Energy Secretary Steven Chu wants to kill research and development on cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells, but a spending bill approved by the House this month and another scheduled for a Senate vote this week would restore funding for the program.
Mr. Chu has said that hydrogen fuel cells are an impractical technology for vehicles, partly because they would require the creation of a network of hydrogen fueling stations.
A Nobel-Prize winning physicist and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which conducts federal energy research, Mr. Chu argues that improved internal-combustion engines and plug-in electric vehicles are more realistic technologies for cutting oil consumption over the next 20 to 30 years.
This is another time that I am in disagreement with Dr Chu.
It wouldn't be as hard to work this out. There are already hydrogen generators using natural gas. It wouldn't be as large a leap once these are in place to start putting in storage and whatnot. It's not a trivial thing, but successful transitions do take place.
Opportunity costs and externalities. As a line of research, it really doesn't make sense as a place to spending federal dollars.
ReplyDeleteChu is right on this. You're going to get a lot more bang for the buck on any metric for research spending on new generation techniques and reductions in gasoline consumption by the end-user.
Second time we've disagreed; both times on big-ticket spending items. May be a pattern here ... except you argued the other way last time.
So what's the pattern? :D Actually, I think this is the third time we disagreed. Nuclear power being another.
ReplyDeleteThe fact of the matter is, we're going to need zero emission/carbon neutral vehicles. No, strike that, we need them now.
Whether its electric (a la Tesla) or its hydrogen, it's largely irrelevant. Even carbon neutral strategies like cellulosic ethanol might work[1]. However, whichever path gets taken and plays out as the 'solution,' we run a massive risk of picking...and it failing. Time and again, we do this and we do this far, far too often.
Once we have a large scale functioning and economic replacement for gas cars, let's scale down the funding. Until then, I think wasting money now is probably a wiser choice than dealing with the economic impacts of anthrogenic climate change.
BTW, at a VC conference, a group was seeking money for tech they developed to recharge cell phones in 30 seconds: they are looking for money for production, not development. The $tech applies to all batteries. Cells and portables are just quick pay-offs. I can just imagine what that'll do to our electrical system. ;)
1. Food crop ethanol is just asking for trouble...
Hm. Yeah, I'm with Chu, and mostly with Noel.
ReplyDeleteEverything runs on HCOs because that's a fat, rich source of energy that suffers incredibly little shrinkage when transported in bulk. That's why building a distribution system for it across the whole nation/world was practical, and why it will be a more economical energy source. It was demand-driven, and took decades.
We're going to probably see some discontinuous changeover to new energy transport techniques as hydrocarbons spike in price. Any centralized attempts to build out a distribution network over that small discontinuity will, IMHO, end in disarray. We're going to have to use an existing network that we can reinforce -- one where the mistakes have already been made, and where a group of specialists exists. This would be the power grid.
Hydrogen is, after all, only a storage and transportation medium. Its mystique (burns! but no emissions!) derives from false analogies to gasoline. Gasoline stores energy that was already hoarded up over aeons. Hydrogen or electrical transmission store energy we generate or collect (centrally) with much more immediacy. Both are lossy in a big way (capacitance/resistive losses vs. cryogenic/chemical storage energy costs), but for one we already have the grid to handle it. It's not ready for the load, but at least it exists and is improving incrementally.
This isn't a something to jerk around with, either -- civilization is as fragile as its ability to eat. Serious interruptions in the transportation infrastructure are the inevitable result of a discontinuity in petroleum supplies without a safety net. I'd be much more comfortable having the electric utilities being the ones we lean on (for all their faults) than an infrastructure created from scratch by government fiat.
Food crop ethanol is, of course, a boondoggle. I'd like to see biodiesel via switchgrass or something take off -- but I have my doubts that such a thing will really take place. We'll be coal and oil dependent for some time to come, but having a non-gasoline-dependent transmission infrastructure will be essential when we finally have enough central nuclear/solar/hydroelectric/tide/whatever production to take over.
Will, you're not making much sense. That doesn't mean that you're wrong; it just means that you're not making much sense.
ReplyDeleteWe need zero emission vehicles? That's a strange and unanalyzed assumption.
Wasting money on hydrogen car development is good but wasting money on building an HST is bad? That's a strange and unanalyzed contradiction.
We have an unlimited budget for federal research money? Well, that's your assumption, and it's just bizarre.
Dude, you don't need to take me seriously, but this is a pretty bad post by your standards. It presents no coherent argument in favor of its thesis. Instead it asserts a bunch of stuff to be true and ignores all practical limits.
It's unlike you.
(What are you talking about with nuclear power? I don't know what there is to disagree about. I'll send you a copy of the Areva case if you want it.)