Earth Day (Today!) organizer Denis Hayes touts hydrogen fuel cells.

[nationalize the fed]

Denis Hayes April 21, 2015


Happy Earth Day- today April 22!

In the run-up to a solar eclipse on March 20 of this year, European tabloids had a Y2K-style field day. In the middle of a bright, sunny day, European solar panels together produce about as much electricity as 90 large nuclear power plants. Germany, with the largest solar commitment, obtains as much as 50 percent of its electricity from the sun during the sunniest hours. The eclipse was scheduled to arrive in the middle of the day and panic was setting in...snip

...Sunlight is, by far, the most abundant energy source on earth. But how do you store surplus electricity to use when you need it? Possibilities include batteries, ultracapacitors, and flywheels, all of which have important uses. One of the most attractive options is to use the sun’s energy to make hydrogen; store the hydrogen until it’s needed; then put it into a fuel cell to make electricity.

At the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, these technologies faced formidable challenges. Solar modules were ultra-expensive devices produced by a cottage industry whose only significant customer was NASA. Hydrogen was tricky to store and expensive to transport. Fuel cells required expensive catalysts like platinum...

...Elon Musk, a very bright guy and the CEO of Tesla, disagrees, calling hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles “mind-bogglingly stupid.” But the arguments he uses against them mostly echo the same arguments that had been used against battery electric vehicles until Musk himself upended the paradigm. Of course, he might well be right—the multiple energy conversions, high cost of infrastructure, etc.—might prove to be the kiss of death. But this depends upon a long string of assumptions about the future. It is not self-evident to people who don’t own Tesla stock that electric cars should receive rich subsidies while fuel cell vehicles receive none...SNIP

...hydrogen—for fundamental reasons—has to be considered among the most attractive contenders.

MORE: http://njtoday.net/2015/04/21/earth-day-organizer-touts-hydrogen-fuel-cells/


Denis Hayes, taken while director of the Solar Energy Research Institute (1979-1981)

Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970 and director of solar energy research under President Jimmy Carter, is president of the Bullitt Foundation and board chair of Earth Day Network.

Hayes has received the national Jefferson Awards Medal for Outstanding Public Service as well as the highest awards bestowed by the Sierra Club, The Humane Society of the United States, the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Council of America, the Global Environmental Facility of the World Bank, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and the American Solar Energy Society. He was featured in the documentary film, Earth Days. Time Magazine has named him as “Hero of the Planet.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Hayes


Solar Hydrogen- the fuel of the future. Earth Day Founder Hayes agrees.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Hayes is not a scientist and he's talking out his ass. And your "Hydrogen Cycle" graphic is a joke.

He founded Earth Day, woo hoo, but his undergrad degree is in Government, not science.

Hydrogen can be made from the sun, fine. But 95% of it is made from natural gas and Big Oil and Gas LOVE that.

Also, while my Chevy Volt charges up for pennies at home or work....


Guess what your H2 car will be REQUIRED TO DO--- Go to Hydrogen stations to fill up. And you will have to pay whatever the market will bear and that won't be cheap.

Hydrogen claptrap, I see it every day.

Your graphic leaves out energy losses, the the energy needed to pressurize the H2 and transport it where needed and scrub the air entering the fuel cell.

In short, it is an old POS graphic with little value.

[mackdaddy]

2. "Why a hydrogen economy doesn't make sense"

From 2006, But still valid now.

In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future. Only niche applications like submarines and spacecraft might use hydrogen.

“More energy is needed to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds than can ever be recovered from its use,” Bossel explains to PhysOrg.com. “Therefore, making the new chemical energy carrier form natural gas would not make sense, as it would increase the gas consumption and the emission of CO2. Instead, the dwindling fossil fuel reserves must be replaced by energy from renewable sources.”

While scientists from around the world have been piecing together the technology, Bossel has taken a broader look at how realistic the use of hydrogen for carrying energy would be. Hi
s overall energy analysis of a hydrogen economy demonstrates that high energy losses inevitably resulting from the laws of physics mean that a hydrogen economy will never make sense.

“The advantages of hydrogen praised by journalists (non-toxic, burns to water, abundance of hydrogen in the Universe, etc.) are misleading, because the production of hydrogen depends on the availability of energy and water, both of which are increasingly rare and may become political issues, as much as oil and natural gas are today,” says Bossel.

http://phys.org/news85074285.html