Halliburton's Worst Nightmare - revealed on TODAY

[derby378]

Fiat has just unveiled a prototype hydrogen-powered vehicle. Runs on hydrogen, emits water vapor as its only "pollutant," and has a whisper-quiet engine. Fiat's homebase is in Torino, Italy.

Shell already has at least one hydrogen fuel station, complete with working pump, in operation in Iceland, just waiting for its first civilian hydrogen-powered customer.

Suppose the very reason for invading and occupying Iraq just got pissed into the wind because everyone is now driving hydrogen-powered vehicles? Wouldn't that just suck for Halliburton?

I have a dream...

[Cassandra]

1. It will suck for Exxon, et al...

but Halliburton already got our money and they can always start a war over something else.

[rman]

2. Producing hydrogen takes energy

of which there's plenty in Iceland, in the geo-thermal form.

The rest of us will have to do with other sources of energy, ie solar (still needs a lot of development) - or hydro-carbons such as oil.

Hydrogen-powered vehicle is nice, but it's only half the solution.

[baldguy]

7. Half a solution is better than none.

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. Thank you

and in combination, all of these 'half' solutions will end our dependence on foreign oil and we can't have that now can we?

[megatherium]

9. Or we could use nuclear energy.

Special nuclear plants have been designed that would produce hydrogen from water (using a combination of heat and electricity to do so efficiently). The alternative is coal.

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. There are other alternatives

then just nuclear and/or coal.

Legal industrial hemp and you won't need nuclear.

[megatherium]

15. How much arable land would be required for that?

Hemp, switchgrass, corn, etc can contribute, but to replace petroleum, I think we'd have to convert much of our farmland to produce motor fuels. We have to eat.

[Talismom]

3. Not at all if the goal was empire building and sucking all our taxes into

their off-shore accounts. Haliburton has already gone from being in the red from asbestos claims to almost 300% profits over the last year. I'm not weeping for them, but for us!

[rodeodance]

4. and Italian carmakers beat the Americans. That should be the headline.

[pinkpops]

5. Actually good news for Haliburton if they want to build Nukes

to make the electricity to extract the hydrogen.

[formercia]

6. Halliburton makes money coming and going

They are an oil well service company. When prices go up, wells get put back in production and they do the work. When prices go down, Halliburton puts the wells in mothballs. Just like stockbrokers, they make money on both sides of the market. It's to their benefit to keep prices fluctuating.

[HamdenRice]

8. Hydrogen is only an energy delivery vehicle, not a source of energy

In other words, energy companies will still have to "make" hydrogen, which is essentially storing energy in hydrogen through an endothermic (energy consuming) chemical reaction -- namely splitting the hydrogen and oxygen in water.

You then burn the hydrogen in your car releasing the energy that was "stored" through the hydrogen elsewhere.

Therefore, a hydrogen economy doesn't threaten the oil industry at all, if it is burning hydro-carbons that is used to generate the power to split hydrogen and oxygen. The most likely system, given our infrastructure is that giant coal and gas fired power plants (or worse, nuclear power plants) will generate electricity which will be used to make hydrogen.

The advantage of hydrogen to a green economy is that it allows us to gather energy from a much bigger variety of sources and store it in hydrogen -- like wind, solar, tidal and geothermal energy

But the big political battle of the hydrogen economy will be deciding what energy source to use to split the water molecule.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Exactly. H2 functions like a battery--except that you can't

"charge" it at home. Just a way of storing energy. You can tell it's a bad deal for 2 reasons: 1) Shell has bought in, and 2) the Bushies have been pushing it as an "alternative energy" venture for years.

[derby378]

16. Any kid with a chemistry set can extract hydrogen from tap water

While this would be a woefully inefficient way of obtaining hydrogen, any enterprising and visionary inventor could dream up a way to streamline the process, perhaps even with a running stream of water. Therein lies the rub. You can't manufacture oil unless you have a world-class synthetics laboratory - you've got to dig it up.

[formercia]

17. I did that as a kid in my bedroom

until the rectifier shorted out and the resulting explosion blew the windows out. The old man was pissed.

[formercia]

18. Why pay some company to make hydrogen

when you can make bio diesel in your own back yard. It has the advantage of working in diesel vehicles with little or no modification and it has better fuel value than hydrogen.

Don't you get it? Use hydrogen and we will still be dependent. From the consumer's standpoint, it doesn't matter where it comes from when you have to buy it from a dealer.

Some farmers could become completely independent by growing the soybeans for oil, fermenting alcohol as the other organic ingredient and making their own tax free farm fuel. They could even make KOH from wood ashes. All three ingredients needed to make their own fuel.

[Solly Mack]

11. Shell's an oil company, no? (among other things)

if an "oil" company adapts to create fuel cell stations - can't Halliburton also adapt to sell hydrogen and fuel cell components?




link on hydrogen & fuel cell energy (for funsies)


http://www.nrel.gov/hydrogen/proj_fuelcells.html

[IDemo]

12. The Hydrogen Economy: An Idea Whose Time Hasn't Come ... Again

The Hydrogen Economy: An Idea Whose Time Hasn't Come ... Again

Also see http://www.alternet.org/story/15239/

-- "For the fossil fuel industry, not surprisingly, hydrocarbons will provide most of our future hydrogen. They already have a significant head start. Almost 50 percent of the world's commercial hydrogen now comes from natural gas. Another 20 percent is derived from coal.

The automobile and oil companies are betting that petroleum will be the hydrogen source of the future. It was General Motors, after all, that coined the phrase "the hydrogen economy".

What does all this mean? A hydrogen economy will not be a renewable energy economy. For the next 20-50 years hydrogen will overwhelmingly be derived from fossil fuels or with nuclear energy."