State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security by The Worldwatch Institute

Author:The Worldwatch Institute [The Worldwatch Institute]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics
ISBN: 9780393326666
Google: WUqcTBHJPJIC
Goodreads: 444460
Publisher: W. W. Norton Company
Published: 2004-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Source: See endnote 52.

The ultimate goal is to switch the global energy economy from carbon to hydrogen. Hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas, and burning it releases no carbon at all. When it is run through a fuel cell, the products are electricity, heat, and water vapor. Hydrogen fuel cells are an old technology that people became enthused about a few years ago. Some of the excitement has ebbed, however, as sober analyses of the transitional challenges have emerged. The long-term potential of hydrogen is great, but hydrogen is an energy carrier rather than a fuel per se. Capitalizing on it may depend on technical progress in efficient renewable electricity generation to make hydrogen from water. (Using nuclear power as the electricity source, despite proponents’ hopes, is too expensive and poses grave security prob-lems.) Such a closed-loop system would be carbon-neutral and could be sustained as long as the sun shines—for several billion years, in other words.54

Hydrogen pessimists do not dispute the desirability of a hydrogen energy economy, but they believe the transition will take longer than the optimists think and will require bridging technologies. One such technology is gasoline- and diesel-electric hybrid automobiles and light trucks. Fuel cells are not yet technically ready or cheap enough for vehicle applications, but hybrids can be nearly as efficient as fuel cells (and twice as efficient as internal combustion engines alone) when evaluated on a “well-to-wheels” basis. Moreover, hybrids are facilitating the debut of fuel-cell vehicles by providing a laboratory for the development of critical electronic controls and power management systems.55

If renewable energy technologies are so attractive, why don’t we already get more energy from them? The market presence of renewables so far is small in absolute terms, despite their extraordinary recent growth rates. The reasons have little to do with technology, however, and more to do with the regulatory and policy environment. Most societies, including the United States, have long been wedded to nonrenewable fuels and large, centralized generating facilities—fossil-fired and nuclear power plants, huge hydroelectric dams—and have supported them with enormous subsidies over the years.

Estimates of those subsidies vary widely because of differing assumptions and definitions; subsidies may include everything from tax breaks and depletion credits to R&D funding. (And in the United States, the Price-Anderson Act limits nuclear industry liability for catastrophic accidents—a priceless asset, because no nuclear plant could be insured or built without it.) Nevertheless, the estimates, both partisan and scholarly, are instructive: in Europe, national and European Union subsidies to the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries were estimated in 1997 at nearly $15 billion a year. A 2004 report put them at 29 billion euros ($36 billion) in 2001. Two separate studies of U.S. subsidies put the total at $5 billion (for fossil fuels alone) and $36 billion a year. Only a small fraction of subsidies anywhere have supported renewables. Imagine the progress that could be made—in raising the relatively low efficiency of solar cells, for example—if $20–30 billion a year were steered into intensive

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