the hydrogen hoax

8/2/2019 The Hydrogen Hoax

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The Hydrogen Hoax

Robert Zubrin

Yes my friends, I believe that water will one day be

employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which

constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an

inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an

intensity of which coal is not capable.... When the

deposits of coal are exhausted we shall heat and

warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal

of the future.

Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island(1874-5)

"The Methanol Alternative"(Summer 2006)

"Getting Space ExplorationRight" (Spring 2005)

"The Human Explorer" (Winter2004)

The Editors ofThe NewAtlantis, "Addicted to Bad Data:Getting the Facts Straight onEthanol" (Spring 2006)

Stephanie Cohen, "EnergyDreams and Energy Realities"(Spring 2004)

early everyone in American politicsbelieves we face an energy crisis,and nearly everyone believes weneed a technological solution thatwill make America energyindependent. Americans are, asPresident Bush put it in his 2006State of the Union address, addictedto oil, and in this case our addictionis enriching and empowering thosewho seek to destroy us. We are

funding, if indirectly, the madrassahsthat teach vile hatred of Westerncivilization and the backward
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cultures that create death-seekingsoldiers for Islam. We are, ifunwittingly, arming those who wishto kill us. To cure this self-destructive addiction, the Bush

administration has placed a major beton the so-called hydrogeneconomy, both in policy and inrhetoric. Former Energy SecretarySpencer Abraham laid out thisvision, in rhapsodic language, in2002:

Hydrogen can fuelmuch more than carsand light trucks, our

area of interest. It canalso fuel ships,airplanes, and trains. Itcan be used to generateelectricity, for heating,and as a fuel forindustrial processes.We envision a futureeconomy in whichhydrogen is Americasclean energy choiceflexible, affordable,safe, domestically

produced, used in allsectors of the economy,and in all regions of thecountry....

Imagine a worldrunning on hydrogenlater in this century:Environmental

pollution will no longer

be a concern. Everynation will have all theenergy it needsavailable within its

borders. Personaltransportation will becheaper to operate andeasier to maintain.Economic, financial,and intellectualresources devotedtoday to acquiring

adequate energyresources and tohandling environmental


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issues will be turned toother productive tasksfor the benefit of the

people. Life will get

better.

In 2003, President Bush reaffirmedthis vision, offering a presidential

primer on the scientific, economic,and foreign-policy dimensions ofhydrogen power:

The sources ofhydrogen are abundant.The more you have of

something relative todemand for that, thecheaper its going to

be, the less expensiveitll be for theconsumer.... Hydrogen

power is also clean touse. Cars that will runon hydrogen fuel

produce only water, notexhaust fumes.... Oneof the greatest results

of using hydrogenpower, of course, willbe energyindependence for thisnation.... If we develophydrogen power to itsfull potential, we canreduce our demand foroil by over 11 million

barrels per day by theyear 2040.

It certainly sounds great. Hydrogen,after all, is the most commonelement in the universe, asSecretary Abraham pointed out.Since it is so plentiful, surelyPresident Bush must be right whenhe promises it will be cheap. Andwhen you use it, the waste productwill be nothing but water

environmental pollution will no

longer be a concern. Hydrogen willbe abundant, cheap, and clean. Why


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settle for anything less?

Unfortunately, its all pure bunk. Toget serious about energy policy,

America needs to abandon, once andfor all, the false promise of thehydrogen age.

The New Energy Charlatans

The idea of hydrogen as the fuel ofthe future dates back to Jules Verne,and by the 1930s was a staple ofscience fiction. With the advent of

nuclear energy after World War II,technologists expected that atomic

power would provide electricity toocheap to meterelectricity thatcould be used to produce purehydrogen at low cost, which couldthen be used as a fuel. By the 1970s,however, it was apparent that nuclearenergy, while potentially competitivewith conventional power, did notusher in a new golden age of cheapelectricity. Still, researchers devotedto the idea of the hydrogeneconomy soldiered on, and withincreased public concern aboutcarbon dioxide emissions in the1990s and about Americasdependence on foreign oil after 9/11,the pro-hydrogen crowd seized a newopportunity to make their pitch.Incredibly, the Bush administration

swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.As a result, over the past six years,billions of dollars have been dishedout to national labs, auto companies,fuel-cell firms, and other

beneficiaries of government largesseon hydrogen show projects that haveno practical application.

The problem with this expenditure isnot simply the waste; the government

throws away vaster sums on anynumber of other useless programs allthe time. Rather, the real issue is that


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the myth of the hydrogen economyhas masked the administrations totalfailure to address the nationsvulnerability to energy blackmail. In

consequence, despite the obviousrelationship between oil dependenceand the war with Islamist terrorism,no competent policy for achievingenergy security has been put forth. Ifwe are to achieve any progress onthis most critical issue, the myth ofthe hydrogen economy needs to bedebunked. It is bad science, badeconomics, and bad public policy.

The Real Science of Hydrogen

Hydrogen is only a source of energyif it can be taken in its pure form andreacted with another chemical, suchas oxygen. But all the hydrogen onEarth, except that in hydrocarbons,has already been oxidized, so none ofit is available as fuel. If you want toget plentiful unbound hydrogen, theclosest place it can be found is on thesurface of the Sun; mining thishydrogen supply would be quite atrick. After the Sun, the next closestsource of free hydrogen would be theatmosphere of Jupiter. Jupiter issurrounded by radiation belts sointense that they are deadly tohumans and electronics. It also has amassive gravity field that would

severely impair hydrogen exportoperations. These would also becomplicated by the 2.5-year Jupiter-to-Earth flight transit time (duringwhich any liquid hydrogen launchedwould probably boil away), and thefact that upon re-entry at Earth, theimagined hydrogen shipping capsulewould face heat loads about eighttimes higher than those withstood bya space shuttle returning from orbit.

So if we put aside the spectacularlyimprobable prospect of fueling our


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planet with extraterrestrial hydrogenimports, the only way to get freehydrogen on Earth is to make it. Thetrouble is that making hydrogen

requires more energy than thehydrogen so produced can provide.Hydrogen, therefore, is not asourceof energy. It simply is a carrierofenergy. And it is, as we shall see, anextremely poor one.

The spokesmen for the hydrogenhoax claim that hydrogen will bemanufactured from water via

electrolysis. It is certainly possible tomake hydrogen this way, but it isvery expensiveso much so, thatonly four percent of all hydrogencurrently produced in the UnitedStates is produced in this manner.The rest is made by breaking downhydrocarbons, through processes like

pyrolysis of natural gas or steamreforming of coal.

Neither type of hydrogen is evenremotely economical as fuel. Thewholesale cost of commercial gradeliquid hydrogen (made the cheapway, from hydrocarbons) shipped tolarge customers in the United Statesis about $6 per kilogram. High purityhydrogen made from electrolysis forscientific applications costsconsiderably more. Dispensed incompressed gas cylinders to retail

customers, the current price ofcommercial grade hydrogen is about$100 per kilogram. For comparison,a kilogram of hydrogen containsabout the same amount of energy asa gallon of gasoline. This means thateven if hydrogen cars were availableand hydrogen stations existed to fuelthem, no one with the power tochoose otherwise would ever buysuch vehicles. This fact alone makes

the hydrogen economy a non-starter


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in a free society.

And even if you are among thosewilling to sacrifice freedom and

economic rationality for the sake ofthe environment, and therefore preferhydrogen for its advertised benefit ofreduced carbon dioxide emissions,think again. Because hydrogen isactually made by reforminghydrocarbons, its use as fuel wouldnot reduce greenhouse gas emissionsat all. In fact, it would greatlyincrease them.

To see this, let us consider anexample. Lets say you wanted to

produce hydrogen. You choose to doit via steam reformation of naturalgas, the most common techniqueused commercially today. Thereaction is:

O => CO2 + 4H2H = +59kcal/mole

As the positive enthalpy changeindicates, the reaction is endothermic(that is, heat-absorbing) and willneed an outside source of energy todrive it forward. This can beobtained by burning some methane,which releases 205 kcal/mole, via thefollowing reaction:

=> CO2 + 2H2O

H = 205

kcal/mole

Assuming an optimistic 72 percentefficiency in using the combustionenergy to drive the steamreformation, this would allow us toreform 2.5 moles of methane forevery one that we burn (or 5 forevery 2). So if we take five units ofreaction (1) and add it to two units ofreaction (2), the net reaction

becomes:


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4 + 4O2 + 10H2O => 7CO2 + 4H2O + 20H2

As far as usable fuel is concerned,what we have managed to do is tradeseven moles of methane for twenty

moles of hydrogen. Seven moles ofcarbon dioxide have also been

produced, exactly as many as wouldhave been produced had we simplyused the methane itself as fuel. Theseven moles of methane that we usedup, however, would have been worth1435 kilocalories of energy if useddirectly, while the twenty moles ofhydrogen we have produced inexchange for all our trouble are onlyworth 1320 kilocalories. So for thesame amount of carbon dioxidereleased, less useful energy has been

produced.

The situation is much worse thanthis, however, because before thehydrogen can be transportedanywhere, it needs to be eithercompressed or liquefied. To liquefy

it, it must be refrigerated down to atemperature of 20 K (20 degreesabove absolute zero, or -253 degreesCelsius). At these temperatures, thefundamental laws ofthermodynamics make refrigeratorsextremely inefficient. As a result,about 40 percent of the energy in thehydrogen must be spent to liquefy it.This reduces the actual net energycontent of our product fuel to 792

kilocalories. In addition, because it isa cryogenic liquid, still more energycould be expected to be lost as thehydrogen boils away during transportand storage.

As an alternative, one could use highpressure pumps to compress thehydrogen as gas instead of liquefyingit for transport. This would onlyrequire wasting about 20 percent of

the energy in the hydrogen. Theproblem is that safety-approved, steel


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compressed-gas tanks capable ofstoring hydrogen at 5,000 psi weighapproximately 65 times as much asthe hydrogen they can contain. So to

transport 200 kilograms ofcompressed hydrogen, roughly equalin energy content to just 200 gallonsof gasoline, would require a truckcapable of hauling a 13-ton load.Think about that: an entire largetruckload delivery would be neededsimply to transport enough hydrogento allow tenpeople to fill up theircars with the energy equivalent of 20gallons of gasoline each.

Instead of steel tanks, one couldpropose using (very expensive)lightweight carbon fiberoverwrapped tanks, which onlyweigh about ten times as much as thehydrogen they contain. This wouldimprove the transport weight ratio bya factor of six. Thus, instead of a 13-ton truck, a mere two-ton truckload

would be required to supply enoughhydrogen to allow a service station to

provide fuel for ten customers. Thisis still hopeless economically, andcould probably not be allowed in anycase, since carbon fiber tanks havelow crash resistance, making suchcompressed hydrogen transporttrucks deadly bombs on the highway.

In principle, a system of pipelines

could, at enormous cost, be built fortransporting gaseous hydrogen. Yet

because hydrogen is so diffuse, withless than one-third the energy content

per unit volume as natural gas, thesepipes would have to be very big, andlarge amounts of energy would berequired to move the gas along theline. Another problem with thisscheme is that the small hydrogenmolecules are brilliant escape artists.

Hydrogen can not only penetratereadily through the most minutely


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flawed seal, it can actually diffuseright through solid steel itself. Thevast surface area offered by a systemof hydrogen pipelines would thus

afford ample opportunity for much ofthe hydrogen to leak away duringtransport.

As hydrogen diffuses into metals, italso embrittles them, causingdeterioration of pipelines, valves,fittings, and storage tanks usedthroughout the entire distributionsystem. These would all have to be

constantly monitored and regularlyinspected, tested, and replaced.Otherwise the distribution systemwould become a continuous sourceof catastrophes.

Given these technical difficulties, theimplementation of an economicallyviable method of retail hydrogendistribution from large-scale central

production factories is essentially

impossible. Because of this, analternative concept has been

proposed wherein methane ormethanol fuel would be transported

by pipeline or truck, and then steam-reformed into hydrogen at the fillingstation itself. This would eliminatemost of the cost of hydrogentransport, but would increase the costof the hydrogen itself, since small-scale reformers are less efficient,

both economically and energetically,than large-scale industrial units.Also, it is questionable how manyservice stations would want to buy,operate, and maintain their ownsteam reforming facility. The stationwould also need to operate its own5,000 psi explosion-proof high

pressure hydrogen pump, or acryogenic refrigeration plant, both ofwhich are very unappealing

prospects. Such a scheme ofdistributed production stations would


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also eliminate any hope ofimplementing the hydrogeneconomys advertised plan tosequester underground the carbon

dioxide produced as a byproduct ofits hydrogen manufacturingoperations. At bottom, the wholeidea is ridiculous, since either themethane or methanol used asfeedstock at the station to make thehydrogen would be a betterautomobile fuel, containing moreenergy, in less volume, at less cost,than the hydrogen it yields.

The idea of producing hydrogen viawater electrolysis locally at fillingstations is equally preposterous. Tosee this, consider the following. Akilogram of hydrogen has about thesame energy content as a gallon ofgasoline, so the owner of a fillingstation could only expect to obtainthe same net income from a kilogramof hydrogen as from a gallon of gas.

A reasonable figure for this might be$0.20 per kilogram. To obtain amodest net income of $200 per dayfrom hydrogen sales would thereforerequire selling 1,000 kilograms perday. Since hydrogen requires about163,000 kJ/kg to produce viaelectrolysis (assuming an 85 percentefficient electrolyzer), this meansthat 163,000,000 kJ = 45,278 kW-hr

per day would be required by the

station. At current grid power costsof $0.06/kW-hr, this would run thestation an electric bill of $2,717perday. If the electrolysis unit ranaround the clock, it would need to besupplied with 1,900 kilowatts ofelectricity (about a thousand timesthe power draw of a typical house).This power would need to besupplied by the utility over specialheavy-duty lines, and then

transformed and rectified into directcurrent on site for use in the


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electrolyzer. Electrolyzers use highamp-low voltage power. In this case,at leastseveral hundred thousandamps would be required. And the

1,900-kilowatt electrolyzer wouldnot be cheap either. At current pricessuch a unit would cost the stationowner over $10 million, whichmortgaged over thirty years wouldcost him about $100,000 per month,assuming it lasted that long. (No onewould want to do this, of course,since the same $10 million investedin five percent bonds would return$500,000 per year, or seven times the$200 per day hydrogen sales incomeunder discussion, with no work andno risk.) Then the station ownerwould still need to buy and operateeither a 5,000 psi explosion-proofcompressor pump or a cryogenicrefrigerator, and build and acceptliability for high-pressure orcryogenic hydrogen storage facilitieson his properties. Having paid for all

that, there would then be the littlematter of insurance.

This, as should be obvious, iseconomic insanity. For just $6,000

per day, plus insurance costs, youcould make $200, provided you canfind fifty customers every daywilling to pay triple the going pricefor automobile fuel. I dont knowabout you, but if I were running a 7-

11, Id find something else to sell.

The Trouble with Hydrogen

Cars

The Queen in Lewis CarrollsThrough the Looking Glass says thatshe could believe six impossiblethings before breakfast. Such anattitude is necessary to discuss the

hydrogen economy, since no part ofit is possible. Putting aside theintractable issues of fundamental


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physics, hydrogen production costs,and distribution show stoppers, let us

proceed to discuss the problemsassociated with the hydrogen cars

themselves. In order for hydrogen tobe used as fuel in a car, it has to bestored in the car. As at the station,this could be done either in the formof cryogenic liquid hydrogen or ashighly compressed gas. In eithercase, we come up against serious

problems caused by the low densityof hydrogen. For example, if liquidhydrogen is the form employed, thenstoring 20 kilograms onboard(equivalent in energy content to 20gallons of gasoline) would require aninsulated cryogenic fuel tank with avolume of some 280 liters (70gallons). This cryogenic hydrogenwould always be boiling away,which would create concerns forthose who have to leave their cars

parked for any length of time, andwhich would also turn the

atmospheres in underground orotherwise enclosed parking garagesinto explosive fuel-air mixtures.Public parking garages containingsuch cars could be expected toexplode regularly, since hydrogen isflammable over concentrations in airranging from 4 to 75 percent, and theminimum energy required for itsignition is about one-twentieth thatrequired for gasoline or natural gas.

Compressed hydrogen is just asunworkable as liquid hydrogen. If5,000 psi compressed hydrogen wereemployed, the tank would need to be650 liters (162 gallons), or eighttimes the size of a gasoline tankcontaining equal energy. Because itwould have to hold high pressure,this huge tank could not be shaped inan irregular form to fit into the

vehicles empty space in someconvenient way. Instead it would


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have to be a simple shape like asphere or a domed cylinder, whichwould make its spatial demandsmuch more difficult to

accommodate, and significantlyreduce the usable vehicle spacewithin a car of a given size. If madeof (usually) crash-safe steel, such ahydrogen tank would weigh 1,300kilograms (2,860 pounds)about asmuch as an entire small car! Luggingthis extra weight around woulddrastically increase the fuelconsumption of the vehicle, perhapsdoubling it. If, instead of steel, alightweight carbon fiberoverwrapped tank were employed toavoid this penalty, the car would

become a deadly explosive firebombin the event of a crash.

While hydrogen gas can be used as afuel in internal combustion engines,there is no advantage in doing so. Infact, hydrogen reduces the efficiency

of such engines by 20 percentcompared to what they can achieveusing gasoline. For this reason,nearly all discussion of hydrogenvehicles has centered on powersystems driven by fuel cells.

Fuel cells are electrochemicalsystems that generate electricitydirectly through the combination ofhydrogen and oxygen in solution.

Essentially electrolyzers operating inreverse, they are attractive becausethey have no moving parts (otherthan small water pumps), and underconditions where the quality of theirhydrogen and oxygen feed can be

perfectly controlled, they are quiteefficient and reliable. These featureshave provided sufficient advantagesto make fuel cells the technology ofchoice for certain specialty

applications, such as the powersystem for NASAs Apollo capsules


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and the space shuttle.

Yet despite their successful use forfour decades in the space program,

and many billions of dollars ofresearch and development fundsexpended over the years for theirimprovement and refinement, fuelcells have thus far found little use in

broader commercial applications.The reasons for this are threefold.First, in ordinary terrestrialapplications, a practical powersystem must last years, not just the

few weeks required to support amanned space flight. Second, onEarth, the oxygen supply for the fuelcell must come from the atmosphere,which contains not only nitrogen(which decreases the fuel cellefficiency compared to a pureoxygen source), but carbon dioxide,carbon monoxide, and many other

pollutants. Even in trace form, suchpollutants can contaminate the

catalysts used in the fuel cells andcause permanent degradation,ultimately rendering the systeminoperable. Finally, and decisively,fuel cells are very expensive. For

NASA, which spends hundreds ofmillions of dollars on every shuttlelaunch, it makes little difference if its10 kilowatt fuel cell system costs$100,000, a million dollars, or tenmillion dollars. For a member of the

public, however, such costs matter agreat deal.

There are many kinds of fuel cells,including alkaline, phosphoric acid,and molten carbonate systems, butfor purposes of motor vehicle use theonly kind that is suitable and being

pursued for development is theproton exchange membrane fuel cell(PEMFC). These, for example, are

the kind used by all vehicle fuel cellengines manufactured by the Ballard


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Power company, of Vancouver,British Columbia, which for the pastdecade has produced nearly 80

percent of all fuel cell engines

worldwide.

PEMFCs use a platinum catalyst,which is very expensive, and despite

billions of dollars of R&D efforts toreduce the amount required, it has

proven impossible to cut the cost ofsuch systems below about$7,000/kW. This is very unfortunate,

because an electric car with a 100-

horsepower motor needs about 75kilowatts of electricity to make it go.At this price, the costfor just the fuelcell stackpowering the car would beabout half a million dollars. Actualcosts forcomplete Ballard fuel cellengine systems have been well over amillion dollars each. Then theresstill the rest of the car to pay for,although with the propulsion systemcosting this much, the additional cost

would seem like a rounding error.

That, however, is not even the worstof it. Operating under roadconditions in the real atmosphere,which contains such powerfulcatalyst poisons (chemicals that willreduce the effectiveness of the fuelcell) as sulfur dioxide, nitrogendioxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbonmonoxide, and ammonia that can

permanently incapacitate a PEMFC,the operating lifetimes of fuel cellstacks have been shown to be lessthan 20 percent those of conventionaldiesel engines. As the trenchantindustry analyst F. David Doty

pointedly put it:

Were still waiting tosee a fuel-cell vehicledriven from Miami to

Maine via the SmokyMountains in thewintereven one time,


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with a few stops andrestarts in Maine. Then,we need to see onehold up to a forty-

minute daily commutefor more than twoyears (preferably atleast fifteen years) withminimal maintenance,and come through ahighway accident withless than $200,000 indamages.... Whenlifetime andmaintenance areconsidered, one can

argue that vehicle-qualified PEMFCs arecurrently 400 timesmore expensive thandiesel engines.

It is true that the costs of PEMFCmight conceivably be reduced overtime due to technologyimprovements (although no real costreduction has been achieved over the

past decade despite several billiondollars in research investment).Moreover, if somehow the vehiclesever went into mass production,increased demand would likely drivethe price of the platinum theycontain, and thus the overall systemcost, through the roof.

Taken together, the outrageouslyhigh costs of fuel-cell cars and

hydrogen fuel, combined with thenon-existence of a hydrogendistribution and sales infrastructure,and the danger to life and limbinvolved in driving around a vehiclecontaining a crash-detonatablehydrogen gas bomb, make the

possibility of mass consumerpurchases of hydrogen fuel-cellvehicles a non-starter. But lets saysome benevolent government

bureaucrat with a great deal of yourmoney decided to spend $700 billion


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to buy, at $1 million each, 700,000PEMFC powered vehicles (thiswould represent about four-tenths ofone percent of the total U.S.

automobile fleet), and then another$300 billion to establish a hydrogendistribution infrastructure. Wouldntwe at least get some environmental

benefit for our trillion bucks?

No, we would get no benefit at all.As discussed above, hydrogen isactually produced commerciallyusing fossil fuel energy, much of

which is lost in the process, meaningthat more fossil fuels need to beburned, and thus more carbondioxide produced, to provide avehicle with a given amount ofenergy using hydrogen than if thevehicle were allowed to burn fossilfuels directly. Even if we ignorecosts completely and generatehydrogen for vehicle fuel using waterelectrolysis, that would also increase

pollution, since most electricity isactually generated by burning coaland natural gas. Even if theelectricity in question came fromnuclear, hydro, wind, or solar power,wasting it on hydrogen generationwould still increase overall carbondioxide emissions relative to thealternative of simply putting the

power into the grid.

Furthermore, despite all their costand hype, the fuel cell vehiclesthemselves offer no increase inefficiency relative to moreconventional systems. (In thiscontext, efficiency means the

percentage of energy in the fuel thatis spent on actual work rather thanwasted.) While the theoreticalefficiency of a hydrogen/oxygen fuelcell approaches 85 percent, the actual

efficiency of real PEMFC stacksusing hydrogen and air near


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maximum output (where they mustoperate, because fuel cell capacity isso expensive) is about 38 percent. Ifwe then factor in an estimated

efficiency for the power electronicsof 92 percent and a real-world motorefficiency of 85 percent, we obtainan estimate of about 30 percentefficiency for a fuel-cell vehicle.Ordinary internal combustion enginecars can already match this, withsystems offering up to 38 percentefficiencies well in sight.Conventional diesel engines operatetoday at about 42 percent efficiency.With variable valve timing, theyshould be able to attain 58 percentefficiency. Thats nearly twice theefficiency offered by a fuel cellvehicle, at 1/400th the cost.

Despite these inconvenient facts, theU.S. Department of Energy hascontinued to hand out billions ofdollars of the taxpayers money to

major auto companies and their fuel-cell development partners to producehydrogen-powered auto-showdisplay vehicles. The agency issuesrepeated predictions claiming thattens of thousands of these cars willsoon be appearing on Americashighways, when in fact theDepartments past projections of thegrowth of hydrogen vehicles have all

been at least two orders of magnitude

higher than reality. As a result,stocks in all the major fuel-cellcompanies, pumped high by suchhype at the expense of naveinvestors, are currently selling at lessthan one-tenth their peak values.Eventually, real markets catch upwith reality; hype and hoaxes canonly take us so far.

A Real Energy Solution

The problem, however, is not


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simply economic but political, andthe reality check on politicians is notalways so swift or so reliable. Thelonger we buy into the hydrogen

hoax, the longer we will avoiddeveloping an energy policy thattruly serves Americas interestseconomic, environmental, andgeopolitical. Fortunately, on thisfront, there is good news, if only wehave the will to be serious. Ethanoland methanol are practical liquidfuels that can be handled by theexisting fuel distributioninfrastructure and produced at pricesroughly competitive with gasoline.During 2006, for example, methanolwas selling at unsubsidized prices aslow as $0.80 per gallon, equivalenton an energy basis to gasoline at$1.50 per gallon. As a path towardenergy security, methanol is alsoextremely attractive, since it can bemade from any kind of biomass,coal, natural gas, or municipal waste

resources plentiful in the UnitedStates and many other non-OPECnations. Unfortunately, however, thevast majority of cars on the roadcannot use it.

What is needed is government actionto break the vertical monopoly on theautomobile fuel supply currently held

by the petroleum cartel. This couldmost efficiently be done simply by

mandating that all new carswhether of foreign or domesticmanufacturesold in the UnitedStates be flex-fueled. Such cars,which can run on any mixture ofalcohol or gasoline, are currently

being produced in the United Statesfor little more (typically an extra$100 to $200) than the same vehiclesin non-flex-fueled form. But theyonly command about 3 percent of the

market, because there are so fewhigh-alcohol gas pumps to serve


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Islamists to spread fanaticalideology, we could give our businessto the worlds farmers, coal miners,and other people who actually work

for a living. Instead of selling offblocks of stock in Western mediacompanies to Saudi princes, wecould be selling tractors to Honduras.Instead of funding terrorism, wecould be using our energy dollars tofinance world development. Thatswhat a serious energy policy wouldlook like.

Robert Zubrin, an aerospace

engineer, is president of Pioneer

Astronautics, a research and

development firm. His new book on

energy policy will be published in

Fall 2007.

Robert Zubrin, "The Hydrogen Hoax," The New

the hydrogen hoax

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