The Hydrogen Revolution: Game-Changing Developments Loom for Global Energy Supply

[nationalize the fed]

Kikkawa Takeo | Nippon.com | 2015.04.02

With zero emissions, hydrogen has long been regarded as a highly promising green fuel. But difficulties in transporting and storing this highly volatile gas, along with slow development of the necessary infrastructure, have kept progress stalled until relatively recently. But 2014 was a big year for hydrogen energy in Japan. An expert on the topic looks to what the future may hold.

Long-Awaited Progress on Hydrogen Energy

The year 2014 was when real progress finally started to be seen in the use of hydrogen energy. In June, the Ministry for Economy, Trade, and Industry’s Council for Strategy on Hydrogen and Fuel Cells compiled its “Strategic Road Map for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells.” And November saw a major step toward the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s goal of realizing a “hydrogen society” by the time of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics with the release of a list of concrete measures and budgetary provisions. Around that same time, both Honda and Toyota Motors confirmed plans to put hydrogen fuel cell cars on the market. And two other firms––Iwatani Corporation and JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation––announced prices for the sale of hydrogen at hydrogen stations. All the gears seemed to have ground into action at once.



Japan had already taken the global lead in the implementation of hydrogen fuel cell technology. In 2009 Panasonic teamed up with Tokyo Gas to launch Ene-Farm, a pioneering electrochemical fuel cell for the home. And in December 2014 Toyota unveiled the world’s first mass-market fuel cell car, a development that attracted much media attention.

Five Potential Benefits

The great potential benefits of hydrogen energy can be summed up in five main points.

First, because the use of hydrogen as a fuel produces no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases (the only byproduct is pure water), it is considered to be a “green” fuel. This eco-friendly status, however, extends only to the actual use of hydrogen, and not to its initial production. Because such merits are negated if fossil fuels are used in production of the gas, hydrogen production via renewable energy sources is a preferable option in order to reap the full environmental benefits.

Second, because hydrogen fuel cells are exceptionally energy efficient, they have great potential in the ongoing drive to curb overall energy consumption....SNIP

The fourth point is, because hydrogen can be produced by a broad variety of means,..SNIP

The fifth and final point is of particular interest to Japan. This country leads the world in the development of the technology for hydrogen energy...SNIP

Continue: http://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00167/

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Some may attempt to slime the author Kikkawa Takeo but most (all?) will not have Takeo's credentials. So the reader is free to believe anonymous posters on the net or credentialed Professors at Universities.

Kikiawa Takeo is Professor of Management at Tokyo University of Science Graduate School of Innovation Studies. Specializes in the history of management in Japan, along with issues relating to the energy industry, local economies, and the sports industry. Obtained his doctor's degree from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Economics in 1996, and held a research position at Harvard Business School, as well as professorships at the University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science and Hitotsubashi University Faculty of Commerce and Management before assuming his current position in April 2015. Was appointed chair of the Tokyo’s Strategic Committee on the Realization of a Hydrogen Society in 2014. Published works include: Denryoku kaikaku: Enerugī seisaku no rekishiteki daitenkan (Electricity Reforms: A Historic Turnaround in Energy Policy) and Nihon no enerugī mondai (Japan’s Energy Problems).

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What is Spera Hydrogen? (From Takeo's article)
http://www.chiyoda-corp.com/technology/en/spera-hydrogen/index.html

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Related: Panasonic Ene-Farm



The 2013 model of Panasonic's household fuel cell (ENE FARM) released in April 2013 achieved the world's highest (*1) total efficiency of 95.0% (LHV) (*2). It has also achieved significant price reduction (*3) through the reduction in the number of components used...
http://panasonic.co.jp/ap/FC/en_doc03_00.html

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The Hydrogen Revolution is here- and no one can stop it.

[NYC_SKP]

1. More Lies. " With zero emissions, hydrogen has long been regarded..." Fucking Lies.

Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source.

95% of the hydrogen we produce comes from natural gas reforming, a fossil fuel.

Production of hydrogen using truly renewable sources like biofuels, wind, and solar is prohibitively expensive.

The push to adopt hydrogen is an effort by industries to keep us dependent upon a proprietary infrastructure.

Your Panasonic Fuel Cell with 95% efficiency is NATURAL GAS FUEL CELL. Good fucking grief.

[NYC_SKP]

2. That 95% efficient fuel cell you have runs on NATURAL GAS, not hydrogen. You have 0 credibility.

.
You posted this link: http://panasonic.co.jp/ap/FC/en_doc03_00.html

Look, I know about this shit and you, apparently, don't.

From your source:

Household fuel cells have adopted city gas (methane, CH4) as fuel, and steam reforming
as the method to produce hydrogen, so that the existing city gas supply infrastructure can be used.

Since hydrogen is produced in the place where it is used, there is no need to transport or store hydrogen, which is hard to handle.

However, when hydrogen is extracted by steam reforming, carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) are produced, because it is a fossil resource containing carbon that is being reformed.

http://panasonic.co.jp/ap/FC/en_doc02_02.html

[CentralMass]

3. Hydrogen is not a fuel. It is an energy carrier,

It requires energy to produce it. Producing it with electricity by electrolysis of water is the most expensive method of generating it. Electricity from solar is still considerably more costly than electricity produced from fossil fuels and nuclear power sources. So using for transportation and home power use it is not currently an economical or green solution to the worlds energy problems and it won't let likely make financial sense for decades. The power required to produce it (via electrolysis of water) and to compress it for storage, coupled with the losses in converting it back into power make it a costly, and from an efficiency standpoint, not a particulaty green use of solar and electrical power. Electric vehicles are more efficient. IMO, the hydrogen economy is mostly hype.

[NYC_SKP]

4. You are correct, and the OP is completely wrong scientifically and factually.

I would advise one correction to your reply, however: It's acceptable to call hydrogen a fuel, but not a source of energy, and it most certainly is a carrier.

2015 has long been planned to be the target for pushing hydrogen out, the marketing campaign. Government is involved and that gives it the air of legitimacy, but government also supports fracking and GMOs and the cattle industry.



Let's face it, hydrogen is an attempt to keep people addicted to fossil fuels and to an infrastructure similar to the current gasoline and utility model.

Nobody, after all, makes their own gasoline or natural gas, but plenty of people can easily make their own electricity to use in cars and home and never deal with a utility company or gas station.

(OK, some people make biofuels, but that's not easy)

[CentralMass]

9. it is not a point worthy of argument as i believe we are on the same page but since hydrogen does

not existing in any obtainable quantity in nature like other fuels such as wood, coal, petroleum, etch, it is more accurately an energy carrier rather than a fuel.

[Binkie The Clown]

5. I don't understand why otherwise intelligent people

can fall for the hydrogen scam. It has, always has had, and always will have a net negative energy return on energy invested.

Hydrogen is not an energy source. (At least not unless you collect free hydrogen gas from outer space. But factoring in the cost of collection, even that would be a net energy loser.) The "hydrogen revolution" has no legs. It won't last because it can't last. It's a net energy loser.

You will notice, also, that the "expert" quoted is a PhD in economics. Economics has a fairy-tale view of how physics works. Some magical process will always fill a need if the market has a high enough demand for it. The one thing economists are terrible at is dealing with physical limits in the real world. They still believe that we can have continuous growth on a finite planet. In other words, economists are delusional.

[NYC_SKP]

7. Ignorance is one thing, misdirection is another. The "Ene-Farm" runs on city gas, not H2.

The OP and the fossil fuel industry proponents and all the folks feeding off the funding are tricky.

They use "fuel cell" articles to promote H2 but the actual cells use natural gas

They talk about zero GHG emissions, but neglect to include the overall processes.

This is greenwashing a dirty fossil fuel backed industry effort and it's fucked up.

The poster should be ashamed, they've been corrected over and over again and refuses to back up their claims or quit posting bullshit.

[caraher]

8. Some people are paid not to understand things

or at least to appear not to.

And some are genuinely misinformed and/or ignorant.

[rickford66]

6. Most people don't undestand thermodynamics.

Converting one form of energy to another has costs, ie losses. I believe if you add up all the costs of the fossil fuel industry, we would find out the real cost is much more than the profits taken by the corporations. We pay the extra through health care, tax subsidies and military intervention. The shortest route is the most efficient. Renewables directly as possible to applications. That would be point of use production determined by local available resources coupled with the highest efficiency possible and the lowest energy demanded. The US standard of living will certainly be affected so it's understandable that there is resistance to the changes needed. Sadly I don't see what should be done happening.

[djean111]

10. On a brighter note, perhaps the nuclear pushers have given up and will switch from

swearing that nuclear power is perfectly safe and its leavings are easily disposed of - to thinking that hydrogen powered energy is certainly not powered by fossil fuels.