Hydrogen can be bad, mmm-kay

It appears that more people are looking into the potential risks of adopting a "hydrogen economy". Today's edition of Science magazine is reporting results of research that leaks from all the hydrogen activities will cause hydrogen to make its way into the upper atmosphere and potentially cause havoc there. Hydrogen in the upper atmosphere combines with oxygen forming water and doesn't rain down on us, instead it upsets the balance of the ozone ayer (where we still have one).

As was pointed out in a rant to Wired magazine last time they were hyping up hydrogen, the story isn't all good. The goodness of hydrogen depends so much on how you make it, distribute it, use it, and now it seems, how you stop it from breaking free into the environment. Get any of those wrong and hydrogen rapidly begins to look like a very bad idea.

We should not be surprised to hear that the hydrogen strategy adopted by the current government is promoting generation of hydrogen from fossil fuels, probably the least efficient and environmentally friendly way to do it. Naturally it also puts most money back into the pockets of the emcumbant energy providers: big oil and gas. Potentially even more money than they get now because using producing hydrogen from fossil fuels, distributing it by road and only then using it in cars is, on a net basis, less efficient than just sticking with current gasoline engines. So we'll need to suck even more oil and gas out of the earth to keep on going and naturally that's exactly what Halliburton and their buddies in office want to hear. Meanwhile they'll be rolling with laughter as they go about marketing how wonderfully environmentally friendly they are for promoting hydrogen use because "hydrogen" and "environmentally friendly" have become synonymous in most peoples minds.

Yes, there are many problems with hydrogen and fuel cells that large investments from the government and big oil can help solve. But lets be clear, these people aren't about to put themselves out of business over it. If they accidentally discovered a staggeringly efficient, cheap and easy way to generate and use power without fossil fuels, it would never reach the light of day by their hands.

I for one intend to make my own small dent on the energy problem, in the next twelve months I'll be selling my fuel inefficient Audi (23 mpg max) and replacing it with a nice new Toyata Prius that not only gets well over 50mpg, it is also rated as a PZEV: partial zero emissions vehicle. That's about as close to no emissions you can get without actually being zero emissions. In fact it may even be true, considering a pure electric vehicle usually gets its electricity from fossil fuel powered generation, that the Prius could even have lower net emissions than the electric car rated as zero emissions.

Furthermore now my home is getting some skylights I'll have a way to get a cable onto the roof without making a hole in it. So I intend to throw a solar panel or two up on the roof and generate some electricity to power some low voltage LED lighting and maybe even my computer.

What we really need is power to the people!