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Technology Stocks : Ballard Power -world leader zero-emission PEM fuel cells -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: smw3 who wrote (2472)	4/29/1998 5:21:00 AM
From: Sid Turtlman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5827

smw3: If I understand you correctly, the reason for your confidence in the future of fuel cells that require hydrogen as their fuel (as opposed to the higher temperature ones that can use natural gas as is) is based on your confidence that the cost of creating the hydrogen from PVs will plummet from its current level. Hydrogen from PVs now costs about ten times as much as hydrogen produced in chemical plants from natural gas, right? (I'm guessing here, but based on HarveyO's excitement about a new development in the lab that might, if it works in real life, bring the cost down to three to four times as much, ten times seems about right.) Given how expensive hydrogen is even made the dirty way, that means that PV created hydrogen now costs about 40 times as much per amount of energy it contains compared to conventional fuels. To put it common sense terms, it is a fuel that provides the same energy as gasoline, but costs more like $50 per gallon, rather than $1.25 or so. Am I mistaken, but isn't it far from given that PV created hydrogen will necessarily be cheaper than conventional fuels any time soon? I'm not saying that it can't happen, but aren't the odds against that a trifle high? You mentioned 20 years as a time frame, and 20 years sounds like a long time if you are young, but it doesn't seem like enough time if you are older. For example, I remember when there was a hot group of public solar energy companies in 1979-80. They were putting solar heaters on people's roofs and developing new methods for producing PVs. At the time, it was considered a foregone conclusion that there was so much R&D money going into PVs that in 20 years they would surely make up a substantial, and possibly the leading, method for creating energy. Well, here it is almost 20 years later, and once again we are hearing the same story with the same 20 year time frame. One other thing you said that was interesting: "It can be shown that the low prices we pay for fuel are largely the result of governmental policies that hide the true costs. Many other societies have been less successful at masking these costs, and it is reflected in the prices their consumers actually pay for energy. It is altogether likely that as we move into the next millenium, drastic changes in the way fossil fuels are recovered and distributed will result in a drastic increase in the costs, hidden or not." I take it you are referring to the argument that the price of energy from fossil fuel does not take into account the external cost of the huge defense outlays that countries spend to assure a reliable supply. That is an excellent argument. However, you could also argue that the price of energy is artificially high due to politics, rather than artificially low. Suppose there were no national governments anymore, and the world were one big free enterprise zone with everything deregulated. (I think that scenario is probably more likely for 20 years from now than yours on PV produced hydrogen.) In that event, what would the price of oil be? About $3 per barrel in current terms. Why? Because the actual cost of finding more oil in the lowest cost locations is about $2 per barrel. In a world without governments all the oil would come from the lowest cost locations, just as all commodities do, and the costs are very low in places with huge reserves. The only reason that oil is $16 a barrel now is that the OPEC cartel artificially restricts supply. I obviously strayed way off topic, but I just wanted to point out that the price of energy is not necessarily underpriced in economic terms, and that it is not inevitable that it must necessarily go up. So if PVs at $50 per gallon equivalent are going to someday be cheaper than gasoline at $1.25 it may have to do it on its own--it can't necessarily count on gasoline going to $51 per gallon.