For that reason, I don’t want a “solution” to high fuel prices. I want prices to stay high enough to give consumers an incentive to change their behavior, and to give developers of alternative technologies a real market incentive beyond continued government funding. I’m therefore in favor of both carbon taxes of various kinds and fuel taxes that more accurately reflect the social costs of the fossil fuel economy. (Proceeds of which can fund research on alternatives.)

I’m not answering your question because I don’t think it’s possible to identify The Solution yet. There’s simply too much basic research that needs to happen and has been, so far, pathetically starved of funding. So the first step towards a solution is social, economic, and political. Convince the average citizen that energy and climate change are existential threats, important enough to justify the full attention of the world’s best minds and economic resources. Do that, and the technological solutions will come.

Twenty years ago, running a financial analysis on the PC industry showed that it was small and didn’t make much financial sense compared with the existing alternatives. Indeed I remember talking to Unisys employees around 1987 who dismissed PC’s as toys. I had a boss in 1991 who said that we shouldn’t enter the consumer market until PC’s were advertised in circulars in the Sunday papers.

I’m sure people like Mitch Kapor are glad they paid attention to the industry. The present is not necessarily an indication of the future And because cars are such a long term investment, any comprehensive solution to power for transportation is necessarily a long term bet. That’s why fleets are so important in to the transportation solution: they tend to turn over quicker and usually have centralized fueling stations, making a stronger financial case for new technologies. By starting with fleets, we can jump start new technologies by priming the pump of economies of scale, in much the same way the space program jump started the economies of scale for microelectronics.

Mike Keller, you’re comment discounts a number of underlying assumptions of Golden’s arguments. 1) thinking within the existing paradigm brings incremental solutions, but not fundamental change; and 2) technology tends tend to increase on a logarithmic, not a geometric scale. Eg: Moore’s law. Therefore, it’s within the realm of possibility that we can discover cost effective replacements for expensive fuel cell membranes, catalysts that lower the energy needs of electrolysis, and hydrides or carbon nanotubes that can soak up hydrogen like a sponge and store it in a solid substrate.

If hydrogen’s not a solution to high fuel prices and CO2/NOx emmissions, what is? So far in this thread we’ve discussed conservation and increased efficiency. What else, especially for transportation?

Reality has a funny way of popping hydrogen filled balloons.

However, I believe the current problem is not really one of technolgy as it is of commerce. We are currently in our high fuel cost predicament because of a limited few corporations who monopolize and cooperate to maximize their profits (I don’t blame them, it’s their duty to the shareholders. It’s just shameful our own government cooperates with them as well). Whether it’s gasoline, diesel, ethanol, or eventually hydrogen, the consumer has no choice but to head to the pumps and continue to purchase from these corporations.

It’s the prospect of the consumer now having another choice with a BEV (pure battery electric vehicle) which will allow him to refuel at home (using electricity created by hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, or homegrown wind and solar) that will finally break the stranglehold that these corporations have had. This unlimited competition will finally let market forces work as they are meant too. As long as it can be produced at home, even hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles could help with this revolution.

BEVs will give the consumer the freedom they need to make these choices that unfortunately, hydrogen sold through fuel stations can’t. There is currently a big fight by ‘big oil’ and auto manufacturers to deny these choices to the average consumer. They have a lot to lose….

Vehicle carbon footprint includes the energy used to manufacture the vehicle in the first place. Often, advanced materials (such as the electronics in hybrids, as well as the catalysts in fuel cells) have significant carbon footprint all by themselves, not to mention the energy involved in shipping specialized parts all over the world. A domestic pickup truck that’s driven until the wheels fall off can actually have less total footprint than an imported hybrid that gets traded in after three or four years.

I’m surprised that natural gas powered vehicles don’t get more attention. The technology already exists, the distribution infrastructure is much more mature than hydrogen, and the carbon footprint is much lower than gasoline. They aren’t zero emissions, true, but they’re a big improvement.

The first widespread use of fuel cell or other electric vehicles are in fleets. Buses, delivery trucks, etc. like UPS and FedX who are looking at fuel cells delivery vehicles. It takes 15 years for the US passenger fleet to turn over, so ANY change to our transportation energy solution is necessarily a long-term bet.

The hydrogen will most likely come from methane; it could come from other fossil fuels. But this “black” hydrogen is not the end goal. Electrolysis via water would be the end goal. The big question becomes, why don’t we just use that electricity to charge up batteries? My hunch is that with solid storage of hydrogen at normal temps & pressures via hydrides or nanotubes, hydrogen could be come more attractive to batteries.

Methane burns much cleaner than oil or coal. And yes, you’re right, we need electricity. But I don’t understand your comment about the CO2 footprint of the vehicle. A fuel cell car is zero carbon emissions. It emits hot water.

What is your suggestion for solving our climate problems? What’s big enough?

I think it’s a diversity of options. For example, conservation is huge. Here in Austin, our local utility thinks of conservation efforts in terms of coal power plant equivalents. Through their efforts over the years, they have worked with their customers to become more efficient so that they have NOT needed to build a coal power plant. That’s really cool. We need to do that on a national level.

Also, getting smarter about how we use energy will go a long way to conservation.

A priority, I think, is the electric vehicle. Whether it’s hydrogen powering the fuel cell, or ammonia, or a plug-in, electric vehicles will be one big solution to our climate problems, not internal combustion engines running on fossil fuel. China and India are on the verge of a consumer revolution in transportation. They are going to be the big marketplaces for electric vehicles.

It’s my contention–based upon a hunch and NOT on data, yet–that fuel cell technology hasn’t had a whole lot of R&D money applied to it. Battery technology hasn’t had that much, either, over the past 100 years, although the computer revolution was the impetus for devloping LiON batteries and their cousins. Therefore, I think there’s tremendous gains yet to be made in battery & fuel cell technologies. Indeed, in his book “Internal Combustion”, Edwin Black comes to the same conclusion and argues that what we really need is a Manhattan Project-like effort with fuel cells to get where we need to go relatively quickly.