« US Coal Imports Spike | Main | Diesel Hydraulic Delivery Truck Unveiled »
July 13, 2006
An Early Retirement For The Hydrogen Fuel Cell
A hugely important announcement was made this weekend by Ulf Bossel at the Lucerne Fuel Cell Forum, which is a very highly respected technical fuel cell conference. The announcement, which I have copied to the bottom of this post, was that the conference will no longer continue discussing PEM fuel cells because they require hydrogen fuel which is a synthetic fuel and "can never compete with its own energy source".The conference will continue discussing phosphoric acid fuel cells, molten carbonate fuel cells and solid oxide fuel cells which "can meet the challenges of a sustainable future".
Ulf Bossel promotes the more efficient "electron economy", covered here, which, for vehicles, is twice as efficient as the hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is quite energy intensive. If you drive 35km per day in a fuel cell car, that car will consume roughly 6000kWh/year. This is equivalent to the per capita electricity consumption in Germany. If you drive 35km per day in a battery car, that car will require 3000kWh/year, the per capita electricity consumption of Poland.
There is not much doubt that northern North America (US and Canada) can afford to use hydrogen, and could do so with only small efficiency increases, considering that Canada uses 16000kWh/person/year and the US consumes 12000kWh/person/year. But the worry is the other 95% of the world that lives outside of North America.
Also, it's really the lifecycle energy intensity of vehicles that we must consider, not the well-to-wheel efficiency. Lifecycle energy intensities are not well understood though and for the time being, well-to-wheel is the best information we have. But one thing is for certain, a battery car or a fuel cell car cannot come close to the 200,000+ miles that a diesel engine can drive, and so for every 1 diesel car built, we would have to build at least 2 battery or fuel cell vehicles.
Here is the entire announcement which was attached to the proceedings of the conference:
Posted by dymaxion at July 13, 2006 07:08 PM