What is Stopping the Hydrogen Economy?

Currently in the United States most of the hydrogen produced is used to manufacture ammonia for use as a fertilizer. Ironically, the cost of making this ammonia is wasted considering that we flush five times more ammonia per day than is manufactured. If we were to use this resource, a nasty proposition I agree, but what are we trying to accomplish? We could then offset the fuel used for over half of our hydrogen production. This in turn would reduce daily consumption and overall price of existing fuels. Giving us some relief while we work on reducing the cost of hydrogen production.

To understand where we are now, you need a little background. The cheapest method of hydrogen production at this time is fossil fuel reforming, this is where methane or natural gas or any other type of fossil fuel is blasted by high pressure, high temperature (750-1200 ^oC) steam in the presence of nickel. This produces syngas, a hydrogen/carbon dioxide mixture. The United States produces over ten million tons of hydrogen per year. The problem is the cost of hydrogen along with infrastructure compared to the longstanding energy winner, gasoline.

Considering the amount of energy stored compared to gasoline, pound for pound, hydrogen wins, however the cost per kilogram for hydrogen is approximately $21.00, with the current cost of gasoline at about $2.75 per gallon, it only takes about eleven dollars worth of gas to produce the same amount of energy as one kilogram of hydrogen. Giving gasoline an ten dollar advantage, so to speak.

One of the most promising conversion methods at the time of writing is aluminum reaction production. Aluminum when exposed to water, converts to hydrogen and aluminum oxide. The reason your lawn chair doesn't disappear in a explosive puff is that aluminum almost immediately creates it's own protective oxidizing layer when exposed to air. This is a problem for the aluminum reaction method, but great for your lawn chair. I digress, the real culprit behind the glacial slowness of conversion to a hydrogen economy really has little to do with the science.

Right now there are about two billion lobbyists on capitol hill keeping fossil fuels in the lead. Each one of those lobbyists has a picture of George Washington on the front of it. What drives our economy, if you don't already know, is scarcity. If oil was as abundant as water, which hydrogen is, the cost of energy would be, well, cheap. To better understand what I am trying to get across, think of De Beers, the diamond corporation. When the Kimberly Mines were found in South Africa, the diamond moguls had a problem. There were just too damn many of those sparkly things around, so the diamond moguls formed De Beers to control the supply on the world market. If all of the diamonds held in De Beers vaults were to be put on the market at once, diamonds would be as cheap as coal, the substance they are made of.

Oh, there are logistical problems to hydrogen, but if we actually tried to convert, we could completely convert within ten to fifteen years. Something the oil companies know, which is why they are now leading the charge to patent the processes of hydrogen conversion. We just cannot have cheap energy, it isn't profitable. Let me give you one more example. About 1830 the British banned slavery. Do you think they did that out of the kindness of their hearts? No, they realized that it is cheaper to hire a man and let him worry about housing and food than it was to keep him up. Something the North realized as well, oh, there were very large fortunes made on the back of slaves, but the cost inefficiencies were becoming apparent. What came after slavery, share-cropping was much crueler.

Political will is going to be tougher to gain verses hydrogen storage. Hydrogen tends to make the strongest of metals brittle and weak. Much the same as congressmen react to lobbyists. Actually, I could spend two hours explaining all of the different methods that hydrogen can be manufactured. Just as I could spend ten hours explaining all of the different methods used by the oil companies to keep oil cheaper than hydrogen. Peak oil is a lie, one of the first things we are taught in science class is that you cannot destroy matter, you can only change it's state. If we really wanted to, we could convert all of the carbon dioxide in the air back into fossil type fuels. In fact, we might consider that as a cheaper alternative, nah, too easy....

In conclusion, I used to think that I was a Republican, but I was too conservative for them. Then I decided that maybe I was turning into a socialist or worse a liberal. Now, I no longer know where I stand. Not long ago, I was looking into utility laws in the wonderful State of Tennessee. What I found shouldn't have shocked me, but it did. I used to have a Tennessee Code Annotated from around 1800, most of the laws in that book were to protect the people. If you look closely now, most laws are made to protect the corporations from us, especially the ones that you have to use. What the American people need to wake up and realize is this, what is good for business isn't always what is good for the people. If you don't believe me, look at what NAFTA and the IMF and globalization has done for our economy. Yes, we can get toothpaste cheaper at Wally world, but the fact that it's made by "share croppers" in a third world country should bother us way more than it does. Now get out there and be a good little consumer.....