I AM PROUD TO PRESENT A VERY THOUGHT-PROVOKING ESSAY ABOUT A VERY IMPORTANT TOPIC, AS WE COLLECTIVELY ENTER THE 21ST CENTURY; FEEL FREE TO SEND THIS TO YOUR FRIENDS AS WELL AS ALL CONCERNED CITIZENS. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.

 

Hydrogen, Fossil Fuels, and the Emergence of Peak Oil

 

Research by Michael Vigilante

 

 

Introduction: What I have done here is simply to organize some information on related topics, which I have found at various websites on the net. But as you’ll notice, they are all pointing to the same conclusion. My own words are simply the titles of each section (in bold), and perhaps a comment underneath that is preceded by (MV). I’ve enclosed the actual cited research in marks like this “><”. I don’t know if this style qualifies as a research paper, it is more an organized arrangement of information on a subject that I think needs to come into awareness now, as oil & gas prices are escalating rapidly. So I hope that you found it as valuable and enlightening as I did!

 

 

I. What Happened to the Promise of Developing Clean Hydrogen Cars?

 

(MV): Remember the State of the Union address on January 20th, 2004?

 

Citing www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-14.html

 

>President Bush announced a $1.2 billion hydrogen fuel initiative to reverse America's growing dependence on foreign oil by developing the technology for commercially viable hydrogen-powered fuel cells to power cars, trucks, homes and businesses with no pollution or greenhouse gases. The hydrogen fuel initiative will include $720 million in new funding over the next five years to develop the technologies and infrastructure to produce, store, and distribute hydrogen for use in fuel cell vehicles and electricity generation. Combined with the FreedomCAR (Cooperative Automotive Research) initiative, President Bush is proposing a total of $1.7 billion over the next five years to develop hydrogen-powered fuel cells, hydrogen infrastructure and advanced automotive technologies.<

 

 

II. A Step in the Wrong Direction: Hydrogen Fuel to be Manufactured Using Traditional Fossil Fuels

 

Citing www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2003/05/ma_375_01.html

 

>What Bush didn't reveal in his nationwide address, however, is that his administration has been working quietly to ensure that the system used to produce hydrogen will be as fossil fuel-dependent -- and potentially as dirty -- as the one that fuels today's SUVs. According to the administration's National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, drafted last year in concert with the energy industry, up to 90 percent of all hydrogen will be refined from oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels -- in a process using energy generated by burning oil, coal, and natural gas.<

 

 

Citing www.alternet.org/envirohealth/18741/

 

>The Bush Administration is spending billions of dollars to replace fossil fuels with a hydrogen-based economy in order, they say, to achieve energy independence. The administration has been banging the drum that freeing us from our dependence on foreign petroleum is a matter of national security. The problem is, instead of investing in basic research that will generate hydrogen from renewable resources, the Department of Energy is primarily funding projects that either use the very fossil fuels we currently depend on or are simply "window dressing" demonstrations of technology that will never work.<

 

 

Citing www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/31/tech/main538846.shtml

 

>Right now it costs about 10 times as much to operate a hydrogen-powered fuel cell car as it does to run one with an internal combustion engine. And the small amount of hydrogen that is produced today comes from natural gas and other fossil fuels, generated in a process that releases the greenhouse warming gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

 

 

To create an environmentally friendly and economically viable hydrogen energy economy, engineers will have to develop a safe and cost-effective way to store and distribute a highly flammable gas, both on board vehicles and throughout a fuel distribution system. They will also have to either develop ways to make hydrogen with renewable energy1, or find a way to capture the carbon dioxide released in hydrogen production and keep it out of the atmosphere.<

 

 

Citing http://www.greenhydrogencoalition.org/

 

>The Green Hydrogen Coalition further charges the Bush administration with using the IPHE (International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy) as a delaying tactic to avoid introducing already available2 off-the-shelf technologies and effective policies that can address local and global environmental issues.

 

 

Hydrogen is found everywhere on Earth, yet it rarely exists free floating in nature. Instead, it has to be extracted from fossil fuels, water, or biomass. Therefore, the energy used to derive the hydrogen makes the hydrogen either dirty or clean, in other words, "black" or "green".

 

 

The Green Hydrogen Coalition warns that if the United States is successful in steering the IPHE towards a black hydrogen future, it could lock the global economy into the old energy regime for much of the 21st century, with dire environmental consequences.<

 

 

III. A Contrived Lack of Ambition in Scientific Study by the Current Administration

 

Citing http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/18741/

 

>…the American Physical Society (APS) produced a report stating that the technology for storing and delivering hydrogen was too immature to justify spending money on such demonstration projects. The 17-page Hydrogen Initiative Report says demonstration programs "only benefit the overall program when a sufficient knowledge base exists, and "can also divert effort toward technology with limited potential." The report adds, "basic science is not receiving appropriate emphasis in the (hydrogen research) program."<

 

 

Citing www.scientistsandengineersforchange.org/bushrecord.php

 

>Downgrading The Position of Science Adviser

 

Early in his tenure, President Bush signaled his disdain for science and scientific advice through his tardy appointment of a science adviser. Every Presidential science adviser in history had been named within the first four months of the new Administration. (break)

 

The delay in appointing a new science adviser is attributable not only to the Bush administration's lack of respect for scientific evidence, but also to the fact that it was openly downgrading the position.

 

 

The Request for Science Funding is Flat

 

The Administration brags about a 5% increase for R&D spending in 2005, but fails to mention that the increase is largely targeted for weapons development.<

 

 

IV. Underfunding of the Wrong Research

 

Citing http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do?PUBLIC_ID=14870&BT_CODE=PR_PRESSRELEASES&TT_CODE=PRESSRELEASE

 

>The NRC report stressed that there are challenges to the achievement of a hydrogen economy, and indicated that the DOE Hydrogen program was probably underfunded, “particularly because a significant fraction of appropriated funds is already earmarked (by Congress)”

 

Of the $78 million appropriated in the FY 2004 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, over $37 million was earmarked for congressionally directed projects.<

 

V. Lack of Pursuit of Renewable Sources as Opposed to Fossilized Sources

 

Citing http://www.greenhydrogencoalition.org/

 

> There is another way to produce hydrogen -- one that uses no fossil fuels or nuclear power in the process. Renewable sources of energy -- photovoltaic solar cells, wind, small sustainable hydropower, geothermal, and even wave power -- are technologies that are available today and are increasingly being used to produce electricity. That electricity, in turn, can be used, in a process called electrolysis, to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Once produced, the hydrogen can be stored and used, when needed, to generate electricity or be used directly as a fuel. (break)

 

 

While Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham claims that the Bush administration is equally committed to research and development of renewable sources of energy to extract hydrogen -- a green hydrogen agenda -- the current energy bill tells a different story. The bill contains subsidies of more than $8 billion to the fossil fuels and nuclear industries and less than $4 billion to the renewable energy industries in its current draft.

 

 

Moreover, despite continued public pronouncements by the Department of Energy that it is equally committed to promoting renewable sources of energy, the White House and their Congressional allies have systematically blocked efforts in Congress to establish benchmarks and target dates for the phasing in of renewable sources of energy in the generation of electricity and for transport.<

 

 

Citing www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/31/tech/main538846.shtml

 

>Last year the Department of Energy convened a committee of energy experts, many from auto and oil companies, to draft a National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap that addresses the production issue and many others. As a renewable energy advocate, American Solar Energy Society chairman Mike Niklas felt hopelessly outgunned at the meeting.

 

 

"There was hardly anybody there from renewables and there were hundreds of people who represented the coal industry and the nuclear industry," Niklas said. "It was a joke." <

 

 

VI. Internal Combustion Engine is Antiquated, Inefficient, Dirty, & Unneccessary

 

Citing waw.wardsauto.com/ar/auto_ice_ice_baby/

 

>…when a measly 15% of the energy in a gallon of gasoline finally gets to the road, that's not good enough anymore. The Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) fingers the largest energy "waster" in every vehicle as the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine). (break)

 

 

One Big Three engineer says "fully optimized" spark-ignited gasoline engines might reach 35% efficiency, diesels perhaps as much as 45%.<

 

 

Citing www.newenergymovement.org/html_orig/non-polluting.htm

 

>The world energy establishment has become enormous and unassailable, above public discussion. In 1997 seven of the twelve largest corporations in the world provided either fossil fuels or automobiles and four others are involved with related financial infrastructures. Through elaborate public relations campaigns and influencing politicians and media, the energy monopoly wants you to think that there is only one way: central station power plants and distributed internal combustion engines, both burning dirty and nonrenewable fuels. Nothing could be further from the truth. Renewable and clean energy is feasible and cost effective.<

 

 

VII. Unacknowledged & Suppressed Technologies Already Available

 

(MV): These are 3 areas of advanced energy systems currently being researched. They are:

 

1. Cold fusion / nuclear energy

 

2. Zero-point / space energy

 

3. Hydrogen & fuel cell

 

There has been breakthroughs in all 3 areas but the first 2 are ignored or suppressed since big oil players are not poised to capitalize on their development like they are with hydrogen. I’m only going to site a couple of examples here but if one does their own research they will find many similar cases. Please note…watching television does not qualify as research!

 

 

Citing bwt.jeffotto.com/alternative.htm

 

>I brought to the table, the world's most efficient heat pump and we quickly added other technologies.

 

 

I have become one of the first of this new breed of criminals in this country, that I call "accidental felons". I was sentenced to a three year prison term for the civil code misdemeanor of not filling out a form the government claims I should have filled out. I had no warning, no knowledge, no intent to do harm, and have to this day never even been convicted. Yet, I served both a jail term as an innocent man, and a prison term as an "accidental felon".

 

 

While I held the answers to pollution, energy shortages, foreign oil dependence and a healthy economy for America, the system worked hard to destroy everything I owned and had worked 20 years to build, and threw me in prison because I had failed to file a registration form.<

 

 

Citing www.progressiveengineer.com/PEWebBackissues2002/PEWeb%2028%20Jul%2002-2/28editor.htm

 

>(Eric Lerner is president of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, a small research and consulting firm. An independent researcher in plasma physics since 1979, he has become internationally known for his studies linking plasma astrophysics and laboratory plasma physics.)

 

 

The plasma focus does pose a real threat to the existing fossil-fuel energy multinationals, the Exxons and Enrons of the world. Not only would focus fusion reactors be cheap, producing energy at the equivalent of a oil at a dime a barrel, they would be decentralized, with each reactor producing perhaps 20 megawatts, enough for a town. This would both reduce transmission costs and inhibit corporate control of energy supply.

 

 

At the moment, there is NO U.S. government funding for focus fusion research. The NASA program that was funding this research, at a very low level, has been cut. Research at some 15 plasma focus groups in other countries is also crippled by lack of funds. Yet the amount of money needed is tiny; the next step in the research will require only about $500,000.<

 

 

VII. The Emergence of the Peak Oil Problem

 

Published on 14 Mar 2005 by US Congressional Record. Archived on 15 Mar 2005.

 

Peak Oil Presentation in the US Congress

by Roscoe Bartlett

 

Conservative Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, Chairman of the Projection Forces Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, gave an hour long presentation on Peak Oil to the US Congress on Monday.

 

(speech exerpt)

 

“We now are doing a lot of talking here in the Congress and fortunately across the country about Social Security, and it is a big problem. But I tell the Members if the problem of Social Security is equivalent to the tidal wave produced by the hurricane, then this peak oil problem is equivalent to the tsunami. The impact and the consequences are going to be enormously greater than the impact and the consequences of Social Security or Medicare or those two put together.”

 

Full transcript here: www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=4733

 

 

Citing www.peakoil.net/HouseOfRepresentatives.html

 

>"We really had about 30 years warning that this was going to happen. When M. King Hubbert predicted oil would peak in this country in 1970 and it did, and 5 years later, certainly by 10 years later we knew absolutely he was right, because we were well down on the curve 10 years later, we should have had some hint that he probably was right, he and Colin Campbell were probably right about world production? We paid no attention to that."<

 

 

Citing www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?has-player=unknown&version=0&show-guide=true

 

>A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth.<

 

 

Citing http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031005_globalcorp.shtml#0

 

>Peak Oil is no longer on the way. It is here. Forget for a moment whether or not global oil production has actually begun (see below) its hopelessly irreversible decline. We will not know that for certain until sometime after it happens. The political fact, however, is that global inertia in response to Peak has driven our species, all of it, past the point of no return. There is no changing course for us. We have committed to a path of bloody destruction that can no longer be postponed or evaded. Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons - long a smoke alarm for Peak Oil - has said repeatedly, "The problem is that the world has no Plan B." Simmons is right.<

 

 

Citing www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC24Dj01.html

 

>The DoE, for example, noted in its International Energy Outlook for 2004 that it expects "conventional oil to peak closer to the middle than to the beginning of the 21st century". But other analysts are not so sanguine. "It is my opinion that the peak will occur in late 2005 or in the first few months of 2006," says Princeton geologist Kenneth S Deffeyes in a new book, Beyond Oil. A more conservative estimate by Mike Rodgers of PFC Energy locates the peak somewhere in the vicinity of 2010-15. If either of these predictions proves accurate, global oil supply can never climb high enough to satisfy the elevated consumption levels projected by the DoE for 2025 and beyond.<

 

 

M.V.

 

3/25/2005

 

 

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