will be cleaner and greener. Supplies of crude oil are expected to begin running down this decade and - with increasing concerns about pollution and global warming - scientists are scrambling to improve the new technology and break the world's dependence on oil.
Australia is part of an enormous body of worldwide research. In the middle of this year, Perth commuters will find themselves using buses powered by hydrogen instead of diesel as part of an international trial that also involves 10 European cities.
Car manufacturer DaimlerChrysler is supplying the buses and funding is coming from a variety of sources, including BP, which is providing the hydrogen. The Federal Government has contributed funds and the Western Australian Government has pledged $10 million.
The three buses will have fewer seats than other buses, and travellers might notice how quiet they are. And, instead of toxic fumes, the vehicles exhaust pipes will emit water vapour, or steam.
For the past 144 years, since former railroad conductor Edwin L. Drake struck oil at his well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, the world has relied on petrol to turn its wheels. But within 20 years, many predict that hydrogen fuel cells will have overtaken the internal combustion engine. Your hot water service and even your mobile phone may be running on hydrogen long before that.
The move is fast gaining momentum. In his State of the Union address of January 28, last year, US President George W. Bush stated that children born on that day could have the choice of a hydrogen-powered car by the time they were 17. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has even promised to build hydrogen fuelling stations every 32 kilometres along major Californian highways.
Iceland has gone further and committed to becoming the world's first hydrogen-based economy within 20 years, planning to convert cars, buses and fishing trawlers to run on the fuel.
The hydrogen car is coming. San Francisco took delivery of two fuel cell Honda FCX hydrogen-powered fuel cars this week.
In Australia, Resources Minister Ian MacFarlane has thrown his weight behind the development of hydrogen-based technology following a conference in Broome last year. A recent Federal Government report has predicted that 20 per cent of cars and 50 per cent of mobile phones will run on hydrogen by 2028.
As for the oil companies, they are being practical. "We are looking to the long term," says Colin Gomm, BP's director of environmental issues.
"Hydrogen is potentially another fuel source and we look at it with a 20-year time horizon."
Hydrogen research is also taking place in Melbourne. Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd hopes to have a product on the market in 2005 that will provide hot water and electricity for residential users.
Proponents of hydrogen power see its potential as unlimited. They see hydrogen not just as an alternative energy source, but as the foundation of a whole new non-polluting economy. While hydrogen has had some bad publicity over the years - linked as it has been to the H-bomb and the ill-fated airship Hindenburg that crashed and burned in New Jersey in 1937 - researchers say such concerns are misplaced, and endorse the gas as clean, safe and readily available.
So, how would it all work?
Renewable energy sources such as wind and thermal power would be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen would be run through fuel cells to create electricity that could power cars, homes, factories and transport systems. (A fuel cell is simply a battery in reverse; where a battery stores power, a fuel cell creates it through a chemical reaction producing electricity - hydrogen is fed in, power comes out.)
Exhaust fumes would be limited to water vapour, eliminating some of our greenhouse problems.
But there is, of course, a catch. In fact, several. Hydrogen may be the most abundant element in the universe, but you can't go out into Bass Strait and drill a hydrogen well: hydrogen always combines with other elements when left to its own devices.
So you have to manufacture it by breaking down the substances - such as water, coal or gas - where it is stored. The problem is that this process generally uses as much energy as the hydrogen it produces gives out.
It is perhaps unsurprising then that the first moves to commercially produce hydrogen are coming out of the fossil fuel industry - and involve the use of fossil fuels. BP will manufacture hydrogen from natural gas at its Kwinnana refinery for the Perth bus trial and have it refined at the nearby BOC (formerly British Oxygen Company). That process releases carbon into the atmosphere and is therefore not seen as the way forward by environmentalists.
Even more controversial (because it is more polluting) are plans to produce hydrogen from coal. David Brockway a long-time coal researcher who is now chief of the CSIRO's energy technology division, says the transition to the hydrogen economy will be a step by step affair and initially, at least, fossil fuels will play a part.
"Hydrogen will be the preferred energy carrier of the future, but the question is will it be in 20 or 50 years?" Brockway says. "In the short term, producing hydrogen from fossil fuels will be cheaper, either using gas or coal."
Where coal is used, he says, the carbon emitted from the process will have to be sequestered, or pumped into underground storages indefinitely.
In the longer term, the Holy Grail is breaking down water using renewable energy sources, Brockway says. "But it could be decades before these technologies are available."
There is another problem. Hydrogen is the lightest element, which means the atoms that make it up are a long way from each other. That means you need much larger storages for hydrogen-powered vehicles than for conventional petrol or diesel models, and this has huge implications in design.
The Perth trial buses will carry 58 passengers, compared with 70 for diesel models because of the large fuel tanks that must be installed. Transporting hydrogen to service stations will also require more tankers than for an equivalent amount of petrol, meaning more cost and more congestion.
Researchers are working on solutions such as compressing hydrogen into a liquid. BMW is working on a liquid hydrogen fuel tank, but this needs to be kept at minus 270 degrees to prevent the hydrogen vapourising. And the compression of hydrogen increases the energy needed to produce it.
Mark Deisendorf, a researcher and the director of Sydney's Sustainability Centre, believes that the energy dollar would be better spent on boosting renewable energy sources such as wind and solar rather than hydrogen. Cheaper, more efficient ways of storing energy, such as hot rocks or hot water, are already available, he says. "You lose about 50 per cent of the energy used to create hydrogen."
Fans of the hydrogen fuel cell counter that the internal combustion engine has been 100 years in development.
Steve Zorbas, director of the National Hydrogen Association, points to work being done on metal hydrides that can store hydrogen like a sponge stores water. Others argue that Australia spends $9 billion a year subsidising fossil fuels in various ways. Take away these subsidies, they say, and alternative fuels such as hydrogen become more competitive.
Ian Lowe, honorary professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University, and former head of the Commission for Future, is a hydrogen enthusiast. He says Australia is ideally positioned to follow Iceland's example as a leader in hydrogen technology.
Lowe cites a report in New Scientist magazine, nominating Iceland as the "obvious country" for a wide-ranging trial.
"It has a good science and technology base, extensive supplies of renewable energy, and it is an island country so there is no transport interface with other countries. I said at the time ‘It's a pity we didn't have those advantages or we might have been able to do something similar'," says Lowe ironically.
"The difference is they have politicians looking 20 years ahead who can see that by then oil will be scarce or expensive or both."
Other than the Perth bus trial, the only Australian application approaching commercialisation is being developed by Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd in Noble Park. CFC chief executive Allen Conduit says he hopes to be selling fuel-cell powered domestic hot water systems - that also produce electricity to power homes or sell back into the grid - by next year. The only catch is it will be in Europe.
In Australia, Conduit says, "the demand for fuel cells is lagging a bit". Cheap energy prices and the lack of a strong environmental imperative (resulting from the Government's refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement) make fuel cell technology less attractive in the local market, Conduit says.
Even so, he adds, investors including gas producer Woodside, Queensland electricity retailer Energex, CSIRO and BHP Billiton, have poured more than $110 million into the company in the past 10 years.
To the purists, says Conduit, CFC is outside the fold because it uses natural gas as its fuel source. But, he argues, gas is the most efficient way to produce hydrogen at the moment, and that using it in a fuel cell is far more efficient and less polluting than other fossil fuel technologies. "We use natural gas so we're not classified as a renewable energy company. But we are part of a transition to the hydrogen economy. I believe we're a world leader in our field."
The fact that five or six companies internationally are working on similar processes does not concern him. "The market does not exist now but soon it will be so large that I'm not concerned with the prospect of competitors," he says. "They will just help to open the market up."
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Evolution of a hydrogen revolution