Seeker Blog

MIT Technology Review: Prof. Richard A. Muller on the realities of a “hydrogen economy“. Dr. Muller summarizes the basic science and the alternative hydrogen manufacture options. He projects that the economics of production will likely lead to significant increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, unless society gets behind nuclear energy.

I also believe that the hydrogen will be made by whatever method is cheapest. In the short run, we could revert to electrolysis, powered by electricity from nuclear plants. Right now nuclear energy is expensive, largely, I believe, because of regulations driven by the perceived risk of radioactivity. Yet I think that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere offers a much greater long-term threat to the environment and to health than do nuclear power plants…

For reasons that he doesn’t explain, he is optimistic about cheap solar power somewhere in the future:

When solar-generated electricity becomes cheaper than natural gas or coal, we can leave the fossil fuels in the ground, and have the best of all worlds. Cheap solar is inevitable, and we will not have to plaster the state of California with solar cells to enjoy its benefits. In a square kilometer of sunlight there is are 1,000 megawatts of solar power-the equivalent of a large nuclear power plant. Even if only 10 or 20 percent of the sunlight’s energy is extracted as electricity, the area of the solar cells will not be much larger than what we currently devote to nuclear, gas, or coal plants. Energy can be stored at night (and during cloudy days) in hydrogen. The solar future is coming.

My understanding of the economics of the “hydrogen economy” is that it may work for applications that are physically close to the source of hydrogen manufacture (e.g., close to natural gas supplies), but is non-competitive for transportation. See “Carrying the Energy Future Comparing Hydrogen and Electricity” for an assessment by The Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment (ILEA).