WASHINGTON, 6 August - When climate change talks came to a close last month in Bonn, the Kyoto Protocol was reinvigorated: 176 nations voted for the protocol, leaving the United States isolated. Government officials returned to their home nations with an opportunity to take a close look at a promising low-carbon alternative to hydrocarbon fuels: Hydrogen.
The shift to clear hydrogen is headed by rapid improvements in the fuel cell - which uses hydrogen to produce electricity, with water as a byproduct - and by the billion dollars bets that leading multinationals are now placing on this technology.
The move to hydrogen is also motivated by the need to address three of the world's most pressing energy-related problems: Worsening urban air pollution, rising geopolitical instability due to oil import dependence, and accelerating climate change from fossil fuel combustion.
According to the Worldwatch Institute, much of the recent ferment over hydrogen and fuel cells has taken place in the auto industry. DaimlerChrysler has committed $1 billion over 10 years to fuel cell development, and is working with Ford and Ballard Power Systems to put transit fuel cell buses on the road in Europe in 2002. General Motors aims to be the first car company to sell one million fuel cell vehicles; beginning mass production by 2010, and in June announced major investments in two companies specializing in hydrogen storage and delivery.
Toyota recently sent shock waves through the industry by announcing it would start selling its fuel cell car in Japan in 2003.
The energy industry is also getting serious about hydrogen. Both Shell and BP have established core hydrogen divisions within their companies. ExxonMobil is teaming up with GM and Toyota to develop fuel cells. Texaco has become a major investor in hydrogen storage technology.
"Just as the aggressive tapping of oil enabled the United States to eclipse Great Britain and become the economic political power of the twentieth century, nations that move first to harness hydrogen could potentially erode US competitiveness," said Set Dunn, research associate at Worldwatch Institute and author of Hydrogen Futures: Toward a Sustainable Energy System. "Today's US superpower status, in turn, may eventually be eclipsed by countries that harness hydrogen as aggressively as the United States tapped oil a century ago."
As the shift toward hydrogen accelerates, one of the most important outstanding issues is how to pick the quickest, least expensive path from today's' fossil fuel-based economy. Today, about 99 percent of the world's hydrogen is extracted from fossil fuels, and most of this is done by treating natural gas with steam.
In the long run, hydrogen will be derived from renewable energy through electrolysis - using electricity from the sun, wind, and other sources to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, via solar, wind, and other renewable sources, thereby eliminating the use of fossil fuels altogether.
Honda recently unveiled a solar-hydrogen production and fueling station in Torrance, California - the first such station to be established by a major car manufacturer.
Hydrogen fuel cells could also help address global energy inequities - providing fuel and power and spurring employment and exports in the rural regions of the developing world, where nearly 2 billion people lack access to modern energy services. One of the most significant obstacles to realizing the full promise of hydrogen is the prevailing perception that full-fledged hydrogen infrastructure - the system for producing, storing, and delivering the gas - would immediately cost hundreds of billions of dollars to build, far more than a system based on liquid fuels such as gasoline or methanol.
"If the Middle East develops solar hydrogen, it could more than offset lost oil revenues it he future," said Dunn. "But like the proverbial tree that must be planted to grow - they must start now."
The societal and environmental advantages of the clearer, more secure path to hydrogen point to an essential - and little recognized - role for government. But hydrogen receives a fraction of the research funding that is allocated to coal, oil, nuclear, and other mature, commercial energy sources.
In April 2001, President George W. Bush proposed a 48 percent cut in the basic hydrogen program budget. But the national energy plan sent to Congress in June restored funding to previous levels, and proposed income tax credits for fuel cell vehicles and re-authorizations of the Hydrogen Future Act. The Act, which was due to expire in 2001, will likely be expanded beyond research and development to include the deployment of fuel cells in federal buildings and vehicles.
In Daniel Yergin's classic book The Prize, Yergin observes that the story of oil contains three large themes: the rise of capitalism and modern business; the link between energy and national strategies and global politics, and the development of a "hydrocarbon society."
If hydrogen is, as some scientists call it, "tomorrow's oil," what does the dawning century of hydrogen hold in store for us? How will the Middle East, with significant remaining oil reserves but an enormous potential for solar hydrogen, fare in altering its source of energy exports? Former Saudi oil minister Sheik Yamani warns that, because of hydrogen and fuel cells, "A huge amount of oil... will be left in the ground," with potentially catastrophic consequences for oil producers that do not diversify into hydrogen.
In their 1999 book, The Long Boom, Peter Schwartz, Peter Leyden, and Joel Hyatt devote a chapter to the "Dawn of the Hydrogen Age," which argues that the achievement of the geopolitical arrangement in Middle Eastern oil declines in importance. But the main consequence will involve the environment because hydrogen is so much more environmentally begin than its predecessors.
Over the past decade, solar and wind-based electrolysis systems have been demonstrated in various locations in Finland, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. Feasibility studies have recently been conducted for solar-hydrogen systems in Dubai and several other sun-belt regions, and for wind-hydrogen systems in Northeast Asia.
"If we really decided that we wanted a clean hydrogen economy, we could have it by 2010." - US National Renewable Energy Laboratory researcher, April 2001.