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Technology Stocks : Ballard Power -world leader zero-emission PEM fuel cells
BLDP 2.850-1.2%Nov 19 3:59 PM EST
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To: William Peavey who wrote (3530)12/26/1998 2:07:00 PM
From: Sid Turtlman  Read Replies (1) of 5827
 
Bill: You write about fc powered cars as if they were not running on hydrocarbons. They are. Methanol is made from natural gas. Hydrogen is made from natural gas. Yes, one can use photovoltaics to split water to create hydrogen, and when that technology is widespread commercially, then, and only then, will the cost of hydrogen not be controlled by the cost of natural gas.

I believe that day will come, but it may well be 20 to 50 years from now. The differential in cost between making hydrogen using solar energy and extracting it from natural gas is so huge that there could be many significant breakthroughs and they still might not be sufficient to make solar splitting of water cost competitive.

As long as methanol and hydrogen are derived from hydrocarbons, your point about how we will someday deplete our supply of hydrocarbons isn't an argument in their favor. Keep in mind that natural gas only gets transformed into methanol or hydrogen with the application of lots of energy (it has to be heated to a high temperature, steam injected, and various other energy intensive processes applied). That is why methanol and hydrogen are always so much more expensive per Btu they contain than natural gas is.

What that means is that if something happened to make energy prices rise, processing intensive products like hydrogen and methanol would go up in price more than relatively unprocessed products like natural gas.

I would think a bull on Ballard might want to lay low on your energy shortage argument until such time as photovoltaics improve.
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