That's what I think, too.
Hydrogen Myths PDF:
Myth #12. Since renewables are currently too costly, hydrogen would have to be made from fossil fuels or nuclear energy.
Hydrogen would indeed be made in the short run, as it is now, mainly from natural gas (particularly in North America), but when the hydrogen is used in fuel cells, total carbon emissions per mile would be cut by about half using ordinary cars, or by ~80+% using 5vehicles.105 That’s a lot better than likely carbon reductions without hydrogen, and is a sound interim step while zerocarbon ways to produce hydrogen are being deployed.
Natural-gas prices would have to rise astronomically before electricity priced at just the running costs of existing nuclear power plants, plus electricity or hydrogen delivery costs, could compete with gas reformers sited at or near filling stations.106 If this did occur, it might be a constructive but temporary use for nuclear plants as long as they are allowed and economical to operate. (That will be until the next big accident or sabotage incident, or repairs become too costly, or the regulatory system becomes politically accountable, or historic exemption from major-accident liability is removed — whichever comes first.) However, since electricity is fungible and nuclear plants are generally dispatched whenever available, any nuclear electricity used to make hydrogen would normally result in the displacement of that baseload generation into the increased operation of existing coal-fired plants, thus reversing any climate benefits from using the hydrogen. And, of course, nuclear power is not the only major way to expand U.S. electricity generation, let alone the fastest or cheapest way. U.S. installed nuclear power capacity now produces less total electricity than could cost-effectively come, for example, just from the ~400 GW of high-grade windpower potential on Tribal lands in the Dakotas.107
Long-term, large-scale choices for making hydrogen are not limited to costly renewables-ornuclear electrolysis vs. carbon-releasing natural-gas reforming:
Reformers108 can use a wide range of biomass feedstocks which, if sustainably grown, don’t harm the climate. Some can actually help the climate, such as reforming methane from anerobic digestion of manure that would otherwise release methane (a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent per molecule than CO2 over a 100-year horizon) into the air. In some cases, it may also make sense to gasify municipal wastes to make hydrogen.
With biomass, waste, and fossil-fuel feedstocks, reformers can also be coupled with carbon sequestration. Since 1996, Statoil ASA, Norway’s state oil company, has been reforming natural gas from a North Sea field and reinjecting 1 MT/y of separated CO2 into the reservoir (also a common method of enhanced oil recovery). This promising method can yield three profit streams — from hydrogen, enhanced hydrocarbon recovery, and carbon sequestration. However, it is centralized and hence incurs hydrogen delivery costs.
Another Norwegian firm, Aker Kværner Group ASA, is scaling up a plasma-arc process that separates hydrocarbons (typically natural gas or oil) into 48 mass percent hydrogen, 10% steam, and 40% carbon black, which can be used (for tiremaking, metallurgy, etc.) or simply stored in an inert or reducing atmosphere. No CO2 is released, so this process, operating since 1992, can also be a backstop in case basic problems emerge with carbon sequestration.109
Some experimental methods of sequestration, notably those that capture the carbon in blocks of artificial rock without requiring extra energy (the reaction releases rather than requires heat), may be capable of scaling down to serve decentralized reformers.
Nor is it generally true that electricity from renewable sources is uncompetitively costly, leaving no climate-safe source to run electrolysis except nuclear power. Florida Power & Light now sells the output of its 100-MW windfarms for 2.5¢/kWh (net of the 1.7¢/kWh production tax credit meant to offset the larger subsidies to fossil and nuclear power). That unsubsidized ~4.2¢/kWh busbar price is the cheapest new bulk power source known, emits no carbon, and is driving the 30–40%/y expansion of global windpower, which exceeded 31 billion watts by the end of 2002. Windpower has lately added more than twice the global capacity each year that nuclear power did in the 1990s.110 Europe plans to get 22% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010 — 2.4 times the 2002 U.S. fraction or the official 2010 U.S. forecast — and is investing €2.12 billion on renewable energy R&D during 2003–06, mainly for hydrogen-related renewable sources. Solar cells, though currently much costlier than windpower (they cost ~8–30¢/kWh delivered to the customer), are growing even faster, and thanks to several recent technical breakthroughs, could approach ~5¢/kWh delivered in a decade or two — about competitive with the delivered cost of just operating existing nuclear plants, and ~2–3 times cheaper than new ones.
a. A hydrogen economy would require the construction of many new coal and nuclear power stations (or perhaps nuclear fusion stations).
This fear felt by many environmentalists is unfounded. New nuclear plants would deliver electricity at about 2–3 times the cost of new windpower,111 5–10 times that of new gas-fired cogeneration in industry and buildings, and 10–30+ times that of efficient use, so they won’t be built, with or without a hydrogen transition. Any hydrogen produced from their electricity would be 4–7 times costlier in energy content, or about 2–3 times costlier per mile, than oil at the highest prices ever observed.112 Further increasing nuclear power’s cost disadvantage, often by as much as tenfold, are 207 “distributed benefits” of decentralized resources recently described by RMI.113 Under no conceivable circumstances would a market economy choose nuclear power.
ZeroCarbon Hydrogen MethodsA recent Australian discovery for solar cells that produce hydrogen instead of electricity:
http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/adv/articles/2004/aug/Solar_hydrogen.htmlOlder technology on Solar Hydrogen
http://www.hionsolar.com/n-hion96.htm
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