If I'm identified with any renewable energy subject matter, it is hydrogen. Recently, I was inspired to re-focus on this option because of an e-mail I received from one of my colleagues, asking me to read this hydrogen article. I responded to him:
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Dear Benny:
The key to the hydrogen economy will be the transition, and this article you sent shows a pathway.
A quarter century after I drafted the first hydrogen bill ever created in the Senate, which became the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act, I thought this was the perfect bill. There is more hydrogen in the Universe than all the other elements put together. All stars utilize this gas to create energy. When combusted on Earth, the only products are energy and water. Surely these are clues that hydrogen will be significant for our future.
In 1979 while on assignment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on fusion--which, of course, is another hydrogen option--I was asked to work in the U.S. Senate. Already, my sense was that commercial hydrogen was more than a generation away, as the laser to do it had not yet been invented. Today, it is still more than a generation away, for that laser has still not been invented. I then felt that inertial confinement (using a laser) makes a lot more technological sense than magnet confinement (as is now proceeding as ITER in Southern France).
That legislation became law, but progress was slow, so more than a quarter century after the U.S. Congress began talking about hydrogen, and this was 16 years ago, I thought: Why not make hydrogen free? I wrote several Huffington Post articles outlining how. Here is Part One. After you read that one, you should be able to find the others if still interested in the subject.
I generally focus on a science topic on Wednesday. You have inspired me to blog on hydrogen this week.
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So here we are on Wednesday, and I saw that it was only in November of last year that I re-told The Story of Hydrogen. There is a lot more to this topic than the following, but as a beginning on why I am involved, here are a few passages from that posting:
- In 1980, I found myself working in the U.S. Senate and recalled what I learned in Miami (thought it would be instructive to explain that this was the inaugural conference when hydrogen dreamers first met). I was so inspired that I wrote the initial hydrogen legislation for the Senate, which led to the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act in 1989.
- In 1990 I chaired the World Hydrogen Energy Conference in Hawaii. Soon thereafter I became chairman of the Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel, and we prepared The Green Hydrogen Energy Report, which served as the guide for a decade of Congressional hydrogen funding. This led to selection of the Hawaii Natural Energy at the University of Hawaii to become a National Hydrogen Center for Education and Research.
- The day before the Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel met in Honolulu in 1995, I created a straw man budget for discussion. This was a super optimistic speculation on escalating the funds for hydrogen.
- Well, the Panel did not change anything, and you can read this quote from the report.
Under the HTAP plan, DOE’s hydrogen budget within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) would annually range between $40 and $60 million, compared with recent funding of about $10 million. This core funding should trigger at least equal cost-matching from industry and stimulate an expanded, but more coordinated, response within DOE and other federal agencies involved with hydrogen research and development (R&D).
The hydrogen budget did in fact reach the higher end of our recommendation, and in 2002, there were more funds in the Department of Energy's budget for hydrogen than solar technologies. How did this happen?
- Read that Matsunaga Hydrogen Act.
- I provided the first draft where:
- Created was the Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel.
- This Panel was unique, in that it reported in parallel to the Secretary of Energy and the U.S. Congress. There is no other federal panel capable of legally doing this.
- Thus, we annually officially filed the recommended hydrogen budget to Congress, while the Department of Energy did the same. The budget was identical.
- Hydrogen is one of those subjects that was alway bipartisan. Thus, there was no contention.
In afterthought, I later realized that the transition of hydrogen from dream to reality would be particularly lengthy. It was too expensive in 2000, and today still too expensive to produce. If hydrogen is this fuel for our future, though, why not find a way to get to the Hydrogen Economy faster? So in 2006 I suggested a mechanism to bypass the traditional R&D to commercialization pathway. From the first of my HuffPo's on the subject:
On March 21, 2006, at the annual luncheon of the National Hydrogen Association (NHA) Conference in Long Beach, California, I received the Spark Matsunaga Memorial Hydrogen Award, usually given to an elected official. However, as I was the individual who U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga assigned in 1980 to write the first draft of his hydrogen bill, I guess I was considered to be close enough to qualify. The second recipient, in 1992, was U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka, whose letter of congratulations was read by Jeff Serfass of NHA. Other awardees have included Congressmen and Senators, although Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger received this honor in 2004. Walking up to the podium, aside from the assorted obligatory thank you, I wondered what I was going to say. (Pardon me for mentioning all this, but a degree of credibility helps when one leaps beyond the edge of the envelope.) It then came to me in a moment of splendid inspiration, bursting forth from a third of a century of deliberation--MAKE HYDROGEN FREE.
What About Free Hydrogen? (Part 1)
What About Free Hydrogen? (Part 2)
After a while the feedback I was receiving called for a mid-course correction. Thus, in this transition, why not make all of renewable energy free at a certain point in the future. Or, from Part 5:
But traditionalists will state, this is impossible...in fact, crazy. So be it. I provide a hint in my first HuffPo of May 29 entitled, "Well, Barack, We have a Problem..." Then through all my other posts, leading to this series, details about purposefully controversial alternatives are provided. I do suggest that the G8 Nations and United Nations take the lead, but, on afterthought, the USA made an early unilateral decision to legislate for clean air and water, and the world followed. Our next president, Congress and the private sector must set aside their differences, ala Booker T, and take just one magnificent step: make Green Energy free in 2020.
Of course 2020 came and went, but there was progress in developing sustainability. You have of course noticed that when authorities talk about energy self-sufficiency and 100% renewable, they are only referring to electricity. There is more to this:
- Electricity is less than 40% of the problem. What about air transport, etc.?
- Some say the future of ground transport will be electric vehicles. But batteries are expensive. A fuel cell is more efficient than batteries. In time hydrogen and fuel cells will overtake EVs. In the transition, a direct methanol fuel cell will precede hydrogen.
- Progress on aviation self-sufficiency has been slow, if not non-existent.
The Matsunaga Hydrogen Act recommended that the Department of Defense and NASA develop the National Aerospace Plane, which will be powered by hydrogen. Turns out that many billions were spent to start a program, but there was little obvious progress. This effort became a Black (secret) Program, and I'm not sure what is happening today.- Read my HuffPo on:
- The transition will take dedication and time and effort and money. Here is an article to read: Hydrogen May be a Climate Solution. The driver will be global warming.
Breakthroughs will be necessary:- Another metal to replace platinum in a fuel cell.
- A catalyst to convert biomass gases into methanol.
- An efficient direct methanol fuel cell.
- Using sunlight to more effectively generate hydrogen from water.
- Aviation applications of hydrogen needs a lot of work.
- Other technologies such as ocean thermal energy conversion must be utilized to produce hydrogen at sea.
- Commercialization of fusion needs to happen.
- The Hydrogen Society will come. But this could take a century, or more. Can Humanity afford to dawdle along with global warming so imminent? Make hydrogen free?
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