Gil Parker
HOT GAS: B.C.'s Gambling that Hydrogen is the Fuel of the Future—1999
Climate change is the thrust pushing the world away from carbon-based fuels and towards non-polluting hydrogen, away from the gasoline engine towards the fuel cell. This 1999 Monday Magazine article is a version of this story.
Is this winter's rain getting you down? Think that somehow we might be causing it? Andrew Weaver thinks so! Speaking to international scientists at the recent Vancouver Hydrogen Power conference, he maintained that average global temperature increases have followed directly any rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that present warming, caused by human activity, is evidenced by the weather extremes we are now seeing. He is a scientist at the Centre for Earth Sciences at UVic and he has 99% of the world climate scientists on his side. Fossil fuels are the root of the problem and hydrogen fuel could end our dependency on carbon-based energy.
Political action on climate change has moved slowly, but governments are taking action. In 1997 at Kyoto, Japan, most nations agreed to start limiting their "greenhouse gases," setting their proposed reductions as a percentage of what they released in 1990. Canada agreed to cut back by six percent by the year 2010. But ideas about how those reductions are supposed to be achieved vary widely. One solution is that people will stop burning coal and gasoline and start using hydrogen fuel instead.
Canada has been seriously working on the problem for nearly twenty years, since the Canadian Hydrogen Association was formed in 1982 and had their first workshop at BC Research. Canada now has a Hydrogen Institute, at Trois Rivières, Quebec. At the University of Victoria, the Institute for Integrated Energy Systems has been working on fuel-cell technology since 1989.
But the biggest regional player in hydrogen, and in the fuel cells that produce it, is Ballard Power Systems of Burnaby. With a stock price that has jumped six times in three years and contracts with major transportation firms throughout North America and Europe, they are an industry leader.
At the conference, federal minister Ralph Goodall, Natural Resources Canada, announced, as part of Canada's "Climate Change Action Fund" of $200 million, a $5.8-million program for the "refinement of the hydrogen fuel refueler." Delegates later inspected the BC Transit refueler in Port Coquitlam which supplies hydrogen to three buses. They rode in the buses, noting that the exhaust is merely a stream of water vapour. The refueling facility was built by Stuart Energy Systems, who now are charged with bringing the technology into commercial use. Minister Goodall expressed his support of other initiatives already under way: Ford's P2000 vehicle with a 50-horsepower Ballard fuel cell for power, 40 electric vehicles under construction, and a project using biotech enzymes to produce ethanol.
The transition to hydrogen fuel is not without its problems. David Scott, UVic mechanical engineering professor and long-time hydrogen advocate, describes hydrogen as an energy currency, like electricity. Neither is the actual power source; both are methods of storing and conveying energy to the point of delivery. Electricity is produced by hydroelectric dams, nuclear or thermal power plants or, more recently, by alternative sources such as wind, biomass and solar. Hydrogen, being interconvertible with electricity, comes from these same sources or from hydrocarbons. Ultimately, we will have to decide which mix of energy sources to exploit.
Hydrogen is often produced by stripping it from the methane (CH4) molecule in natural gas. But this is wasteful of a useful resource and expels carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More acceptable is to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric current. Called "electrolysis," this system is used by BC Transit for their bus refueling. Using off-peak power, the plant produces hydrogen, stored at the station for use in the buses during the next operating day.
Hydrogen is in a gaseous state while on standby and after refueling onto the buses. While on their routes, an on-board fuel cell uses the hydrogen, plus oxygen from the air (in a process that is opposite to electrolysis) to power an electric motor. This allows the 250-horsepower direct-current electric engine to run the bus approximately 350 kilometres before refueling.
Hydrogen can be used for stationary energy requirements and, with current heavyweight fuel cells, this may be a more easily achieved early application. However, the energy options for transportation are more limited; it is hard to envision the purely electric-powered vehicles ever taking precedence, with battery storage limiting the practical range to about 150 kilometres. At present, vehicles are responsible for 22% of fuel-released carbon dioxide in Canada, a significant sector of our emissions spectrum. Thus, the emphasis is on hydrogen for vehicle fuel and the need to perfect on-board hydrogen storage.
Ballard Power Systems of Burnaby has long been assisted by the federal government. Now, they are a world leader in fuel cell technology, with their equipment in prototype cars produced by Ford and Daimler-Benz (partners with Ballard in the firm DBB Fuel Cell Engines). Six transit buses now run on hydrogen, three in Chicago and three in Vancouver. This success is one reason that the provincial representative, Minister Andrew Petter, rather pointedly suggested that the federal government support a research centre in BC to develop technology applications of the fuel cell.
Geoffrey Ballard supports nuclear energy as an energy source. "I think the next century will see a return to nuclear energy as a major source of world energy. I believe that the new look at nuclear power will involve a much more careful and systematic approach that will avoid the pitfalls of the past." But Carl-Jochen Winter, giving the "post-Chernobyl" European view, described a growing reluctance to use nuclear power. "France, Switzerland and Germany are all taking stations out of use," he said, "and the safety gap is still considerable."
Regardless of the energy source, hydrogen is destined to become an important factor. Producing virtually no pollutants, it is the only practical non-carbon fuel for mobile applications. Some industry spokesmen are predicting that half the cars on the road will be powered by fuel cells by 2020, with a complete conversion to hydrogen by 2040. Long-time energy "guru," Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, even sees fuel cell cars run by hydrogen from natural-gas reformers. This hypercar fleet, converting hydrogen to electrical energy while parked, would power buildings and other stationary needs at rates even cheaper than our present electricity.
Plug Power has a demonstration home in upstate New York run entirely by a fuel cell, a home laden with appliances, which proves that "the technology is certainly here today," according to engineer Richard Maddaloni. If hydrogen is produced from alternate energy sources, such as wind, photovoltaic solar, or geothermal, it can be a zero-emissions loop, with clean water the only effluent.
The federal initiative to reduce carbon emissions has been criticized by some industrial leaders, notably from fossil-fuel industries, as going too far, too fast. Coal, oil and, to a lesser extent, natural gas all add carbon to the atmosphere when burned. Firms with heavy investment in extracting and selling these fuels are naturally concerned with limitations placed on their markets. But Canada is committed to the cleaner standards of Kyoto. It will require concerted action to meet these targets. A central strategy is to push hydrogen research and applications. Canada is taking a leading position in hydrogen technology.
Eight years ago, David Scott declared that it was inevitable that the world would switch from fossil sources and go into non-carbon currencies. With limited reserves of fossil fuels and with atmospheric conditions preventing our use of them, hydrogen is the only practical energy currency for the next century. We are almost there. Geoffrey Ballard saw this shift years ago. Now he declares: "The fuel cell is the engine of change, but hydrogen is really the future!"
