The Emperor Has No Clothes A Practical Guide for Environmental and Social Transformation (17 page)

The second great hurdle that a hydrogen
economy must overcome is storage of the hydrogen. At the present
time a few ways are available for storing hydrogen. The current
methods of storage are in high pressure tanks and in special metal
alloys. In tanks, currently hydrogen is stored at pressures ranging
from 340 to 680 atmospheres (5,000 – 10,000 psi). These numbers
suggest that a lot of hydrogen can be squeezed into a tank.
However, hydrogen is the smallest and lightest gas molecule which
means that the actual weight of hydrogen is small. For example if a
44.8 liter tank (about 10 gallons) which is around the size found
on a small or mid sized car were filled with hydrogen at the high
pressure of 680 atmospheres it would contain 2.72 kg (5.98 pounds)
of hydrogen, which isn't enough fuel to provide adequate cruising
range for a vehicle. Liquid hydrogen is not practicable for use
either. It must be maintained at extremely low temperatures (-253 C
or -423 F) to be stabile, otherwise it changes to a gas and must be
vented. Compressing and liquifying hydrogen also requires large
quantities of energy to accomplish producing another unfavorable
loss of energy. The metal alloy adsorption type of hydrogen storage
is very heavy, extremely expensive, and has impractical charging
and discharging requirements. At the present time there are about
20 different approaches to these problems that are either
theoretically possible or being worked on in the laboratory. None
of the ones that are being researched in the lab are ready to be
moved to the prototype stage of development. So the hydrogen
storage problem isn't even close to being solved.

Hydrogen also has a number of other problems.
Since it is such a tiny molecule it is very hard to contain, it
escapes from piping joints, valves etc. Thus, the current types of
“plumbing” systems are specially made and also require high
maintenance making them expensive. It also burns with a very hot
transparent flame that can not be seen which makes hydrogen fires
particularly dangerous.

To sum up, in order for a hydrogen fuel
economy to become practical it would require a revolutionary
improvement in production and another revolutionary improvement in
storage. Each one of these hurdles is about the same order of
magnitude as the change from vacuum tubes in electronics to
semiconductors. It would also require incremental improvements in
the plumbing systems and safety mechanisms for general usage in
vehicles. In my view the likelihood that all of these problems will
be solved within a time frame that would produce a workable system
that is practical to solve our environmental and other fossil fuel
problems is remote. It will almost certainly be decades before
there is even a chance that this type of technology can be
implemented.

Solar Voltaic - Electricity generated from
solar energy has one insurmountable problem
it
only produces electricity when the sun shines on the solar
cell.
Not only does it require sunlight, but it also only
produces electric output near it's rating for “peak sunlight' for 4
1/2 – 5 1/2 hours in the middle of the day. You won't get energy
from solar cells on cloudy days or if they are covered up with
snow, ice, leaves, dirt or other sun blockers. At the present time
there is no cost effective way of storing large quantities of
electricity to mitigate this problem (that's why hydrogen fuel
cells are being researched). It can be stored in batteries but
their cost is prohibitive for storage of large amounts of power. To
demonstrate this problem, where I live 54% of the days are
overcast. Last winter it seldom got above freezing, and many of the
days were below -27 C (0 F) with some days as low as -35 C (-25 F).
All the heating systems except hand stoked stoves and fireplaces
are operated by electrical systems, that means for less than half
the winter days the heating system where I live would have worked
for maybe 5 hours a day, as well as the refrigerator and other
electrical appliances. Obviously this level of performance isn't
acceptable for just about anyone living in the United States.

Lets consider if solar voltaic may be
practical for reducing fossil fuel use by operating it for the 5
hours (this average will be used henceforth) on sun lit days to
partially offset fossil fuel use. To evaluate this aspect of solar
voltaic we need to consider the amount of energy needed which
according to extrapolations of Epsteins figures are a colossal
2.061 trillion kWh (kilowatt hours) per year. The solar cells used
for large scale arrays are 15% efficient and have an average cost
of $3,250.00 per kWh.

The amount of energy in peak sunlight is 1
kWh per square meter. I will assume that peak sunlight will be
available 80% of the year with high air clarity. [65]

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The Total Cost for solar voltaic is $1.97
Trillion, WOW! It would also require

1,150,000 acres of land.This system would
provide electric power for 16 2/3 % of the year!

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It should be noted that the above cost does
not include the wiring to connect the panels, if all the panels
were lined up end to end they would stretch for 2.11 million
kilometers (1.3 million miles).

65. To convert our yearly usage into hourly
usage (kWh) we need to take 2,061 Billion kWh / (364.24 days /year
X 24 hr/day) = 235,758,407 kWh I will round to 236,000,000 for the
following calculations. (Note; not all electricity is produced by
fossil fuels).

The output of a solar cell is reduced by
about 25% through conversion to alternating current, steeping up
losses, line losses etc. So we can expect to get .15 X 1 kWh/square
meter X .75 = .112 kWh per square meter.

The number of 1 square meter panels we need
are: 236,000,000 kWh / .112 kWh / sq. m = 2.11 billion square
meters.

It requires 1 / .112 kWh/ sq. m = 8.93
square meters of solar cells to produce 1 kWh.

In order to produce the 236,000,000 kWh of
energy we need : 236,000,000 X 8.93 panels = 2.11 Billion
panels

The cost of the solar cell
panels is
: 236,000,000 kWh X $3250.00 /kWh
=
$767 Billion
.

The amount of land
required
: An acre of land can accommodate
an array of: 29 rows each having 63 square meter panels or: 29 rows
X 63 panels = 1,827 panels / acre.

So 2,110,000,000 panels /
1,827 panels/ acre =
1.15 million
acres

According to the FHA the average cost of
land in 2010 was $1,000 / acre

The land cost is $1.15 Billion

In order to operate this
system the power transmission grid would need to be upgraded (the
smart grid) at a cost of
$1.2
Trillion
.

The total for this system is; $767 billion +
$1.15 billion + $1.2 trillion = $1.97 Trillion.

The amount of wire required certainly would
be stupendous with a proportionately large cost, so the $1.97
trillion cited above is much lower than the actual cost. Moreover,
these costs also do not reflect the externalized costs. For
example, it would require a significant increase in mining to
produce all the materials required, such as copper for wire, steel
for mounting brackets, hardware, and many other types of materials
incorporated in other essential components. As you probably recall
mining has a lot of undesirable environmental and social costs and
should be avoided if possible. The manufacture of solar cells
produces toxic byproducts. Fabricating approximately 2.11 billion
square meters of solar cells would produce colossal amounts of
toxic waste that would have to be dealt with, probably at public
expense. Shading 1.15 million acres with solar cells and the
required access areas (for maintenance) would almost certainly have
a significant and undesirable impact on the environment and
ecology. It would also take an army or several armies of people to
clean and maintain the panels. Also the taxes on almost 1.15
million acres of land would also be considerable and would be added
into the electric rates. If we consider the cost, solar voltaic is
prohibitive, especially since it would only theoretically reduce
fossil fuel plant usage by 16 2/3%. This system would also produce
no reduction in the number of fossil fueled electricity plants
because they would still be needed to produce energy when the SV
system wasn't operating. A final problem with this is that several
types of fossil fuel electric plants are used, peakers and base
load. Peakers are used to provide extra power when a sudden
increase in demand occurs and can be turned on and off rapidly.
Base load plants are designed to operate continuously and provide
most of the electric energy. Base load plants can not be shut down
for a few hours and turned back on. Therefore, the use of solar
isn't feasible to replace fossil fueled grid transmitted electrical
generation at all! It's only really cost effective use is for
producing power in remote locations where the cost would be
prohibitive to run power transmission lines. [66]

The prospects for future fossil fuel
availability. The oil and coal industries often tell us that there
are huge reserves of their products and that theoretically they
will not run out for hundreds of years. They are being rather
disingenuous when they say this because the amount that it is
feasible to recover is much smaller than the reserves they speak
of.

Oil wells are usually depicted showing an
underground lake of petroleum with a pipe connecting the well head
on the surface to the underground lake of oil. Actually oil is
found in a porous type of rock that has a structure that resembles
a sponge, of course the rock can not be squeezed to force the oil
out like a sponge. The number and size of the sponge like pores
govern the amount of oil found in the rock, many large pores lots
of oil. They have another measurement related to the spacing of the
pores called permeability, this indicates how many of the pores
touch each other allowing the oil to flow through the rock sponge
to the well hole in the rock. If the well has large pores and high
permeability (lots of oil with good flow) this is a high quality
well. Usually the largest quantity of oil that can be recovered
from a high quality well is about 1/4 of the reserves.

How about good old coal we are told that we
have huge amounts of it, and this is definitely true. However, the
amount of coal reserves that exists isn’t the same as the amount
that is economically recoverable. A 1993 study by Rohrbacher (U.S.
Bureau of Mines) found that between 5% and 20% of the coal is
actually economically recoverable. Since we have been mining coal
for hundreds of years, most of the coal that was inexpensive to
mine has already been mined.

66. Yes it's true some people choose to live
off the electric grid without electricity or are willing to pay the
huge costs to establish a on site power system. For the vast
majority of people though this isn't an option.

According to this study in about 10 years the
cost of coal will probably start to go up because of the increased
cost to mine it. For example, the largest deposit and mining
operation is in the Powder River basin where 40% of our coal is
mined. When they started mining it around 40 year ago it was
covered by about 6 meters (20 feet) of material (dirt, mudstone,
and sandstone). This material must be removed before the coal can
be dug out. This particular coal seam is sloping downward and they
now have to remove about 75 meters (250 feet) of material. Needless
to say, it’s much more expensive to remove all the additional
covering material. Since the deposit is sloping down and ever more
covering material has to be removed, at some point the cost of
recovering coal from this mine will become prohibitive ( the
Rohrbacher study estimated that 11% of the coal was recoverable
from this deposit). [67] Another mathematical method used to
predict resource depletion was developed by Marion King Hubbert
(see below for a more detailed explanation). Using Hubbert's method
of analysis the amount of coal mined will reach a peak in the US in
2015 and start to decline while becoming increasingly expensive
until it's cost is prohibitive. A multicycle Hubbert analysis has
shown that world coal production has already peaked in 2011
(Epstein p.74). Moreover, it will also require progressively more
amounts of energy to extract eventually producing an unfavorable
energy balance.

Marion King Hubbert was a geophysicist who
worked for the Shell Oil Company and was aware of biological
research on invasive species that started in the 1940's. The
biologists developed mathematical models describing the dynamics of
exploitation of resources by novel species. Hubbert realized that
these models could be applied to the exploitation of nonrenewable
resources by human beings. In 1956 he published a paper using this
type of modeling predicting that oil production would peak in the
US in the late 1960's – early 1970's. His prediction proved
accurate, peak oil production occurred in the US in 1970. This type
of model is comprised of several interrelated mathematical curves
of a similar type to the commonly used curve developed by Gauss
(the famous bell curve). One of the characteristics of Gaussian
curves is that the right side is a mirror image of the left. So if
you know the first half of the curve that describes increasing
exploitation,you can also produce the second half which shows the
mirrored decline of the resource, thereby providing a means of
prediction.