Right-wing people see it as a key to America's independence from foreign countries, left-wing people - an opportunity to redistribute power and resources. The industrialists believe that it will cheapen energy and promote globalization, its opponents predict that it will free the countries of the third world from their dependence on the Western energy giants. The hydrogen economy
Yanai Ofran
Hydrogen refueling facility in Munich. Currently the hydrogen cells cost about ten times more than a normal engine
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Senator John Kerry thinks America should generate its own energy. "No foreign government can embargo self-produced clean energy, and no terrorist can take control of such energy sources," he said recently in his thoughtful voice to members of the Democratic Party in Iowa.
Kerry is one of the leading contenders for the presidential nomination on behalf of the Democratic Party. According to him, George Bush runs an "oil policy through the oil giants, for the oil giants". If Kerry becomes president, he will "bravely" lead a plan to develop an alternative fuel so that within ten years the American economy will no longer depend on the capricious, totalitarian and shaky regimes in the Middle East. This statement joins Kerry with three of the eight other Democratic candidates, and also with George Bush himself, who have already marked the issue of oil and its substitutes as one of the main issues in the 2004 race.
Bush's energy minister, Spencer Avraham, announced last year high-budget plans for the research and development of alternative fuel, and Bush himself announced a purchase tax exemption for those who purchase cars based on hydrogen cells instead of gasoline (the fact that such cars cannot still be purchased in the US sabotaging the solemnity of the announcement).
The energy polemic encompasses quite a few political and economic issues: the relationship between the West, the main energy consumer, and the third world countries, the main supplier; the centralized structure of the American economy that is based on drilling, importing and distributing oil by a small number of giant companies; The dependence of the entire production and transportation system on these companies; And above all - the environmental damage caused by burning oil. Internal combustion engines emit huge amounts of nitrogen oxides, polluting particles and carbon compounds into the atmosphere every year, which are probably one of the main causes of global warming.
A few years ago there was still a debate between scientists about whether the Earth was warming. But this debate is like that. The data showing that humanity is on the brink of an environmental catastrophe have already convinced most of the skeptics, and they continue to accumulate.
Scientists have identified air pollution, that is, the oil economy, as one of the main causes of this process, and environmental activists have consecrated a war on oil and its products. But unlike many environmental struggles, this time they are not alone. Many pressure groups in Washington see the oil economy as a danger to America and the world economy. That is why both the Democratic candidates and the Republican administration are encouraging the development of alternative fuels. When they say alternative fuel they mainly mean hydrogen.
William Grove, a London lawyer who spent his time as a tutor and set up a laboratory in his home, developed a battery based on hydrogen at the beginning of the 19th century. He discovered that with the help of platinum electrodes dipped in sulfuric acid, it is possible to create an electrochemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen and thus create an electric current. The reaction releases energy and turns the starting materials into water. Grove's battery received much attention in the two centuries that passed, but little attention. Chemists and engineers improved the efficiency of the system they called a hydrogen cell, but outside the scientific world it struggled to stand out. Other energy sources were considered more efficient, cheaper and more convenient.
But since the oil crisis in the nineties, hydrogen cells began to emerge as a possible solution. In a bestseller published at the beginning of the year, economist Jeremy Rifkin laid out the vision of the hydrogen economy. A hydrogen cell is not only a quiet and clean engine, which has no moving parts and emits only a small jet of water vapor into the atmosphere. According to Rifkin, the hydrogen cell is the infrastructure for revolution. In his vision, the hydrogen cell is cheap and available and replaces the engine in all cars. In the morning he brings his husband to work, but even in the parking lot he continues to generate energy. In the evening, he provides the electricity for the washing machine and the refrigerator. In any home or public parking lot, it will be possible to connect the car to the electricity grid and transfer to it the energy that the car generates while parking. After you finish the laundry, you can feed electricity to the national grid and receive payment at the end of the month from the electricity company.
The hydrogen economy will not be based on the supply of power from one giant company, but on millions of small domestic suppliers. Rifkin's hydrogen economy is reminiscent of the Internet. It is independent, open to all and encourages entrepreneurship. Every consumer is both a producer and a marketer, and this is how the "vision of democratic energy" comes true.
Major car manufacturers have already developed prototype hydrogen-based cars. In some places in Europe and Asia you can even buy them. But currently, contrary to Rifkin's vision, the hydrogen cells cost about ten times more than a normal engine. Hydrogen, which is a highly flammable gas, also requires the development of special safety measures. And above all, it is still not clear where all this hydrogen will come from. Rifkin's hydrogen economy, like Kerry's or Bush's, would have to produce huge amounts of hydrogen. It is not clear how this can be done effectively.
The oil companies hope to take over the hydrogen market and produce it from fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas. Proponents of atomic energy propose to produce hydrogen in nuclear reactors. Environmental activists are trying to develop green methods such as producing hydrogen from seawater using solar energy. The charm of the hydrogen economy vision is probably related to the fact that many parties are sure that the hydrogen economy will advance their interests.
Right-wing people who see the hydrogen vision as a key to America's independence from foreign countries, and left-wing people see it as an opportunity to redistribute power and resources. The industrialists and heads of corporations believe that hydrogen will cheapen energy, lower production costs and promote globalization, and the opponents of globalization predict that it will free third world countries from dependence on Western energy giants. Israel's supporters whisper that the hydrogen economy will weaken the Arab countries that depend on oil, and pro-Arab analysts predict that the elimination of the oil economy will also eliminate American involvement in the Middle East and weaken Israel. Oil tycoons hope that hydrogen production will depend on fossil fuels, and environmentalists are convinced that hydrogen cells will cool the planet. Except that heretical reflections were no longer heard within the scientific community on this matter.
A team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) tried to predict what would happen if all the fuel in the world were converted into hydrogen. Like any volatile substance, a certain percentage of hydrogen will leak out of the storage and transportation systems into the atmosphere. Some?
The team, led by Yuk Young, estimates that this is 10%. This is more or less the percentage of leaks in the gas industry today, the researchers write in an article recently published in the journal Science. If such an amount of hydrogen is released into the atmosphere, the gas will immediately rise to the stratosphere, the upper layer of the atmosphere. There the hydrogen will meet oxygen and turn into water.
What will be the impact of these changes? Yang's team calculated and found that the increase in humidity in the atmosphere will lead to a decrease in temperature above the poles, which will lead to changes in air flow, which will ultimately lead to damage to the ozone layer. Damage to the ozone causes serious ecological damage and may even endanger the health of the human race.
According to these calculations, the effort to stop one ecological catastrophe with the help of the hydrogen cells could accelerate another catastrophe. "They raise a legitimate concern and this should be taken into account," said Dr. Tom McClory, an expert on the ozone layer who was called by the Canadian National Post to clarify the implications of the study. "But I would be surprised if the level of hydrogen leaks ever comes close to the levels they are talking about." Young himself does not completely disagree on this point and points out that his estimate may be somewhat exaggerated.
But this is not the only reservation that has been voiced recently about Yang's sensational results. In fact the entire study is a collection of assessments with different levels of substantiation. These are not experimental findings but a computer model that tried to predict what will happen at the edge of the stratosphere in 50 years. As a measure of the reliability of such calculations, one can take, for example, the weather forecasts. Forecasters have difficulty predicting what will happen next week on Earth, in processes that are known and understood by science much more than the stratosphere. Even those who trust a fortune teller to decide whether to take a sweater for a week's trip are allowed to doubt predictions about what will happen in 50 years at the edge of outer space.
In any case, says McClory, "it's good that Young's team is playing devil's advocate." Even if Young's prediction does not come true, it reminds hydrogen cell advocates that human activity is always changing the environment. It is possible, and even justified, to be enthusiastic about the idea of hydrogen cells. But it is important to remember that it will probably have a price. Even if today it is not clear what it is.
Environmentalist - Earth
Fuel-cell car hopes played down - BBC News
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