The Laws
At some point along the chain of making, putting energy in, storing, and delivering the hydrogen, we will have used more energy than we can get back, and this doesn’t count the energy used to make fuel cells, storage tanks, delivery systems, and vehicles. When fusion can make cheap hydrogen, when reliable long-lasting nanotube fuel cells exist, and when light-weight leak-proof carbon-fiber polymer-lined storage tanks and pipelines can be made inexpensively, then we can consider building the hydrogen economy infrastructure. Until then, it’s vaporware. All of these technical obstacles must be overcome for any of this to happen. Meanwhile, the United States government should stop funding the Freedom CAR program, which gives millions of tax dollars to the big three automakers to work on hydrogen fuel cells. Instead, automakers ought to be required to raise the average overall mileage their vehicles get — the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard.
"The Hydrogen Economy
Savior of Humanity or an Economic Black Hole?"
by Alice Friedemann
In eSkeptic
I know biofuel and hydrogen fans mean well, but the laws of thermodynamics simply cannot be circumvented.
Laws of Thermodynamics in simple form:
(1) you cannot win (you can’t get something for nothing because matter and energy are conserved.)
(2) You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state because entropy always increases.)
(3) you cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is not attainable.)
from Physics Planet
2 comments:
Presently we do not seem to have the ability get to a "hydrogen economy."
I personally think we are more likely to face what Kunstler calls "the long emergency." We should have taken President Carter's advice a generation ago.
How do these laws apply to solar power? Since the sun contributes most of the energy required for solar power, aren't we earthlings, in a sense, getting more out of it than we put in? Can't one environment (earth) gain "free" energy at the expense of another (in this case, the sun)?
And it seems that if hyrdogen is doomed to fail, solar is primed to break through. Arizona, for example, has just announced the construction of the world's largest solar power plant, expected to power some 70,000 homes a year.
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