The Hydrogen Economy

Rifkin, 2003

But what does “prepared” really mean? If the fossil-fuel era is passing, what can replace it? A new energy regime lies before us whose nature and character are as different from that of fossil fuels as the latter was different from the wood-burning energy that proceeded it.

Hydrogen is the lightest and most ubiquitous element found in the universe. When harnessed as a form of energy, it becomes “the forever fuel.” It never runs out, and, because it contains not a single carbon atom, it emits no carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is found everywhere on Earth, in water, fossil fuels, and all living things. Yet, it rarely exists free-floating in nature. Instead, it has to be extracted from natural sources.

The foundation is already being laid for the hydrogen economy. In the next few years, the computer-and-telecommunications revolution is going to fuse with the new hydrogen-energy revolution, making for a powerful mix that could fundamentally reconfigure human relationships in the 21st and 22nd centuries. Since hydrogen is found everywhere and is inexhaustible if properly harnessed, every human being on Earth could be “empowered,” making hydrogen energy the first truly democratic energy regime in historgy.

Hydrogen-powered fuel cells are being commercially produced for installation in factories, offices, commercial buildings, and homes to produce power, light, and heat. The major automakers have spent more than $2 billion developing hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered cars, buses, and trucks...

The first scientist of note to envision the full potential of hydrogen was John Burden Sanderson Haldane, who later went on to become one of the distinguished geneticists of the 20th century. In 1923, and still in his twenties, Haldane gave a lecture at Cambridge University in which he predicted that hydrogen energy would be the fuel of the future. He then went on to outline, in a scientific paper, the case for hydrogen and how it would be produced, stored, and used. His notion was so revolutionary at the time that it was met with incredulity by his peers within the academy. Yet, in its every particular, his thesis was tantamount to a working blueprint of how hydrogen would later be harnessed and exploited... He wrote that “liquid hydrogen is weight for weight the most efficient known method of storing energy, as it gives about three times as much heat per pound as petrol.” ..

It was not until the oil crisis in 1973 that scientists, engineers, and policymakers decided to take a second look at hydrogen as an all-purpose form of energy. In that year, the first International Conference on Hydrogen was held in Miami Beach, and the International Association for Hydrogen Energy was established, along with a monthly journal, the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. A small group of enthusiasts..began to proselytize within the energy industry, hoping to win over converts to the hydrogen vision. T. Nejat Veziroglu, president of the association and a member of the group, summed up the excitement at the time, exclaiming that hydrogen “was a permanent solution to the depletion of conventional fuels, [and a] permanent solution to the global environmental problem.” ...

The Soviet Union successfully converted a passenger jet to run partially on liquid hydrogen in 1988, and that same year an American, William Conrad, became the first person to fly an airplane fueled only by liquid hydrogen. In 1992, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Germany created the first solar home, using hydrogen for long-term energy storage. The next year, Japan committed $2 billion to a thirty-year plan to promote hydrogen energy around the world. In 1994, the first hydrogen-powered buses took to the streets in Geel, Belgium. The Chicago Transit Authority began testing its own hydrogen- fueled buses a year later. The Royal Dutch/ Shell Group made its first tentative steps into the hydrogen era in 1998, setting up a “Hydrogen Team” to explore business ventures, and a year later it set up a hydrogen division.