More on Building a Hydrogen Economy
The article “A Week Without Dinosaurs” (by Dan Neil, Aug. 29) presented an excellent argument for the use of hydrogen as a clean, replenishable and infinitely available fuel for motor vehicles and other equally important applications. But it was accompanied by trite, unimaginative and ultimately inane hand-wringing cop-outs: It requires non-replenishable, dirty fossil fuels to produce the hydrogen in the amounts needed; it costs a fortune and uses a lot of energy; it is hard to distribute; and because it has so little density, it requires large high-pressure, thus dangerous, tankage to hold it.
This is the message to the disenfranchised: Forget the hydrogen economy; let’s do business as usual. But there are real answers--positive rebuttals--to all of this negativism. Alas, they require the same type of effort and expenditure and time that was invested in the Manhattan Project--when we had to find a solution. In the case of energy and its impact on the environment, we again must find solutions.
When they are reunited to produce power or heat, hydrogen and oxygen recombine to form water. The obvious source of unlimited hydrogen and oxygen is the ocean. The only economically feasible, high-volume production method of obtaining hydrogen is by utilizing nuclear energy to separate the two elements. Solutions are within our grasp if we have the will and make it a national goal. We could then develop the infrastructure to support a hydrogen economy in 20 to 30 years--just in time to defeat predictions of our running out of oil by then. What are we waiting for?
Robert F. Brodsky
Redondo Beach
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Finally, a thoroughly honest article on hydrogen as a “fuel.” Congrats to Neil for his straightforward account. I have taken a keen interest in the so-called hydrogen economy since reading the book of the same title by Jeremy Rifkin. Anyone with a little college science knows that it takes more energy to make hydrogen from water or any other molecule than you get back when you recombine it in a fuel cell. Hydrogen is not a primary fuel, but it may prove a valuable storage medium for renewable energy from intermittent sources such as wind and solar power. Only in a place such as Iceland--with greater sources of renewable energy with which to make hydrogen--does a hydrogen economy truly make sense.
Richard Foster
Fullerton
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We need not await the miracle of fuel cells; the solution is available now. Battery-powered electric cars, or hybrids that are plug-capable for recharge, use cheap off-peak power, decrease total energy usage and emit less pollution.
If we really wished to avoid our humiliating dependence on overseas oil imports, the path is clear. Building 1 million cheap, small electric cars that can go 100 miles at 80 mph on batteries would reduce our gasoline usage by at least 10% in just one year. In addition, we could build plug-capable electric cars that run on batteries for traveling around town.
Doug Korthof
Seal Beach
