Japan Looks at Hydrogen for Power Generation

[nationalize the fed]

Mitsuru Obe Wall St Journal Jul 29, 2014

[center][/center]

Now that Toyota Motor says it will release mass-production fuel-cell vehicles powered by hydrogen, Japan has set an even bigger goal of making hydrogen a main energy source for the nation’s electric utilities.

The nation’s first “hydrogen energy white paper,” released Monday, calls on the country to become a “hydrogen economy” by adopting the fuel for utility power generation.

The paper was produced by the government-affiliated New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization...

...Japan isn’t alone in looking at hydrogen for utility power. Germany, for instance, has been experimenting with a project to inject hydrogen into natural gas grids...
Full article + video: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/07/29/japan-looks-at-hydrogen-for-power-generation/

[Jim Lane]

1. These headline writers never learn. Here's another misleading headline.

Coal is an energy source because you can mine it and burn it. Uranium is an energy source because you can mine it and use it for fission. The sun is an energy source because you can put up a solar heater to heat water, or a photovoltaic panel to generate electricity.

Hydrogen is not an energy "source" because you can't mine it or find it anywhere. It's a way of storing or transferring energy. You use some other energy source to generate an energy input so that you can obtain hydrogen, then at another time and/or place you burn the hydrogen to get back some of the energy that you put into it.

Even worse, it's not just the headline. The full linked article would leave many readers with a false impression.

It's interesting enough to know that Japan is looking into hydrogen in a big way. I just wish the writers were a little more knowledgeable about the subject.

[phantom power]

2. + 1e6

Bad energy reporting -- a subset of Bad Science Reporting -- which is one of my all-time pet peeves.

Not a victimless crime either. Just one of the many things that makes people dumber, while they think they're educating themselves.

[nationalize the fed]

3. Italy launches first clean hydrogen power plant

Aug 14, 2009
Italian power company Enel said Friday that it had started up a ground-breaking hydrogen-powered electricity plant producing no greenhouse gases.


Fusina hydrogen power station, Fusina, Veneto Italy

Enel said the 12 megawatt plant, at Fusina in Venice's industrial zone of Porto Marghera, was the first of its kind in the world to operate on such a scale.

Powered by hydrogen by-products from local petrochemical industries such as the Eni group's Polimeri Europa factory, it can meet the needs of 20,000 families, while saving emissions equivalent to more than 17,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to Enel.

The power station forms part of a project dubbed Hydrogen Park, which is backed by the Venice region and Italy's environment minister to the tune of four million euros (5.6 million dollars)...
http://phys.org/news169470669.html

[Nihil]

4. ... which is a total non-sequitor (never mind a rebuttal to the previous post).

Sigh.

[NickB79]

5. "Powered by hydrogen by-products from local petrochemical industries"

"Clean, I tells ya! Never mind all that oil we had to process to get the hydrogen out of."

[caraher]

6. I wonder whether you'd ever see such a headline about batteres, flywheels or capacitors

Probably a good "sniff test" for any hydrogen headline - replace the word "hydrogen" with "batteries" and see if it still makes sense!