Schwarzenegger promises 'Hydrogen Highway' by 2010

[CShine]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an order Tuesday for California to have a network of stations offering the pollution-free hydrogen fuel up and down the state within six years.

Schwarzenegger signed the order after driving around a university campus in a Toyota Highlander propelled by a clean-burning hydrogen engine. The University of California at Davis is the site for one of America's most advanced centres for the study of alternative transportation systems.

Although many industry experts say the plans are ambitious - estimated to cost $100 million - Schwarzenegger said he believes the technology is available but government needs to play a catalyst role in making the new fuel system a reality.

"Your government will lead by example," he said. "As I have said many times, the choice is not between economic progress and environmental protection. Here in California, growth and protecting our nature beauty go hand in hand."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20040420/ca_pr_on_tc/schwarzenegger_hydrogen&cid=2152&ncid=2152

[bahrbearian]

1. Lead by example,. when is the Gopenator going to start riding a

bicycle?

[TheDonkey]

Good move, we need Kerry in the WH to make this national

and I can't wait until he's there.

[lastknowngood]

2. This idiot can't even spell hydrogen and he has no idea what

is involved. Why don't you people in Cali. just tell this moran to shut-up until he has to purge the democratic roles in November as planned.

[theoceansnerves]

3. we tried..

believe me we tried...
i don't know how so many people got duped.

[BayCityProgressive]

4. Hey this is a good initiative

even if he is republican. HE also released some non violent criminals from prison as well. More than davis was willing to do. It's bad when the two parties are so alike that we are getitng rpogressive action out of a republican governor that we couldnt get out fo the democrat.

[tinanator]

11. Im not so sure they were

the published election results have some of the most absurd outcomes (un)imaginable. I think it is open to serious question whether the voting was rigged. Where is CA's Bev Harris? Someone posted that perhaps 8% of the vote for Governor wasnt counted and about 4% of the recall, or vice versa. Does anyone have direct info on this?
http://vote2003.ss.ca.gov/Returns/gov/00.htm
there is no logical explanation for the high totals on the lower 100 candidates in this race, nor why not one got votes under 3 digits. Impossible. Very disproportional numbers for these joke candidacies turned up in certain rural counties and correlated with voting system used. Also it has been said that optical scanners have been subject to the same security breaches over the last two decades, so lets take a few grains of salt here and not blame the citizenry too soon.

[Cannikin]

5. Wonder if we can tap the energy from the hot air he blows?

[David Zephyr]

6. A Very Good Move for California and the Nation.

Regardless of who is endorsing it, this is a very, very good thing.

[havocmom]

17. are they gonna use oil to make it?

cuz if that is the recipe, it is just same ol same ol...

[leyton]

24. I agree.

People here who are rolling their eyes because it's Schwarzenegger and not Davis - come on, grow up. Give Arnold a chance - he's not a neocon. He's a moderate Republican who is proposing something environmentally responsible.

[Piperay]

7. Arnold is good on the environment

he sucks on everything else but I will give the devil his due and since the environment is my number one issue I give him a :thumbsup:. I still won't vote for arnie though because I will never vote for a repuke.:-(

[truthisfreedom]

8. what about fears that free hydrogen in the atmosphere will rapidly destroy

the ozone layer?

[mouse7]

10. Got science links this is an issue?

This is the first I've heard of this.

[truthisfreedom]

28. yes, there are quite a few links if you put "hydrogen ozone" in google

here's a couple:

http://www.nature.com/nsu/030609/030609-14.html
http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,59220,00.html

i have no idea exactly where this stands now. both of these articles appeared during the middle of last year. the basic premise is that because hydrogen has a good likelihood of heading skyward when it leaks (and it generally leaks badly because it is the smallest atom in the universe and it's hard to hold onto) and can cause chemical reactions that might ultimately affect the ozone layer.

[evworldeditor]

19. Original study flawed

The original study was pretty soundly critiqued to be based on worse-case scenarios of gas leakage. I tried to interview the author shortly after the study came out, but he took a leave of absense bfore we could talk. I got the impression that he'd had enough public exposure -- in more ways than one.

-----------------------------
http://www.evworld.com

[Pale_Rider]

9. HAH! He musta realized that he needs to get people ...

... off 'his' supply of precious gasoline for his humvees. Welcome to peak oil.

[dawgman]

12. Doesn't it take more energy to isolate the hydrogen than burning the

hydrogen will produce? If I am not mistaken more fossil fuel is burnt in the production than usable hydrogen is created.

[mouse7]

21. It's a clean fuel, and good way to store energy generated cleanly

Yes, it takes a fair amount of energy to convert hydrogen from water. The eventual plan is to use other efficient energy sources to generate electricity, and then use the cleanly generated electricity to produce clean fuel for vehicles.

[evworldeditor]

22. That's the dream... the reality is a lot different

Everyone in the industry talks about this, but the reality is, it only makes sense when there is sufficient surplus renewable energy to make it viable. Then you still have to deal with the inefficiencies of going from mechanical to electrical to chemical back to electrical then to mechanical power.

We have to get to at least 25% of grid capacity with renewables before we have to think about storing electricity and doing it as hydrogen may or may not make economic sense when that time comes.

--------------------
http://www.evworld.com

[KissMyAsscroft]

13. Nice PR stunt..

Look for the plan to be scrapped just like him doing a "full investigation" of the sexual allegations against him.

This thing will be trashed or made impotent...it will never happen.

Every now and again, this prick throws a bone to the lefties in California to keep him off his back...all lies.

He's a repuke through and through.

Take it to the bank.

[hatrack]

14. Hate to be the one to bust the hydrogen bubble, but . . .

From "The Party's Over" by Richard Heinberg, pp. 147-49

"However, there are no exploitable underground reservoirs of hydrogen. Usable hydrogen has to be manufactured from hydrocarbon sources, such as natural gas or coal (a gallon of gasoline actually contains more hydrogen than does a gallon of liquid hydrogen), or be extracted from water through electrolysis. Hydrogen production from algae and from sewage wastes has been demonstrated in the laboratory, but it is unclear whether these proceses can ever be scaled up for commercial production.

The crux, however, is this: The process of hydrogen production always uses more energy than the resulting hydrogen will yield. Hydrogen is thus not an energy source, but an energy carrier.

EDIT

In terms of energy efficiency (setting aside for the moment the problem of emissions and the need for energy storage), we would be better off burning natural gas or using PV or wind electricity directly, rather than going through the extra step of making hydrogen. The Second Law of Thermodynamics insures that hydrogen will be a net-energy loser every time since some usable energy is lost whenever it is transformed (e.g. from sunlight to photovoltaic electricity, from electricity to hydrogen, or from hydrogen back to electricity).

Given the already low net energy from renewables as well as the net energy losses from both the conversion of electricity to hydrogen and the subsequent conversion of hydrogen back to electricity, it is difficult to avoid the conclusions that the "hydrogen economy" touted by well-meaning visionaries will by necessity be a much lower-energy economy than we are accustomed to."

EDIT

Not that there won't be applications for this kind of power system, and research should indeed continue. But there ain't no magic hydrogen panacea coming down the Highway Of The Future. And I'd be saying the same thing if Gray Davis were still governor, and if Al Gore had introduced the "FreedomCAR" in HIS SOTU speech - physics doesn't care about political parties.

On edit - sheesh, can't spell tonight!

[havocmom]

18. That's what I fugured: looks like an environmental move but is just $$$

to the same extraction industries. What a ruse.

People, the real hope for the globe is to get serious about clean, renewable energy. Anything less is just a shell game

[JohnyCanuck]

23. The Hydrogen Economy - An Idea Whose Time Hasn't Come

Hydrogen - the Reality

Hydrogen has been successfully used in space by NASA. It makes sense in an environment where you want all the outputs: heat (the major output); water (for drinking, because space is the ultimate desert); electricity - and you are carrying around pure oxygen anyway and cost is not a real object. Things are a little different here on the planet's surface.

The hydrogen economy as postulated by North American governments, the mainstream media and the existing energy industry is at best hyperbole and wishful thinking, and more likely, a cynical hoax being perpetrated on the majority of the residents of planet Earth. None of this should come as news to us. The hydrogen fuel cell is an older technology than the internal combustion engine or the rechargeable battery; being created in 1837. Modern research on the hydrogen fuel cell dates back to at least the 1950's. General Motors developed a hydrogen fuel cell powered van prototype by 1966. It was not pursued because of economics. Technology almost 40 years later is not significantly more robust or efficient than this 1966 vehicle. Hydrogen was championed by Dr. Roger E. Billings in the 1970's, and then by Dr. David Scott in the 1980's, and then Dr. Geoffrey Ballard in the 1990's. Fuel cell vehicles were produced as early as the 1950's (Allis-Chalmers). A major breakthrough is still required to make the hydrogen economy viable on basic efficiency grounds. The hazards of working with hydrogen are well-documented, if not well publicized by the clique in power today who are steering the debate (or lack thereof) according to their own desires. Hydrogen gas had its day (as city gas - used for gas streetlights and heating), and lost out to superior technologies (notably zero-emissions electricity). Basic historical research on city gas works of the 1800's and 1900's will give you a slight sense of the hazards implicit in the widespread use of hydrogen gas.

Hydrogen does not make an efficient transportation fuel. Methanol and ethanol are more effective hydrogen carriers than pure hydrogen; for that matter, so is gasoline. But on-board reforming coupled with poor combustion or mobile fuel cells lead to a losing formula. We are definitely better off focusing our efforts on telecommuting, human powered vehicles, biofuels, battery electrics, hybrid drives, better traffic planning and control, increased use of mass transit as part of a multi-modal transportation system, and mass transit based on electric drive (subways, streetcars, trolley-buses, electrified inter-urban rail).

http://www.econogics.com/en/heconomy.htm

[evworldeditor]

15. Premature by 20 Years

While I appreciate the gesture -- and I know many of the people pushing for this -- it's my view that building a "hydrogen highway" is premature by about 20 years. Most hydrogen is still reformed from natural gas, so there is no reduction in CO2 emissions or fossil fuel dependency.

On top of this, we still haven't solved the "nut" of hydrogen storage. The best we have managed is about 2.5 kg of gas at 5000 psi. That translates into just over 100 miles range for fuel cell EV, not much better than a battery electric car, though the "refuel" time is minutes instead of hours.

The argument for doing this now is that we have to start someplace, so let's start with a fuel infrastructure and the vehicles will follow. That presumes the cost of fuel cell and storage technology drops rapidly enough to justify the cost of building the stations, a presumption that is hard to believe given the current slow progress of the technology.

The course California appears to be pursuing is one that relies initially on internal combustion engine vehicles -- like the Governor's Hummer -- converted to burn hydrogen, which is a relatively low-cost solution, even though SCAQMD is spending $2.3 million to convert 35 2004 Toyota Priuses to burn hydrogen. That's about the cost of one fuel cell Honda FCX.

But again, the issue is range, which will probably be even less than today's fuel cell demonstration vehicles.

I once asked a pair of Ford fuel cell engineers over lunch when this technology would become commerically viable. Their answer was twenty years.

What's the alternative? A carbohydrate economy that relies on biofuels -- ethanol and biodiesel. I just spoke this evening to Dr. Burns at SDSU about his plan to drive their L3 Enigma diesel hybrid sports car from San Diego to Florida on a single 30 gallons of biodiesel fuel starting July 4th. If they are successful, this will be the first motor vehicle to cross coast-to-coast without refueling. He is confident the car will do 80 mpg using off-the-shelf technology.

I'll be reporting on it for EVWorld when it happens.

----------------------
http://www.evworld.com

[central scrutinizer]

16. smells like a hydrogen sulfide highway to me

nfm

[MGKrebs]

20. Flatulence Freeway?

[cambie]

25. Hydrogen and Biodiesel

are pleasant fantasies, but we all know that there is only one place to get enough energy to keep everything running the way we have become accustomed. This and the war are the same topic.

[hunter]

27. California already has a "Biodiesel Highway..."

http://www.biodiesel.org/buyingbiodiesel/retailfuelingsites/showstate.asp?st=CA

There are biodiesel refineries being built in various places, some of them quite large.

Biodiesel will be MUCH more significant than Arnold's "Hydrogen Highway" for at least a decade or more. Hydrogen powered transportation may NEVER catch on because liquid fuels (or liquified gaseous fuels) are so much easier to use and make, and don't require any expensive new infrastructure.

I don't think war in the middle east is going to help us maintain our current lifestyle. Down that path is a Soviet-style economic collapse. If it's "U.S." against the world, well, nobody is going to win, and the average U.S. American is going to be lucky to have a job they can ride a bicycle to.

[leesa]

26. What BS money-making scam is this?? He's pushing Hummers and

pretending he gives a shit about the environment?? Most environmentalists agree this is not the way to go.