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According to a recent story from Agence France Presse, published in the June 4 issue of the Inquirer, some 3,000 households in Japan, including the official residence of the Prime Minister, are now equipped with hydrogen fuel cells “the size of a cupboard” to light, heat and energize the homes.
In an operating fuel cell, oxygen from the air and hydrogen (from natural gas or from water) are combined in an acidic solution to produce electricity. There is no noise, virtually no pollution, and the exhaust is nothing more noxious than water vapor. If the hydrogen is extracted (by electrolysis) from water, there is no pollution at all. In the Hyatt Jamboree Hotel, the fuel cell is less than half the size of a tennis court and its exhaust of water vapor is condensed as hot water, which is used by the hotel’s laundry.
In 1995, the price of oil was probably around $20 a barrel. The per-kilowatt price of power generated by fuel cells then was about ten times that of power generated by coal or diesel fuel. But with the price of oil now at $134 a barrel and climbing, the price differential is becoming minimal, especially if one were to factor in the medical and hospitalization expenses incurred by millions of people from the pollution, plus the damage to the environment in the way of more extreme floods, droughts and desertification blamed on global warming.
In 2002, the government of Iceland was the first in the world to declare an official policy to move away from a carbon to a hydrogen economy. Since then, the governments of Norway, Sweden, New Zealand and Costa Rica have declared an official policy of achieving a “carbon-neutral” economy. To achieve that, they have to increase the use of non-carbon energy alternatives such as hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, solar and hydrogen fuel cells.
Countries with very little or no gas deposits can use hydrogen fuel cells. The hydrogen can be extracted from water — rainwater, tap water, river water — by electrolysis, using either solar energy or wind energy to electrolyze the water, meaning to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen, which is one of the first experiments that we perform in high school Science class.
In the Hydrogen Future, there will be no big power plants anywhere, connected to millions of users by miles and miles of transmission lines. Instead, there will be thousands of stand-alone hydrogen fuel cells generating power for neighborhoods, communities, residential condos, office condos, industrial complexes, university campuses, government offices, military camps, shopping malls, hospitals, hotels, etc.
What about the Philippines? In the recently concluded Energy Summit, not a word seems to have been spoken about hydrogen fuel cells. It is our continuing misfortune that the leaders whom we elect, and the bureaucrats whom they appoint, cannot see the future beyond the next elections. — Antonio C. Abaya, www.tapatt.org
