Hello and welcome back to my civic issues blog! Lately my blogs have been very heavy in the science and maybe less civic, but bear with me. I am trying to give you information and potential solutions on issues related to our energy crisis and climate change crisis. There are many ways we can adapt and attempt to solve these major issues facing our world today. With this information, I hope you can better understand the solutions to our problem and figure out which solution or solutions you support the most.
Now if you have read my passion blog, you would know I absolutely love electric vehicles (EVs). After all, I review one seemingly every week. Today I will be talking about electric vehicles’ opposition and likely partner in creating an emission free transportation industry: hydrogen vehicles.
When I refer to electric vehicles, I am referring to electric vehicles powered by batteries that charge by connecting directly to the power grid. These vehicles are zero-emission and run on fully renewable resources should the grid be powered with renewables.
Their counterpart to making the transportation industry zero emissions are hydrogen vehicles. Hydrogen vehicles have a longer range than electric vehicles and have only about a 5-minute refuel time compared to electric vehicles’ lengthy charging times. Since hydrogen cars will be fueled in a similar way to gas vehicles, there will be no need to build up a charging grid like the EV network has had to do. Gas stations can simply be modified to by hydrogen stations (I know! It sounds funny, but I think it will catch on). Lastly, there would be less concern with recycling of hydrogen vehicles since there will not be a massive, dangerous battery to dispose of at the end of its life.
This may lead you to ask where all this hydrogen comes from and whether it is a renewable resource. Hydrogen by itself is not a renewable resource, but there is a way to get hydrogen by splitting water with electric current and catalysts into oxygen and hydrogen. Water is a renewable resource and if we have water, we will be able to create hydrogen in this way. Once we have the hydrogen, we will be able to transport it to the Hydrogen stations and into vehicles much like we do with gasoline. Again, we already have the infrastructure.
Now, all these benefits sound great, but that is where there are some problems with these vehicles. Hydrogen vehicles come in two types: hydrogen combustion engines and hydrogen fuel cell engines.
Hydrogen combustion engines use basically a gas engine in a car with a few modifications to make it run on hydrogen. Companies such as Toyota, BMW, and Yamaha have all worked on or are working on hydrogen combustion engines, according to CNBC. A problem with these vehicles is that these vehicles produce the greenhouse gas, NOx, if they are not properly regulated. This would solve our energy crisis by offering an alternative fuel but would not help our climate change problems.
On the other hand, hydrogen fuel cell engines seem like the perfect alternative. Creating electricity out of hydrogen with only a byproduct of water. The problem here is that there are doubts from businessmen and scientists about this being a feasible option. According to CNBC, Elon Musk and the CEO of Volkswagen have voiced their concerns with fuel cell technology, saying it is foolish and does not line up with the science. That being said, I know there are even a few researchers at Penn State studying fuel cell technology and I have faith in this technology.
I think in an ideal world, fuel cells and hydrogen powered vehicles would be used in cases where the batteries needed to power vehicles would be too large. This would be the case in shipping, air travel, rail, buses, trucks, and construction vehicles. There is progress in this idea as well, the airplane manufacturer, Airbus, just announced it is working on a hydrogen version of its plane, the A380, and that it could take the skies as soon as 2026.
This issue once again relates to civics when it comes to public investment into this technology to stop climate change. Recently the Department of Energy invested $52.5 million into clean hydrogen research, according to energy.gov. Is this enough to invest, or is this too much and should we be investing in different areas instead? I am not sure and I’m not even sure if anyone knows the right answer.
There are different countries around the world taking different approaches to this technology. Car companies and countries such as Jaguar Land Rover, Toyota, Hyundai, and Japan as a whole are all investing in and committing to hydrogen technologies while Volkswagen and other European auto makers are ditching the technology, according to Discovery.com.
Based on what you heard, do you think the US should invest in hydrogen vehicles or ditch them in favor of other technologies? Also, if given the option to own a hydrogen, gas, hybrid, or electric vehicle as your next car, which one would you choose and why? I am curious what the consensus is here. Will people go for reliability, or environmentally friendly?
That’s it for now! Thanks for reading!
https://www.discovery.com/motor/electric-vs–hydrogen–the-pros-and-cons-of-greener-transportati
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/toyota-commissions-yamaha-motor-to-develop-hydrogen-fueled-engine.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/23/hydrogen-generation-could-become-1-trillion-market-goldman-sachs.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/-airbus-plans-to-test-hydrogen-engine-on-a380-jumbo-jet-to-fly-mid-decade.html