hydrogen planes won't fly

The BBC reports that the aviation industry is giving up on its promise of hydrogen powered aircraft.

Millions of taxpayers' money has been funnelled into projects that did not seemingly take on board the the fact that hydrogen power would remain costly and polluting for some time to come.

They knew it wouldn't work. It was never intended to work. The whole point of alternative fuels for cars or planes is to pretend that the answer is just around the corner, so it's OK to keep burning oil today.

Anyone who thinks that there's a readily available sustainable alternative to fossil fuels doesn't understand what fossil fuels are. They are millions of years of solar energy captured and stored. You're not going to get that off a year's worth of plants or whatever.

"Kerosene is a very good fuel and very difficult to compete with," explains Rainer von Wrede who works in Airbus's research and technology department.

But we all want to be able to fly round the world, we all want to be able to take a tonne of metal as a security blanket with us every time we pop down the shops, so we want to think there's an alternative fuel to make it happen.

As one false solution becomes exposed, another rises to take its place. Oftentimes, the public ditching of one will be saved until the next one's ready to dazzle us with.

"The big deal at the moment is alternative jet fuels. Principally biofuels that come from sustainable sources, and do not compete with food and water, ecetera," Christopher Surgenor, editor and publisher of GreenAir Online tells the BBC.

Hate to tell you this Christopher, but all biofuel crops compete with food and water.

Just because we switch from using edible crops like sugar or corn to inedible ones like jatropha does not mean there's no competition. It's not the crop that's the issue, it's the land use. There is already something growing there, either crops or forest. The water supply is already in use. There simply isn't a load of 'spare' land and 'spare' fresh water lying around.

We can safely ignore all the guff about using 'marginal' land. Firstly, there isn't waste land - the harder it is to support life the more fragile and vulnerable the ecosystems we find there. Additionally, much of the land they speak of as 'marginal' certainly isn't regarded that way by the people who live graze their livestock there. But the real clincher is the fact that the gargantuan industrial processes involved want intensive farming and maximum production. That means using high quality land.


When Virgin started using a little coconut oil in its planes it was calculated that it would take a coconut plantation twice the size of France to supply the world's aircraft. And that's what we're facing. Next year Lufthansa begin using 50% biofuel on a (woohoo) short haul service. Wherever you grow biofuels, it puts the squeeze on food production and raises prices.

But the first thing we need to address is the supposed reason they're moving to biofuels - carbon savings. The simple fact is that biofuels usually cause greater carbon emissions than oil. That should be enough to get them discounted before we even look at the food and water issue.

Clearing land causes a huge amount of carbon to be released (and taking over farmland for biofuels causes new land to go under the plough, so either way biofuels are responsible for deforestation), and it takes years for this to be balanced by savings from not using oil - in some cases longer than the global oil supply will last.

In Indonesia the researchers found that converting land for palm oil production ran up the worst carbon debts, requiring 423 years to pay off. Producing soybeans in the Amazon would take 319 years of soy biodiesel to offset the carbon debt.

What's more, everybody knows it

Britain's promise to more than double its use of biofuels by 2020 is "significantly" adding to worldwide carbon emissions, the Government admitted yesterday.

They can power cars with electricity from renewable sources (though those are hardly oversupplied right now) and give us equally fast alternatives on road and rail. But for planes, there's no electric alternative, nothing so swift, nothing but planes and oil and biofuels.

Faced with the decline of oil production, they're moving to biofuels in the full knowledge that it is a climate disaster, yet are dressing it up as carbon savings cos, y'know, it's made from nice green natural plants and stuff.

So the roll-out begins, the carbon emissions increase and millions more of the poorest people on earth are on course for starvation.

hydrogen zombies from murdoch hell

For those of us who generally spend too much time on news sites, it was curious to see Rupert Murdoch decide to put his papers behind a paywall. Whilst it's cut The Times' website traffic by 90%, there are those who reckon it's nonetheless increased the revenue.

But it's also stopped most of us having anything to do with The Times. Chicken Yoghurt notes the clear air and cheers on the process.

Isn’t the world a nicer place with The Times behind its paywall? If nothing else now only a few thousand hardcore masochists are having their mornings spoiled (either directly or indirectly) by David Aaronovitch’s brainfaeces. Once Rupert Murdoch finishes shovelling the rest of his offal behind the paywall we can get on with finally founding Utopia.

I had occasion to buy a paper copy of The Times the other week. It wasn't for me, it was for a friend. Really it was.

The Greater London Assembly has been enthusiastic about hydrogen vehicles despite the fact that they make no sense in terms of economics or climate impact. Even the Green members support it. So it was no surprise to see Kit Malthouse, Tory member of the Greater London Assembly, trotting out an article for the Times extolling the virtues of hydrogen cars.

Times subscribers can read it here, but you don't have to fork out a quid if you don't want to. Any pro-hydrogen article will have the same old twaddle, zombie arguments long disproven yet still they walk among us.

Fantastic news: by 2015 you will be able to buy a reasonably priced family car that runs entirely on hydrogen

Mmm-hmm. The magic switchover to hydrogen cars has been five years away for about twenty years now. Mr Donkey, meet Mr Carrot.

Nasty 19th-century internal combustion will be out; pure 21st century electrochemistry will be in.

Sexy! Shiny! Space-age! Actually, not. The hydrogen fuel cell is 19th century technology, invented by Sir William Grove in the late 1830s.

Electric propulsion is, of course, the solution. But there is a divide about how to store and release the power: battery or hydrogen?

With a battery, you charge it up and off you go. Perfect for town, where short, frequent journeys are the norm. But there is a teeny problem: instant refuelling... electric cars take between six and ten hours to charge.

No they don't - their batteries take that time to charge. If you have ready-charged batteries waiting at filling stations, swapping your empty one for a full one takes the same time as filling up with petrol, or indeed hydrogen.

That requires new infrastructure at filling stations, but not as much as hydrogen. Additionally, you can recharge your car yourself at home overnight on cheap electricity when you have got hours spare. For convenience and availability, electricity wins because it's everywhere, whereas hydrogen is available nowhere.

Malthouse deftly avoids any mention of hydrogen's cost. There's a reason the protoypes have only been available on lease instead of to buy. As Shell Hydrogen’s CEO Don Huberts bluntly conceded

‘at the end of the day, hydrogen and other alternative fuels will be three to four times as expensive as oil based products, and if no one wants to pay for that, we can't make those fuels’(1).

Or, to compare, Ulf Bossel of the European Fuel Cell Forum said,

The daily drive to work in a hydrogen fuel cell car will cost four times more than in an electric or hybrid vehicle. 

Still, at least Malthouse does mention some other drawbacks.

Don't get me wrong, there are problems with hydrogen too. The main one is that it is pretty inefficient - it takes more energy to produce than it produces as a fuel.

And the understatement of the year award goes to...

In a recent post I mentioned the way the word 'recyclable' is used to imply that a product has no environmental impact so we can just use as much as we feel like, throw it away and get more. This also applies to 'renewable electricity'; it apparently has no impact to manufacture, install and maintain generating equipment, and is freely available in infinite quantity. Kit Malthouse certainly thinks so, and it lets him off the eye-watering inefficiency of hydrogen.

But if we use renewable energy to make the hydrogen in the first place, is this still an issue?

In a word, yes.

To replace our vehicle fuels with hydrogen would take as much electricity as we presently use for everything else combined (2). Do we think we can double electricity generation whilst doing away with fossil burning? Or is renewable-electricity hydrogen a non-starter?

Meanwhile, the Tory market values championed by the likes of Malthouse will see to it that we don't actually use renewable electricity. It is, by a huge margin, far cheaper to make hydrogen from natural gas than any other source. Renewable electricity, conversely, is by far the most expensive. Unless we have a stringent big-government regulatory regime, gas will be the raw material.

Making hydrogen from gas then using it in a fuel cell emits about 90g of CO2 for every kilometre you drive, about the same as a modern efficient petrol car (3). So when Kit Malthouse says that hydrogen cars

emit only water

it's true in the sense of what comes out of the exhaust pipe, but that's because the carbon emissions have happened at the hydrogen factory. The climate, of course, doesn't care where you emit the carbon, only that you do it at all. This use of gas as the raw material means that hydrogen is just another fossil fuel.

Perhaps the maddest scenario we could head towards is shifting from oil to another fossil fuel that's just as carbon-intensive and just as scarce, which then runs out after a couple of decades, leaving us with all this hydrogen infrastructure, making us squander our electricity on making hydrogen instead of the more efficient battery vehicles.

Bank-busting, ash-spewing Iceland has started to harness all that free geothermal power, aiming to be the hydrogen Saudi Arabia by 2060.

This is hardly, as Malthouse wants to imply, a reason for the UK to compete. Exporting hydrogen is very unlikely to happen on any major scale, as it contains a fraction of the energy of oil.

Iceland may produce its own hydrogen some time in future, but that is for several reasons that don't apply anywhere else. It is not only sat on more renewable energy than it can use (a few huge hydroelectric plants and a hell of a lot of geothermal energy); it is also little more than a city state. It has a population the size of Bradford and two-thirds of them live in one city.

Even then, its trumpeted 'hydrogen economy' has been and gone several times. In 2000 Iceland was to be the Bahrain of the North and the big breakthrough was five to ten years away. In 2002 it was touted as the Kuwait of The North with hydrogen cars to be on the roads in 2005. Shell put three hydrogen buses into action in Reykjavik in 2005. Two years later, two were scrapped and the third put in a museum.

The hydrogen vehicles are a gimmick, fluttered about by oil companies so we think the breakthrough is around the corner and therefore we can carry on with our cars. The wonder is that we're fooled by it over and over.

The electric vehicle may be more efficient, but the batteries take a lot of minerals and energy to manufacture. It too is being hyped as a decoy, just the way hydrogen has been.

To think there is an easy and renewable alternative to fossil fuels is a fundamental misunderstanding of what fossil fuels are; millions of years of stored energy. We have to stop thinking every individual can have the energy needed to carry a ton of metal and glass with them everywhere they go.

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

1 . Looking Ahead: Fuel Producers Weigh in on Hydrogen’s Fit in Cleaner Energy Production, Fuel Cell Industry Report, January 2003.

2.Decarbonising the UK – Energy for a Climate Conscious Future, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, 2005, p74.

3. Well-to-Wheels analysis of future automotive fuels and powertrains in the European context, Version 1b, European Commission Joint Research Centre, January 2004, p50, Figure 8.4.1b.

iceland's hydrogen bus stop

Last year I wrote a piece called Hydrogen: Not The Vehicle Fuel of The Future.

Amongst the things I mentioned was the way that Shell had touted its hydrogen powered buses in Iceland as some sort of pilot scheme for the rest of the world. I gave reasons why Shell were - undoubtedly knowingly - wrong.

Iceland is not only peculiar because it is sat on more renewable energy than it can use (a few huge hydroelectric plants and a hell of a lot of geothermal energy); it is also little more than a city state. It has a population the size of Bradford and two-thirds of them live in one city. So all you need is three or four filling stations and you’re covered. That simply cannot be scaled up to the UK, or anywhere else. The rest of us need a different solution.

There's a punchline to it. According to a recent New Scientist article

A trial of three hydrogen-powered buses ended in 2007, when two were scrapped and the third was consigned to a transport museum.

sod what works, i want my jetpack

Conservative Party Chairman Eric Pickles was on this week's Any Questions, Radio 4's political panel discussion programme.

Asked about the government plan to subsidise the purchase of electric cars, Pickles said

There’s hydrogen just around the corner. That’s possible. I was looking at a hydrogen Ford Transit the other day. The problem with electric cars is there’s no real infrastructure out there in order to deal with them.

That's just soooo right. I mean, whoever heard of a place to get electricity?

Whilst we can speculate about the possibility of a network of electricity cables crossing every country and outlets being available in almost every building, we can't say when such a thing would be available. Whereas we can't move for tripping over hydrogen pipelines can we?

By far the cheapest way to make hydrogen is from natural gas. It's a carbon emitting fossil fuel. Hydrogen can be made from renewable electricity, but at much worse efficiency than batteries. The cars are far more expensive to make than electric or oil fuelled ones. On every front, it's a load of arse.

Except one, that is. It sounds so much sexier doesn't it? Very futuristic, a new fuel we've not used ourselves but has been putting rockets into space. Woof woof. How 21st century, much more than the milkfloat image we get when talking about electric cars.

If we want to base our transport policy on how it would appeal to little boys in the 1960s daydreaming about jetpacks, let's go with hydrogen.

green party hydrogen response 4: boris johnson

To recap: I did an analysis showing that London's prototype hydrogen buses cause considerably greater carbon emissions than diesel buses.

As the Green Party support this technology yet obviously shouldn't, I've been having correspondence with them about it. First up was MEP Caroline Lucas.

London's about to have a new larger hydrogen vehicle trial, so I've had exchanges with Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones, the Green members of the London Assembly, as they are supporting this high-carbon technology. So the second exchange was with London Assembly member Darren Johnson

After that, the other Green London AM Jenny Jones, who table some questions to the Mayor, Boris Johnson.

Darren Johnson (no relation, you've gotta hope) has forwarded the answers.

Please find below the response from Boris Johnson, The Mayor of London to the questions that Darren Johnson, Green Party Member of the London Assembly raised on your behalf at the September 2008 London Assembly’s Mayors Question Time.

Hydrogen Buses, Question No: 1694/2008

Darren Johnson’s questions:

Will the mayor respond to the following questions from a member of the public:

- With the planned expansion of the trial of hydrogen buses going ahead this year, will you ensure the hydrogen is from renewable sources?

- What is the target for improving on the well to wheel calculation of CO2 emissions obtained from the previous CUTE [Clean Urban Transport for Europe, the pilot project that ended in 2006] trial?

- With the expansion of the existing scheme to encourage local authorities to install charge points for electric vehicles, what efforts are being made to ensure that this energy is from renewable sources?

- Will you carry out an assessment on the full potential for sewage in London to be used as a fuel for Combined Heat and Power generation, or for the bus fleet?

Boris Johnson’s response:

The new hydrogen buses will be on London’s roads by 2010. The hydrogen used will be produced by steam methane reforming. TfL [Transport for London] and Air Products (the refuelling supplier) are committed to putting in place measures that minimise the emissions from this method over the life of the projects as further advancements in abatement technology become available. In the future, TfL will look to procure hydrogen from the greenest sources and harness renewable technologies when they become available and are viable.

No well-to-wheel statistics were produced for the CUTE trial. TfL expects the new generation of buses to produce significantly lower emissions with the fuel-cell buses estimated to produce 50% less CO2 than a diesel bus on a well-to-wheel basis. These figures can be improved further when greener sources of hydrogen are developed.

TfL and GLA officers are in discussions with local authorities and energy suppliers to investigate the possibility of obtaining electricity from renewable sources.

In terms of building facilities, TfL have introduced combined heat-power generation to their newest building. This technology can be adapted to run on gases other than mains natural gas, should potential alternatives such as sewage become available. In terms of buses, current hybrid technology being trialled in the bus fleet offers immediately realisable CO2 benefits in London.

'No well-to-wheel statistics were produced for the CUTE trial'? Come with me to page 79 of CUTE's own report on their trial, where we find this chart.



The baseline is the impact of a normal diesel Mercedes Citaro bus, the same model that the hydrogen bus trial adapted.

To decode, the three groups are:
FC H2 St.ref. - fuel cell bus, powered by hydrogen from steam reforming (ie natural gas)
FC NEBUS, H2 St.ref. - the NEBUS, the hydrogen Citaro's predecssor, powered by a fuel cell with hydrogen from natural gas.
FC, H2 Hydro - fuel cell bus powered by hydrogen made from electricity from hydroelectric dams.

The four bars on the graph are:
PE (n.ren) - Primary energy from non-renewable resources
GWP100 - global warming potential (taking all climate impacts into account, not just CO2)
POCP - Summer smog formation potential
AP - Acidification potential

It clearly shows that the energy and climate impacts are substantially worse with the hydrogen bus when powered from natural gas.

Incidentally, as I said in my original piece, the hydroelectric thing is a red herring. Firstly, there's the way that hydroelectricity is seen a climate-neutral whereas it emits huge quantities of methane (a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as CO2).

Beyond that, there is - as with all the 'hydrogen from renewable sources' stuff - the fact that it displaces electricity from fossil sources. I know I've said it before, but it seems that either I'm missing summat or else people are refusing to hear me.

If we earmark our renewables for this new electricity demand, they no longer feed the grid. So more fossils get burnt to make up the shortfall. It only works if the grid is entirely powered by renewables with capacity for all our present uses and our vehicles too.

Full marks to the Greens for their tenacity and responsiveness, it really does set them apart from the lower fob-off threshold of politicians in other parties. But they clearly haven't grasped the point of my writing to them, despite reiterations, citing sources and a couple of simple handy metaphors.

Answers that miss the point of questions that, in turn, missed the point are not really going to mean much, are they?

I'm following it up but, as with all the exchanges in this, I'm letting it run until the exchange has ended before I publish so that it's fairer and clearer for all concerned.

green party hydrogen response 3: jenny jones

A while ago I did some maths about London's hydrogen bus trials and found that the hydrogen buses are responsible for far greater carbon emissions than the diesel buses they seek to replace.

The Green Party support this technology, which is all the more worrying as there's to be a new and larger trial in London next year. As so many wild and inaccurate claims have been made about the ecological benefits of using hydrogen as a vehicle fuel, I'm presuming they've just never looked into it properly.

Because the London buses were part of a wider European trail, I had an exchange with Green MEP Caroline Lucas.

Then there was Green member of the London Assembly Darren Johnson. He said that he'd be 'doing more work in this area in the Autumn'.

I think we've got more detail on what that meant in a subsequent email from the office of the other Green London AM, Jenny Jones.

I am responding on behalf of Jenny Jones at the London Assembly, and I apologise for taking so long to get back to you.

We will put the following questions to the Mayor at next month's Mayor's Question Time, in the hope of finding a solution to some of the issues you raise:

- With the planned expansion of the trial of hydrogen buses going ahead this year, will you ensure that the hydrogen is from renewable sources?

- What is the target for improving on the well to wheel calculation of CO2 emissions obtained from the previous CUTE trial?

- With the expansion of the existing scheme to encourage local authorities to install charge points for electric vehicles, what efforts are being made to ensure that this energy is from renewable sources?

- Will you carry out an assessment on the full potential for sewage in London to be used as a fuel for Combine Heat and Power generation, or for the bus fleet?

I will let you know the response received.

To which I replied

Thanks for getting back to me. I'm glad to see you will be raising the issue. However, one element seems to miss the point

"With the planned expansion of the trial of hydrogen buses going ahead this year, will you ensure that the hydrogen is from renewable sources?"

Making hydrogen from a green electricity tariff causes the same emissions as if it were made from grid electricity. If we start powering our vehicles from the electricity grid, it adds to overall demand for electricity; taking the renewable electricity for hydrogen production means the same amount of electricity being generated from fossils generation elsewhere, so the extra emissions should be attributed to the new demand from hydrogen.

As an analogy, imagine if you went home tonight to find there were a hundred new cars parked on your street. The drivers of the new cars got there first and took the spaces, making the usual cars have to overcrowd other places and park illegally. The new drivers could claim that they were taking the sensible legal spaces, but we would all know it is they who are creating the problem.

Hydrogen only becomes effectively renewable if the whole grid is powered by renewables. Until then, it causes more fossils to be burned and should be counted as such. Not to do so is as disingenuous as the hydrogen manufacturers who claim it has no climate impact because the CO2 was released at the production plant.

Making hydrogen from electrolysis from the grid, as the analysis I previously sent to you showed, has around ten times the carbon emissions of a diesel bus. If someone came to the GLA with a proposal for a low exhaust-emission, tenfold carbon-emission bus that has twice the resource impact to manufacture than a normal bus, what would you say?

The other option is to make it using new dedicated renewable infrastructure. Even then, hydrogen makes no sense. We take electricity, convert it to hydrogen, then convert that back into electricity to power the bus. The hydrogen is, in effect, just a very inefficient battery.

Making hydrogen by electrolysis takes colossal amounts of electricity. It’s only 30% efficient, less than half the rating of any other method(1). It’s such a wasteful process that powering the UK’s vehicles with electrolysis hydrogen would take more electricity than we presently use for everything else combined(2). There are far more efficient batteries available.

Fuel cell vehicles that operate on hydrogen made with electrolysis consume four times as much electricity per mile as similarly-sized battery electric vehicles(3).

Using electric vehicles would mean only a quarter of that dedicated renewable generation infrastructure would be required. That would mean it would be 100% renewable a lot sooner, and a lot less money and resources to invest in the meantime, and it could not be used as an excuse for the fossil fuel companies to promote their present high-carbon hydrogen. It’s hard to see how electrolysis hydrogen is anything other than an extravagance.

"With the expansion of the existing scheme to encourage local authorities to install charge points for electric vehicles, what efforts are being made to ensure that this energy is from renewable sources?"

This has the same problems as described above regarding adding to electricity demand as so merely displacing emissions, but at least it's several times more efficient - and therefore a fraction of the emissions - of using hydrogen.

Thankyou for taking the time to write, and I look forward to seeing what response you get from the Mayor.

Please forgive the academic overtones of using footnotes, it's just that with any statistical or scientific assertion there should be a source to check, and in my experience green issues especially lend themselves to wild claims.

1-US National Academy of Engineering, Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, 'The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs', 2004, p39
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10922&page=39

2-'Decarbonising the UK – Energy for a Climate Conscious Future', Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, 2005, p74
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/media/news/tyndall_decarbonising_the_uk.pdf

3-Alec Brooks, 'CARB's Fuel Cell Detour on the Road to Zero Emission Vehicles', Electric Vehicle World, 7 May 2004
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=691

Some time later I got a copy of Boris Johnson's response (I'll publish that in a couple of days). The questions were tabled as set out above, with no amendments in the light of my reply pointing out that they don't actually address the 'issues I raise'.

Kudos to them for sticking at it, but if they miss the point, ignore the corrections and then ask the wrong questions, what they say is not going to be worth much.

cooking with gas

A further thought on that home electrolyser.

I dissed its stupidity for turning electricity into hydrogen into electricity. However, they tell us some of it can be used directly for cooking.

At present, when we cook with gas we are actually cooking with hydrogen. Natural gas is essentially methane; CH4, carbon and hydrogen. In burning it we combust the hydrogen and the carbon reacts with atmospheric oxygen to form CO2.

Manufacturing hydrogen from natural gas emits 9.1kg CO2 per kilo of hydrogen(1). So if cooking with gas is a way of splitting hydrogen from carbon, it seems reasonable to presume that we emit about the same when we cook with gas.

It takes 39kWh of electricity to make 1kg of hydrogen(2).

UK grid emissions are 480g of carbon dioxide per kWh(3).

480gx39 = 18,720g.

By this calculation, if the cooking hydrogen is made from grid electricity, it releases 18.72kg of carbon dioxide per kilo of hydrogen - more than twice the amount of someone cooking with gas.

= = = = = = = =

1. IPCC, Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p131.

2. J. Levene, B. Kroposki, and G. Sverdrup, Wind Energy and Production of Hydrogen and Electricity — Opportunities for Renewable Hydrogen, US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, March 2006, p2.

3. Table 3, Fuel Mix Disclosure Data Table, DBERR 2006-07,

green party hydrogen response 2: darren johnson

The stuff about hydrogen vehicles is especially important to flag up in London. Not only did the city take part in the CUTE hydrogen bus trial, but Transport for London are testing a fleet of 70 hydrogen-powered vehicles starting next year.

TfL’s vehicles will be a mixture of buses, vans, cars and motorcycles that will be used by TfL staff, the police and the fire brigade... The five-year trial of both fuel cells and hydrogen combustion engines will cost around £22 million.

I sent my analysis to the Green members of the Greater London Authority, Darren Johnson (key issues include climate change) and Jenny Jones (sustainable transport).

After a month I did a reminder email prod, and shortly after received this

Many thanks for your letter, which you sent to both myself and my colleague Jenny Jones.

We agree with the emphasis on traffic reduction as the first priority. As the Green Transport Advisor to the previous mayor Jenny was pleased that London achieved zero growth in traffic, but was determined that we could actually reduce traffic and build on our reputation as the only major city in the world to switch people out of their cars and onto public transport. The planned expenditure of £500m on walking and cycling was due to be the next big step in making traffic reduction a reality.

We believe that London should use all the tools available in switching people to lower carbon transport. The programme of all new buses being hybrids by 2012 is something that we are pushing the new mayor to stick to. We continue to push for strict criteria to be applied to biofuels, so as to restrict their use in London.

We have supported the hydrogen partnership, despite being aware of the misgivings you raise and will state our reasons for doing so. Hydrogen is a technology which is still in development. We are not convinced by the optimists within the green movement who see the switch to hydrogen as the big transition which will take place in the next five to ten years (it has been five to ten years away for the last twenty years).

However, we do accept that progress has been made and the technology has taken significant steps towards mainstream production. We are aware of the well to wheels analysis of the current hydrogen vehicles and are pushing for the London contracts to include the sourcing of hydrogen to come from renewable energy within the capital.

In the meantime the technology needs supporting through the transition period when it is being piloted and trialled. There are significant potential gains for the environment and whilst the current generation of vehicles are not the most environmentally friendly, that is more to do with our lack of renewable energy infrastructure, rather than the buses themselves.

Finally, we think that air pollution is one of the major problems facing Londoners and hydrogen vehicles have an immediate impact because they are non-polluting at the point of use. Given that London is going to fail its 2008 target for PM10 and its 2010 target for NO2, anything which reduces these emissions has to be seriously considered.

CC: Jenny Jones

To which I replied:

Thankyou for your letter of 19 July replying to my letter regarding hydrogen buses. Please forgive the academic overtones of using footnotes in this letter but, as I’ve no doubt you personally know, in the area of green ideas you hear many surprising assertions and often they are without basis.

Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel has indeed ‘taken significant steps toward mainstream production’. Mainstream production is not a reason to support it if it can’t deliver sustainability. When a new idea is advancing and about to expand, that is precisely the time to consider it most carefully. Any earlier and it may never happen, any later it’ll be trying to get the genie back in the bottle.

You, personally, are in a position to influence this one way or the other. So there is a great responsibility to be sure of what you’re advocating. As CUTE’s own studies show it’s a massive increase in carbon emissions(1), you have every reason to oppose it.

Making hydrogen from a green electricity tariff causes the same emissions as if it were made from grid electricity. If we start powering our vehicles from the electricity grid, it adds to overall demand for electricity; taking the renewable electricity for hydrogen production means the same amount of electricity being generated from fossils generation elsewhere, so the extra emissions should be attributed to the new demand from hydrogen.

As an analogy, imagine if you went home tonight to find there were a hundred new cars parked on your street. The drivers of the new cars got there first and took the spaces, making the usual cars have to overcrowd other places and park illegally. The new drivers could claim that they were taking the sensible legal spaces, but we would all know it is they who are creating the problem.

Hydrogen only becomes effectively renewable if the whole grid is powered by renewables. Until then, it causes more fossils to be burned and should be counted as such. Not to do so is as disingenuous as the hydrogen manufacturers who claim it has no climate impact because the CO2 was released at the production plant. Making hydrogen from electrolysis from the grid, as the analysis I previously sent to you showed, has around ten times the carbon emissions of a diesel bus. If someone came to the GLA with a proposal for a low exhaust-emission, tenfold carbon-emission bus that has twice the resource impact to manufacture than a normal bus, what would you say?

It could, as you suggest, be made by electrolysis using new dedicated renewable infrastructure. Even then, hydrogen makes no sense. We take electricity, convert it to hydrogen, then convert that back into electricity to power the bus. The hydrogen is, in effect, just a very inefficient battery. Making hydrogen by electrolysis takes colossal amounts of electricity. It’s only 30% efficient, less than half the rating of any other method(2).There are far more efficient batteries available.

Fuel cell vehicles that operate on hydrogen made with electrolysis consume four times as much electricity per mile as similarly-sized battery electric vehicles(3). Using electric vehicles would mean a quarter of that dedicated renewable generation infrastructure would be required. That would mean it would be 100% renewable a lot sooner, and a lot less money and resources to invest in the meantime, and it could not be used as an excuse for the fossil fuel companies to promote high-carbon hydrogen.

It’s hard to see how it could ever be cost effective to make hydrogen from electrolysis. It’s such a wasteful process that powering the UK’s vehicles with electrolysis hydrogen would take more electricity than we presently use for everything else combined(4). The concept is being dangled as a reason to push on with hydrogen by the companies selling fossil-derived high carbon hydrogen, such as BP and Shell.

Not only would you need a lot more renewable electricity capacity for hydrogen, but the fuel cells themselves have relatively short lives. The average for a bus in the CUTE trial was 2,300 hours, which is around the limit of a fuel-cell’s life(5). These expensive bits of kit will need replacing on every bus about once a year.

Beyond this, I stress again that the upcoming TfL trial’s use of hydrogen as a combustion fuel is even worse; a lot more hydrogen used, and as it’s usually stored as a liquid there’s far greater energy use in manufacture (liquefying it and keeping it liquid until the point of use takes about half the energy it contains(6)). As far as I know, there’s not a single study that says liquefied hydrogen is more efficient than fuel-cells; everything I can find says it’s far worse.

Additionally, the reports of BMW’s hydrogen combustion car said that whilst it does have greatly reduced exhaust emissions compared to a petrol or diesel, nonetheless it does emit some nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, so it was not actually zero-emission(7). I presume that also applies to other hydrogen combustion vehicles. I share your concern for local air quality. However, surely reducing such emissions shouldn’t take precedence over concern for the climate impact, especially if that impact is many times worse than diesel, and much lower carbon zero-emission options are available.

Climate science demands that carbon emissions start to decline within the next decade or so. Instigating a plan that will actually increase emissions at this crucial time, that will require far more energy consumption and infrastructure than lower-carbon options on the table - how can that be the best use of financial resources, let alone be considered sustainable or green?

London should be looking for sustainable and effective solutions. The hydrogen bus could only eventually meet that by costing a huge amount of money and profligate waste of electricity.

Surely, among the real solutions, London should be looking for the cheapest and most efficient. That can never be hydrogen.
CC: Jenny Jones AM

1- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p60, Fig 5-17. http://www.fuel-cell-bus-club.com/modules/UpDownload/store_folder/Publications/CUTE_D8_Final_Report.pdf
2- US National Academy of Engineering, Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs (2004), p39 http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10922&page=39
3- Alec Brooks, CARB's Fuel Cell Detour on the Road to Zero Emission Vehicles, Electric Vehicle World, 7 May 2004 http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=691
4- Decarbonising the UK – Energy for a Climate Conscious Future, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, 2005, p74 http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/media/news/tyndall_decarbonising_the_uk.pdf
5- Dr Sukhvinder Badwal, Fuel cells, Science on the way to the hydrogen economy, Australian Academy of Science, 5 May 2006 http://www.science.org.au/sats2006/badwal.htm
6- US National Academy of Engineering, Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs (2004), p38 http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10922&page=38 30-40% for liquefaction, around another 10% maintaining refrigeration until point of use.
7- Bruce Gain, Road Testing BMW's Hydrogen 7, Wired, 13 Nov 2006 http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2006/11/72100

That snail mail letter crossed in the post with an email from Darren Johnson:

Many thanks for this. We will be doing more work in this area in the
Autumn.

Cllr. Darren Johnson AM

There's been no response to my letter. I'm guessing that's it.

I want to be optimistic about what 'work in this area' means.

I want to believe it means that he's not just taking my word for it but is checking his sources, and if his investigations show my analysis to be broadly correct the Greens will reverse their position and speak out against hydrogen vehicles.

I want to believe it means he's seen through the great hydrogen decoy, namely that although it's a huge emitter now it could one day be made from water using renewable electricity.

That idea is like the 'capture ready' promise that's making people swallow new coal-fired power stations. It means higher emissions now on the promise of the possibility (without any binding obligation) that there could be lower emissions later.

Hydrogen from water has the advantage of actually existing, but the idea still swiftly falls apart. It would be just a way of storing electricity; a grossly inefficient way that can't compete with batteries that already exist, so why are we considering it?

The answer lies in the dividends for those who dangle the dazzling decoy, those who make the fossil hydrogen we use today and will continue to use for as long as it's more profitable than electrolysis. Which, factoring in manufacture from coal, is likely to be centuries to come.

I want to believe Darren Johnson's followed the logic and that, moving as slowly as a party's policy must do, is stirring something of a turnaround in the Greens' position on hydrogen.

Like agrofuels, hydrogen is the wrong answer because it asks the wrong question. It's saying 'how do we keep our vehicles on the road whilst maintaining the profits of the established oil companies?' rather than 'how do we live within sustainable emissions limits?'.

As with agrofuels, it's a climate 'solution' that actually causes greater emissions than burning oil. There can be no credible Green position other than opposition to hydrogen as a vehicle fuel.

green party hydrogen response 1: caroline lucas

Given that my analysis of hydrogen buses concerned London and EU policy, I sent copies to the UK's Green MEPs (Jean Lambert and Caroline Lucas), and to the Green members of the London Assembly (Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones).

The thing about dealing with politicians is that you rarely get to have a proper debate. On TV or radio news - as the politician well knows - there's only a short time given and no matter what's said, once time's up they'll not be questioned any further. So, if they repeat themselves or say something that doesn't answer the question, there's often no opportunity to point that out and elicit a real answer, let alone move the debate beyond that one point.

By the same token, you know when you are writing to a politician that after a couple of exchanges they'll stop writing. So, again, all they have to do is ignore a part of what's put to them and they're never held to account, let alone forced to face the consequences of holding an opinion that can be proven wrong.

You'd hope with the Greens that they are motivated from genuine concern and so would respond differently. Let's see.

If I were a Green politician and someone came to me claiming that a technology I supported actually led to a vast increase in carbon emissions at excessive financial cost, my first thought would be to check their sources. In green politics people make all kind of wild claims and counterclaims about saviour technologies. But were the claims found to have basis, I'd speak out.

Carline Lucas' office replied to me:

Thank you for your email, which Caroline has asked me to respond to on her behalf. I am sure that Jean Lambert's team and the London Assembly Members will look closely at your findings and those of CUTE.

Caroline supports Green Party policy, which is cautious about hydrogen fuel and notes that CO2 emissions from production need to be considered. See http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/downloads/mfsstr.pdf

At European level, the Greens have also adopted an approach that stresses the need to take production into account – see http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/default/dok/105/105787.hydrogen@en.htm.

A Green sponsored written declaration is now Parliamentary policy and this advocates the use of hydrogen to store renewable energy – see http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/default/dok/184/184145.green_hydrogen_economy@en.htm - as part of a coherent programme that prioritises demand reduction and energy efficiency.

Once these objectives have genuinely been given centre stage, there is still a need to replace fossil fuels in our transport system with sustainable alternatives. Caroline agrees that this will require full life cycle analysis of hydrogen, in all its manifestations, alongside biodiesel, agrofuels, electricity and other options, to ensure that we do favour those fuels that can best deliver low carbon emissions and other benefits. The European Commission’s policy on agrofuel targets, for example, as well as on hydrogen fails to take proper account of this need, so Caroline and her Green colleagues are working hard to amend the relevant legislative proposals.

Thank you for taking the time to write to Caroline and you will appreciate, I am sure, that she is not in a position to influence whether or not the next phase of the hydrogen bus trials in London go ahead.

To which I said

I'm grateful for the links to Greens position on hydrogen, but worried by elements of that position.

Caroline supports Green Party policy, which is cautious about hydrogen fuel and notes that CO2 emissions from production need to be considered. See http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/downloads/mfsstr.pdf

That document says using hydrogen 'is sustainable as long as the electricity generation itself is sustainable'.

This, as the document I originally sent says, isn't strictly true. We power our vehicles from oil. If we start powering them from electricity, we add to the overall electricity demand. If our renewables are used to make hydrogen, then the shortfall will be made up elsewhere by the burning of fossils.

Hydrogen only becomes genuinely renewable once the whole grid is renewable.

Worse, hydrogen from electricity is tremendously inefficient; why not use a straightforward battery? The answer is that hydrogen is being hyped by people who are pushing for its primary power source to be coal or gas.

At European level, the Greens have also adopted an approach that stresses the need to take production into account - see http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/default/dok/105/105787.hydrogen@en.htm

It's perceptive of the Greens to realise that hydrogen is being pushed by the coal and nuclear lobby. However, that document says;

"Research and development in the hydrogen sector is important but should be concentrated on comparative system analysis, renewable energy based technology development and a clear prioritising of steam reforming systems that promise the highest overall efficiency."

'Steam reforming' means making it from natural gas which, as the figures I sent you show, has around *four times* the emissions of a diesel bus. Why are the Greens favouring such a massive emissions increase?

And, as I said earlier, the demand for using renewable electricity is merely displacing emissions and effectively leads to the same emissions as if it were taken from grid electricity.

Green sponsored written declaration is now Parliamentary policy and this advocates the use of hydrogen to store renewable energy - see http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/default/dok/184184145.green_hydrogen_economy@en.htm

What that proposes is using electricity to make hydrogen which is later used to generate electricity in a fuel-cell. The hydrogen is therefore just a battery.

For the stationary uses such as powering a building, there may well be some benefit as the heat generated in a fuel cell can be used. But for transport, this heat is wasted and as such means it is enormously inefficient. There are far more efficient batteries available.

Presuming that the grid will not be powered from 100% renewable sources, advocating inefficient devices is advocating the unnecessary burning of fossil fuels. As hydrogen is grossly inefficient, it can only be seen as an increaser of emissions.

I'd be interested to hear any defence of the Green statements I've discussed, or else what new statement might be made to retract them.

To which Caroline Lucas' office said:

Thank you for your further comments. Green Party policy is determined by members at conference and European policy in a similar way by the European Green Party and MEPs. Caroline is far from an expert on energy issues - she tends to work on trade, environment, climate, animal rights and peace as her main priorities - so is not best placed to respond to your questions/points in detail.

If you would like to bring your comments to the attention of Policy Committee, who coordinate the policy making process nationally, you can contact Brian Heatley.

At European level, the lead MEP on the Industry, Research and Energy Committee is from Luxembourg and his name is Claude Turmes.

I trust that one or both of these contacts will be able to answer your enquiry in greater detail.

There we have it; no response to the points in my replies which were, in themselves, restatements of points made in my original analysis.

If I'm not fobbed off with 'yes we're concerned' then they tell me it's all too technical for a mere amateur like Caroline to understand. As if I'm some global expert, as if the nice little coloured graphs in CUTE's own brochures are too difficult to understand.

It's an energy issue and so not really to do with Caroline, nothing that is of concern to an MEP who claims to have, 'challenged policymakers to put environmental sustainability at the heart of legislation' and that her work as an MP includes, 'tackling climate change', and also transport.

I wrote back

thanks for your further advice, I'll certainly write to the people you suggest.

One thing, though; you say Caroline's main work includes climate. As you surely appreciate, climate and energy are very much overlapping issues. My interest in the hydrogen thing comes from a climate change perspective.

The CUTE trial's own report spells out in simple graphics that they have a far worse climate impact than diesel buses. This really isn't an expert thing, and anyone interested in the European Union's response to climate change should have a strong feeling against hydrogen as a vehicle fuel.

I'm no expert either, so I'm sure my analysis is easily comprehensible to Caroline or anyone else.

There has been no reply and I presume that's it.

I'll publish the exchanges with the other Greens here. I want to give these people the opportunity to consider everything in their own time, so (as I've done with Caroline Lucas) I'll only publish exchanges of correspondence once they're finished.

hydrogen car emits like a hummer

Another reason to wheel out the hydrogen maths.

A Sheffield company have come up with a home electrolyser. You take electricity into your house, lose 70% of the energy converting it to hydrogen, then burn the hydrogen to make it back into electricity.

You couldn't make it up.

The real push is that it makes hydrogen vehicles seem more viable. The company have adapted a Ford Focus to run on hydrogen. I've done an emissions calculation.

For the results (and another trumpeting of the basic arguments against hydrogen as a vehicle fuel), see my new post on The Sharpener, Hydrogen Car Emits Like a Hummer.

(No Comments on this post; the place to leave them is over on The Sharpener)

london's hydrogen buses

London was one of nine European cities to take part in the Clean Urban Transport for Europe (CUTE) trial of hydrogen fuel-cell buses.

Because the buses emit nothing but water vapour, they were called ‘zero emission’. This is seriously misleading, because whilst they have no exhaust gas except steam, they are responsible for an increase in carbon emissions.

The front page of CUTE's website declares ‘This public transport system will contribute to the reduction of overall CO2 emissions’(1). It will do nothing of the sort. I am no professional on these matters, but I have endeavoured to use credible, published sources for my figures, including damning ones from CUTE themselves.

The London trial showed fuel consumption of 23.9kg per 100km(2). That’s 4.2km/kg.

There are several ways to make the hydrogen required.

Hydrogen from natural gas

The cheapest and most common way of making hydrogen is from natural gas. This hydrogen is actually as much of a fossil fuel as diesel.

Manufacturing hydrogen from natural gas emits 9.1 kg CO2 per kg of hydrogen(3).

9,100g divided by 4.2 km = 2167g/km to make hydrogen gas from natural gas.

But it's not over, because at this stage all we've got is hydrogen gas. This has about one three-thousandth of the energy density of petrol. Assuming you're not going to have a fuel tank far bigger than the bus itself, you have to shrink it. It has to be either cooled to a liquid, or else it has to be compressed.

CUTE’s fuel cell buses used hydrogen compressed to a pressure of 350 bar(4), or 5,000psi.

It takes 2.6-3.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity to compress 1kg of hydrogen to 5,000psi(5). That electricity is made from a variety of sources, predominantly fossils. The UK grid CO2 emissions are 480g/kWh(6) .

2.6-3.6kWh x 480g/kWh = 1248g-1728g CO2 emissions per kg hydrogen compressed.

1248-1728g divided by 4.2km = 297-411g/km for compression.

This gives us an emissions total of 2167 + 297-411 = 2464-2578g/km for compressed hydrogen from natural gas.

A normal diesel bus emits around 640g/km(7). According to the US government's Argonne National Laboratory, exhaust emissions are only 78% of petrol's greenhouse gas emissions - 22% are emitted in the manufacturing process.

Assuming it's a similar figure for diesel as petrol, to be fair we should bump up that bus figure accordingly so that, as with the hydrogen, we're comparing total emissions for making and using the fuel.

That would make the emissions from a diesel bus - and this is the figure to keep bearing in mind - 821g/km.

CUTE’s own report on their trial says that when the hydrogen was made from natural gas, the buses had around two and a half times the climate impact of using normal diesel buses(8), which would make it around 1650g/km. This is somewhat different to the figures I’ve arrived at, but the thing that CUTE and I are both clear on is that the buses powered from hydrogen derived from fossil sources had a far worse climate impact than if they had been driving diesel buses.

CUTE hope that future efficiencies could save 25% of the fuel or more(9). Even if this were achieved it would be, even by their own figures, almost twice the CO2 emissions of a diesel bus.

The emissions for hydrogen from natural gas can only get worse with time. As we try to reduce our reliance on Russian gas, we have begun importing natural gas from the Middle East, liquefied so that it can be shipped. To be liquefied, gas must be cooled to –162 degrees and kept at or below that temperature for its entire journey, with the colossal energy consumption that implies. This means that emissions from using gas effectively increase.

Hydrogen from water using renewable electricity

Hydrogen needn’t be derived from fossil fuels. It can be made by electrolysis of water, using an electric current to split its hydrogen and oxygen components. CUTE say there was far less climate impact from the buses that used hydrogen made by electrolysis of water, using electricity from hydroelectric sources(10).

Firstly, I’m not sure if they’ve made the common error of assuming hydroelectricity is zero-emission. Hydroelectric dams are not the clean, green zero-emission sources they are often portrayed as. Submerged vegetation decays without oxygen, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide(11). The amount released varies widely, from many times worse than burning coal to substantially less. At best it appears a dam gives one-tenth of the greenhouse effect of generating the same power thermally(12).

The World Commission on Dams – despite being paid by the largest funder of dams, the World Bank – said, ‘greenhouse gases are emitted for decades from all dam reservoirs in the boreal and tropical regions for which measurements have been made. This is in contrast to the widespread assumption that such emissions are zero. There is no justification for claiming that hydroelectricity does not contribute significantly to global warming.’(13)

But whether CUTE allowed for hydroelectricity’s climate impact or not is a side issue. The important thing is that there is still an enormous climate impact from making hydrogen from any sort of renewable electricity.

Our vehicles are currently powered by oil products. If we start making our vehicle fuel from electricity, we add to the total electricity demand. If the electricity we’re getting from renewables is taken for hydrogen production, it means the shortfall would have to be made up by more fossil electricity being generated elsewhere.

It’s rather like the way a biofuel company can proudly claim not to be cutting down forest for their plantations, yet their use of farmland displaces food production creating a knock-on effect and because of this someone somewhere is having to cut down a forest to grow food.

It could only stop having such a displacement effect if the whole grid were powered by renewables with enough spare capacity to start powering our vehicles. That would be a hell of lot of spare capacity; electrolysis is tremendously energy intensive. To replace our vehicle fuels with electrolysis hydrogen would take more than our entire present electricity consumption(14).

Do we think we can double electricity generation whilst doing away with fossil burning? Or should we stop considering hydrogen as a vehicle fuel?

Hydrogen from water using national grid electricity

As the vehicle fuel is creating additional demand for electricity and thereby displacing consumption, we should look at the emissions as if it were made from grid electricity.

A CUTE report says that it takes 5.1kWh of electricity to produce 1Nm3 of hydrogen(15), which weighs 0.09kg. This means that it takes just over 56kWh to make 1kg. (This is higher than I thought; I’ve seen 39kWh reliably quoted(16)). The UK grid CO2 emissions are 480g/kWh(17).

480g x 56kWh = 26,880g/CO2 per kg hydrogen.

26,880g divided by 4.2 km = 6400g/km to make the hydrogen gas from electrolysis.

That’s eight times the emissions from a normal bus.

(If we go with that 39kWh figure, it’s 4457g/km - still way above hydrogen from natural gas, let alone diesel, let alone any actual carbon savings).

CUTE did their own maths and calculated that grid electrolysis generates 4.71 times the emissions of a diesel bus(18), making it somewhere around 3,900g/km. There are several possible reasons for the discrepancy. Perhaps my figures aren’t reliable, perhaps theirs aren’t, perhaps the figure they have for grid emissions aren’t the same as the UK’s.

But despite there being a difference in precise figures, once again the principle is the same - the hydrogen bus is undoubtedly many times worse than the diesel models it is portrayed as being cleaner than.

The only scenario for sourcing in which CUTE don’t agree with this on is in their ‘hydrogen from renewable electricity’ example which, as I’ve already explained, ignores that fact of adding to electricity demand and so causing the same amount of electricity to be added to the grid.

If we aren’t going to use fossil-derived hydrogen but are only going to make it from electricity then the hydrogen is effectively just a way to store electricity. We take power from the grid, convert it to hydrogen, then on board the bus it’s used to make an electric charge to drive a motor. The hydrogen is effectively just a battery. That being so, surely there are more efficient and lower-carbon batteries available.

This would suggest that electric buses might well be worth looking in to. I know very little about these, although I have come across a report saying ‘fuel cell vehicles that operate on hydrogen made with electrolysis consume four times as much electricity per mile as similarly-sized battery electric vehicles’(19).

That claim comes from an avowed electric vehicle advocate, but still, it suggests that serious investigation of electric vehicles is merited. If we agree with CUTE’s figure of electrolysis hydrogen being 4.71 times worse than a diesel bus, then a system that uses a quarter of the electricity would be roughly comparable to a diesel bus.

This isn’t an immediate improvement in carbon terms, but at least it’s not significantly worse, whilst still delivering the localised air quality improvements of ‘zero-emission’ vehicles. Also, a slight increase in the amount of renewable electricity feeding into the grid would make such a bus lower carbon than diesel, whereas we’ll be waiting a long time for that to be true of electrolysis hydrogen.

Additionally, many of the problems of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel – lack of drive range, the need for specialised refuelling staff, etc – that the CUTE trial surmounted also apply to electric vehicles but would be solved by CUTE’s approach.

Impacts of making the technology

The average operating time for a bus in the CUTE trial was 2,300 hours(20). I understand that this is nearing the limits of a fuel cell’s life. The industry wants to get fuel cells up to around 4,000 hours of use, but seems to be struggling to get far beyond 2,000 hours(21). So, as well as the great expense of manufacturing the buses – both financially and environmentally (they have twice the impact of making a diesel bus(22)) – there is the cost and environmental impact of frequently replacing the fuel cells.

The London bus operated for an average of 7.952 hours a day(23). To keep the maths simple, let’s call that eight hours. Let’s say it only runs five days a week. Let’s also assume that the fuel cells meet the industry aim of 4,000 hours of life. Forty hours a week means a hundred weeks. So, even with these very generous assumptions, that’s less than two years of service.

Again, I’m ignorant of matters concerning electric buses, but I imagine they’d last longer than a year or two before needing inevitable major work doing on them.

Liquid hydrogen as a combustion fuel

The forthcoming second London hydrogen bus trial is not only to use fuel cells, but also buses run on liquid hydrogen as a combustion fuel. This is probably the least efficient and highest carbon fuel you could find.

If they're going to go down the same route as BMW - and it seems the only way to have enough drive-range with such an inefficient use of fuel - then compressed hydrogen doesn't contain enough energy and it will be liquefied. Not only do liquid combustion vehicles use more hydrogen than fuel cells, but the liquefaction process is incredibly energy intensive.

To be liquefied, hydrogen must be cooled to minus 253 degrees centigrade. It takes 12.5-15kWh of electricity to liquefy 1kg of hydrogen(24).

12.5-15 x 480g/kWh = 6-7.2kg CO2 emissions per kg hydrogen.

Let’s be generous and assume the bus will achieve the same consumption figures as its fuel cell cousin, 4.2km/kg.

6-7.2 divided by 4.2 = 1429-1714g/km for liquefaction.

So, even if the hydrogen itself were made of thin air and utterly carbon-free, a bus using liquid hydrogen is responsible for nearly three times the emissions of a diesel bus simply for the liquefaction process.

I note that, incredibly, the hydrogen used in London’s part of the CUTE trial had been liquefied and then returned to its gaseous state(25). This was a massive waste of energy and a serious contribution to climate change.

Add the liquefaction to the emissions from manufacturing hydrogen and we get this;

2167 + 1429-1714 = 3596-3881g/km for liquid hydrogen from natural gas.
6400 + 1429-1714 = 7829-8114g/km for liquid hydrogen from national grid electrolysis.

The actual amount of hydrogen consumed is even greater that that, though. Keeping hydrogen at minus 253 degrees between manufacture and dispensing is very energy intensive, and the figures above don’t include anything for that.

When it’s on a small vehicle there isn’t an energy source that can do that sort of refrigeration, so it’s in a highly insulated tank. This cannot stop it warming, only reduce the rate. As the hydrogen warms it returns to gas, increasing pressure in the tank. To avoid explosion there is a valve, rather like the one on petrol tanks to prevent explosion if you’ve left your car parked in blazing sunshine.

The problem is, liquid hydrogen regards anywhere above minus 253 degrees as blazing sunshine. It would continuously be jettisoning this high-carbon fuel. A report on BMW’s liquid hydrogen car found it ‘begins to boil after 17 hours if the car remains parked. The tank empties completely after 10 to 12 days’(26).

The EU’s encouragement

The CUTE Project is co-financed by the EU, and is so integral to the EU’s transport vision that the European Commission’s Director General for Energy and Transport, Matthias Ruente, wrote a glowing preface to one of the major reports on the outcomes of the trial.

He criticises oil-based fuels ‘that provoke climate change’ yet – at the front of a report proving the opposite - he tells us hydrogen is ‘at the heart of a zero emissions transport system that would de-couple mobility from climate change’. This, he qualifies, is once we’ve overcome the ‘challenge’ of producing hydrogen ‘with minimal or no negative environmental impact’(27).

I would reiterate that I am not a professional in researching this subject, but nonetheless from all the figures I can find, including those from CUTE, it seems to me beyond doubt that hydrogen buses lead to a massive increase in carbon emissions. To instigate a switch to hydrogen in the hope that an as yet unthought-of method of making it with minimal environmental impact will turn up soon is an act of grossly irresponsible blind faith. If what we’re proposing doesn’t improve on what we’ve got, it’s not a solution in any sense of the word.

It is surely absurd that, in the same project that grasps the nettle and legislates to reduce carbon emissions from cars, the European Commission is also pushing for an increase in vehicle emissions by promoting hydrogen(28).

The lesson is clear

A bus that is responsible for many times the carbon emissions of a diesel bus clearly has no part in any sustainable or responsible policy. This would have been clear about hydrogen before the CUTE trial, but is now proven by it. As these data show that it vastly increases carbon emissions, the forthcoming London trial of hydrogen buses should be cancelled. How can it make sense for the EU to fine car manufacturers for not decreasing emissions whilst paying bus operators to increase them?

Repeatedly portraying hydrogen buses as environmentally beneficial - the bus trials are referred to as one of Transport for London’s ‘key environmental achievements’(29) - is a fraud. Even if you were to dismiss me and my figures as a load of nonsense and judge the CUTE trial solely by its own published results, you would surely reach the same conclusion.


===============

References

1- http://www.fuel-cell-bus-club.com/index.php?module=pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=1&pid=12

2- CUTE A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Project in Europe 2001-2006: Vision, Teamwork and Technology. Detailed Summary of Achievements, May 2006, figure 3.3.8, p67
http://www.fuel-cell-bus-club.com/modules/UpDownload/store_folder/Publications/DETAILED_SCREEN.pdf

3- IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p 13
http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/pages_media/SRCCS-final/IPCCSpecialReportonCarbondioxideCaptureandStorage.htm

4- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p55, Table 5.1.
http://www.fuel-cell-bus-club.com/modules/UpDownload/store_folder/Publications/CUTE_D8_Final_Report.pdf

5- Raymond Drnevich of major American hydrogen supplier Praxair, Hydrogen Delivery: Liquefaction & Compression, Strategic Initiatives for Hydrogen Delivery Workshop, US Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency, May 2003, p14
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/liquefaction_comp_pres_praxair.pdf

6- DBERR, Fuel Mix Disclosure Data Table, 2006-07, table 3.
http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/policy-strategy/consumer-policy/fuel-mix/page21629.html

7- National Atmospheric Emission Inventory, Vehicle Speed Emission Factors (Version 02/3). http://www.naei.org.uk/other/vehicle_emissions_v8.xls These are the figures used by government, as cited by transport minister David Jamieson in a parliamentary answer, 8 July 2004.

8- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p60, Fig 5-17.

9- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p58.

10- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p60, Fig 5-17.

11- IPCC figure: Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, p.212, Table 2.14
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch02.pdf

12- Dams And Development, p75, World Commission on Dams, November 2000 http://www.dams.org/report/contents.htm

13- Raising a Stink, New Scientist issue 2241, 3 June 2000
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16622410.300-raising-a-stink.html
(paywalled: reproduced in full on World Commission on Dams’ site http://www.dams.org/news_events/media50.htm)

14- Decarbonising the UK – Energy for a Climate Conscious Future, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, 2005, p74
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/media/news/tyndall_decarbonising_the_uk.pdf

15- CUTE, A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Project in Europe 2001-2006: Vision, Teamwork and Technology. Detailed Summary of Achievements, May 2006, p.24

16- Wind Energy and Production of Hydrogen and Electricity — Opportunities for Renewable Hydrogen, US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, March 2006, p2
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy06osti/39534.pdf

17- DBERR, op cit

18- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p60, Fig 5-17.

19- Alec Brooks, CARB's Fuel Cell Detour on the Road to Zero Emission Vehicles, Electric Vehicle World, 7 May 2004
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=691

20- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p57.

21- Dr Sukhvinder Badwal, Fuel cells, Science on the way to the hydrogen economy, Australian Academy of Science, 5 May 2006
http://www.science.org.au/sats2006/badwal.htm

22- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p61.

23- CUTE, A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Project in Europe 2001-2006: Vision, Teamwork and Technology. Detailed Summary of Achievements, May 2006, figure 3.3.9, p67

24- Drnevich, op cit, p8

25- CUTE, Project No.NNE5-2000-00113 Deliverable No.8 Final Report, 30 May 2006, p40.

26- Bruce Gain, Road Testing BMW's Hydrogen 7, Wired, 13 Nov 2006
http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2006/11/72100

27- CUTE, A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Project in Europe 2001-2006: Vision, Teamwork and Technology. Detailed Summary of Achievements, May 2006, p.3-7

28- European Commission, Competitive Automotive Regulatory Framework for the 21st Century, 7 Feb 2007
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2007:0022:FIN:EN:PDF

29- Transport for London is helping the Capital to tackle climate change, TfL press release, 13 March 2008 http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/media/newscentre/archive/7728.aspx

honda's hydrogen hype

As longer term Badgerers will know, I have pretty clear opinions on hydrogen as a vehicle fuel.

The long version can be read here; Hydrogen: Not the Vehicle Fuel of the Future.

The short version can be read here; it's a load of arse.

Yesterday it was announced that Honda had started 'commercial production' of their hydrogen car, the FCX Clarity. Quite how producing 200 cars over three years and not selling any of them counts as commercial production is beyond me.

But anyway, despite being told it's all sexy and shiny and zero-emission, it will be responsible for at least as much carbon dioxide emissions as driving a petrol car.

I've just published a post about it over at UK Watch. For reasons I don't quite understand because I've only just spotted the pattern, as usual for my posts there it's got a triply alliterative title, Honda's Hydrogen Hype.

[No Comments on this post - the place to leave them is on the post at UK Watch]

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UPDATE 2 APRIL 09: As UK Watch is offline, I'm republishing the posts from there on their poInter-posts here.

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HONDA'S HYDROGEN HYPE

Car manufacturer Honda tell us that

If you could read our minds, you’d see dreams of a greener and more environmentally sustainable world.

Judging them not by what we telepathically perceive but by their actions in the external world, we find quite a different picture.

Yesterday it was announced that Honda have begun limited commercial production of the FCX Clarity, their hydrogen powered car.

Over and over and over and over again we’re told that it is ‘zero emission’. This is true in the sense that the only emission from the car itself is water vapour. However, the car is responsible for considerable carbon dioxide emissions – as much as a petrol car.

This is because the nice clean hydrogen has to come from somewhere, and that involves a lot of fossil fuels. The cheapest and most common source is natural gas. It can also be made from water by electrolysis, using an electric current to split water’s hydrogen and oxygen components.

Here’s the maths

Honda say the FCX Clarity does 57 miles on 1kg of hydrogen. Let’s get that in metric; 57 miles is 91km.

Manufacturing hydrogen from natural gas emits 9.1 kg CO2 per kg of hydrogen.
[IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p 131]

9,100g divided by 91km = 100g/km to make the hydrogen gas from natural gas.

Electrolysis requires 39 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce 1 kilogram of hydrogen.
[Wind Energy and Production of Hydrogen and Electricity — Opportunities for Renewable Hydrogen, US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, March 2006, p2]

That electricity is made from a variety of sources, predominantly fossils. UK grid CO2 emissions are 480g/kWh.
[Fuel Mix Disclosure Data Table, DBERR 2006-07, table 3]

480g x 39kWh = 18,720g/CO2 per kg hydrogen.

18,720g divided by 91km = 206g/km to make the hydrogen gas from electrolysis.

But it’s not over, because at this stage all we’ve got is hydrogen gas. This has about one three-thousandth of the energy density of petrol. Assuming you’re not going to have a fuel tank a few hundred times the size of your car, you have to shrink it. It has to be either cooled to a liquid, or else it has to be compressed. Honda use hydrogen compressed to a pressure of 5,000psi.

It takes 2.6-3.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity to compress 1kg of hydrogen to 5,000psi.
[Raymond Drnevich of major American hydrogen supplier Praxair, Hydrogen Delivery: Liquefaction & Compression, May 2003, p14]

2.6-3.6kWh x 480g/kWh = 1248g-1728g CO2 emissions per kg hydrogen.

1248-1728g divided by 91km = 14-19g/km for compression.

Here’s the totals

100 + 14-19 = 114-119g/km for compressed natural gas hydrogen

206 + 14-19 = 220-225g/km for compressed electrolysis hydrogen

To compare, the current petrol powered Honda Civic emits 135g/km, a Toyota Prius emits 104g/km, a Renault Megane emits 117g/km.

As David Talbot from MIT’s Technology Review said of BMW’s Hydrogen 7 vehicle

a car like the Hydrogen 7 would probably produce far more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-powered cars available today. And changing this calculation would take multiple breakthroughs – which study after study has predicted will take decades, if they arrive at all. In fact, the Hydrogen 7 and its hydrogen-fuel-cell cousins are, in many ways, simply flashy distractions produced by automakers who should be taking stronger immediate action to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of their cars.

The sleight of hand that passes the emissions to the fuel factory and has people calling the
FCX Clarity an ‘eco-car’ is unsurprising. If we want to know how corporations will treat carbon accounting, look at how they presently perform tax accounting.

The FCX Clarity is a decoy, deployed by people who surely know about the emissions they’re responsible for. The car manufacturers can see no way of reducing their emissions that won’t similarly diminish their profits.

As the petrol/diesel car is widely understood to be unsustainable, car makers have to offer the hope of an alternative; not so far off that we feel there’s a problem to worry about, but not so imminent that they’ll actually be held to account for failing to do it nor make anyone question why they’re still developing new oil-fuelled models.

Honda are only leasing the FCX Clarity. There are perhaps many reasons, but I can’t help suspecting that chief among them are that it’s too expensive to sell and they want the cars back before they break.

In December 2002, Yozo Kami, Honda’s engineer in charge of hydrogen fuel cells, said it would take at least ten years to get the price of a hydrogen car down to $100,000 (£50,000).

Fuel cells of the type used in cars (proton exchange membrane cells) have a short lifespan. The industry is aiming at around 4,000 hours of use, which might equate to ten years of driving. As it stands, a good prototype can only manage about 2,000 hours. Buying a car that costs £50,000 and is guaranteed to need major engine work within five years isn’t going to appeal to anyone.

Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel is thoroughly impractical, prohibitively expensive and, most importantly, does nothing to reduce carbon emissions. On the contrary, it would significantly increase them.

Honda might be able to kid journalists into thinking that hydrogen cars are ‘zero emission’ but unfortunately they can’t fool the climate.

hydrogen: not the vehicle fuel of the future

In our deep love affair with the motor car, we're desperate for a quick-fix low carbon alternative fuel that lets us carry on.

The EU and the Bush administration are both putting billions of dollars into the possibility of hydrogen as a vehicle fuel.

Not only are there economic, engineering and safety issues that can't be surmounted in time to make it a climate mitigation technology, it wouldn't work anyway. Hydrogen is most commonly made from fossil fuels; it is as much a refined fossil product as petrol. The present prototype hydrogen cars are far worse emitters than the thirstiest filthiest SUV.

It can be made by passing electricity through water, but where's that electricity coming from? fossil power stations? Or some new renewables?

To make enough hydrogen to replace our vehicle fuels would take more electricity than we currently use for everything combined. Can anyone really tell me we can shut down the fossils and build enough renewables to double our output before runaway climate change kicks in?

I've just done a pretty darn long article taking the whole notion apart. It's published over at U-Know under the title Hydrogen: Not the Vehicle Fuel of the Future