If oil is the problem, what are the solutions?
by Jill Zobel
Hurricane season is coming to an end in the U.S.A., oil refineries there are for the most part up and running but...
Depending on who you talk to the day is coming when not only will gas for your car and oil for home heating become too expensive to pay for but sooner or later oil reserves will be depleted and the world supply will run out.
You may say that's just OPEC's scare tactics and because the USA insisted on waging war in Iraq (where the oil fields and refineries are constantly under attack) but, fact is, ever since hurricane Katrina did more damage to US oil platforms and refineries than bin Laden could ever dream of doing, even the George W. Bushes of the world are talking loudly about conservation and alternative technologies.
Now, I don't even drive a car and as I'm mostly out of the house my heating bills are relatively low. And, though I hate to admit it I am generally speaking too lazy to go heavy on conservation in any aspect of my life. So, getting my head around hybrids, hydrogen, non-oil fuel and energy alternatives wasn't very easy. To make matters worse I really wasn't very interested in the whole deal.
Professor Hydrogen
That is, until I heard about a guy in Iceland named Bragi Arnason, a University of Iceland chemistry professor people fondly call "Professor Hydrogen." For more than 20 years he's been pursuing a dream of making Iceland entirely fossil fuel free by 2030. Fact is his dream is becoming a reality and overnight Professor Hydrogen has become something of a national hero. What's more he's got the whole world watching as this tiny North Atlantic nation gets ready to become the world's first hydrogen-powered economy.
How is it even possible and what is hydrogen power all about anyway?
"We have plenty of hydrogen power and geothermal energy from our many volcanoes, rivers, hotsprings and glaciers, and Iceland has used only about 15% of these energy sources. But, we still import about 30% of our energy supply from fossil fuel. This is what we want to change. We know what it costs to produce hydrogen today and it is possible for this hydrogen to power clean fuel cells
and then it will be competitive with fossil fuel", says Professor Hydrogen, Bragi Amason.
But, didn't the explosion of the Hindenberg airship in 1937 prove that hydrogen is too dangerous for people to use?
"Of course hydrogen is flammable, otherwise you couldn't use it as a fuel. But now people are thinking that it was not
the hydrogen that caused the Hindenberg disaster but it was the material of the ship itself."
Well, I for one don't know the truth of that but talking to Professor Hydrogen about the experimental hydrogen powered busses there and cars and ships he foresees in the near future got me thinking about the possibilities. Will just have to wait and see what happens. Not only the whole world is watching to see what happens but all the car and oil companies too because their dream is that by 2010 hybrid cars fueled by both hydrogen and gasoline will account for 20% of all car sales.
World's first hydrogen-powered motorcycle (by Intelligent Energy, June 2005)
The future is hybrids
Leonardo DiCaprio has one. So does Harrison Ford. But those guys have money, and the hybrids that are around today cost much more than your usual luxury car. And, the hybrid being developed for future use would carry a really huge price tag. But, as I said before, what do I care... I don't drive.
But, I've got to admit talking to New York Times reporter Clive Thompson (who has driven pretty much all the Japanese made hybrids around and those in development in California) convinced me that taking a seat in the Engima prototype hybrid would be well worth the ride.
"It's a fantastic car. It's like a little red sports car, a 2 seater, and it goes very fast. It goes from 0 to 60 in 4.3 seconds. It handles very well: it's up there with the Porsche or the Lambourghini class of cars, really, and it's remarkably efficient on fuel. The guy who owns it is planning on putting in a 113.5 liter tank and driving it from 1 U.S. coast to the other on one single tank of gas next year", auto industry reporter Clive Thompson explains.
Schwarzenegger dedicates the first retail-designed hydrogen fueling station in L.A. (Oct. 2004)
That sounds great, but to dummies like me I really had to get my head around what a hybrid is in the first place:
"Basically, the way the hybrid works is that they achieve higher levels of gas efficiency by using electric motors to sort of give the gas engine a break every once in a while. A gas engine is least efficient in 2 situations: one is when you're sitting idling at a red light because it's on but you're not moving and the other one is when you're accelerating from 0. So what a hybrid does is that it uses the electric motor in both those situations and it just shuts the gas engine right off", says Clive Thompson.
Maybe move to Brazil
Once I realized what hybrids were all about, I started to understand why environmentalists like them. But then I wondered about how they would just love cars that don't need oil-based fuel and could operate on bio fuels - some of which exist today and others which are in development like Cellulose ethanol. You make it like the ethanol which is currently used as a blending component with benzine for today's fuels which means it's like making grain-based schnaps or vodka. But, you use lots more of it so that the oil becomes the smaller part and the cellulose ethanol makes-up the bulk. Problem is, of course, our lawmakers everywhere. Today you can use more of it in America, much less in Europe, but 80% of it in the fuel for Brazil. In Brazil they even have built their own cars which can take both non-oil fuel and oil-based fuel so the driver just keeps his or her eyes on the price at the fuel pump and buys what's cheaper. So maybe the answer is to move to Brazil...
The possibilities for reducing, if not replacing, oil in our energy futures seem limitless. The question is: is there the political will and will the industries react in time? These days it's a fact that the big oil manufacturers like Shell and Chevron have invested heavily in these alternatives and some governments from Iceland to Japan and down to Brazil are working hard to end their fossil fuel dependency as quickly as possible.
It sounds boring perhaps to think about the chemistry, the physics, the mechanics involved but I guess at least some of us can be glad that someplace out there someone is doing the thinking. Personally I vote for Professor Hydrogen and a guy in France they call "the sun prophet."
That's aerospace engineer Guy Pignolet who tells Chris Cummins in this Saturday's Reality Check about what's going to happen in the far-off future when there'll be huge solar panels in space, built from asteroid-provided space materials so they can take care of our future energy needs. He does admit we'll have to be able to have enough space stations and astronauts or robots in space first to get the job done. Maybe I'll be driving by then but somehow I doubt it.
If oil is the problem, what are the solutions?
A Reality Check Special, Saturday, October 8th, 12h with Hal Rock.
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