A Concise History of the Concept of “Hydrogen Economy”
The concept of “hydrogen economy” has a distinct “1960s” feeling. It is the idea of maintaining the lifestyle of the post-war period, with suburban homes, green lawns around them, two cars in every garage, and all that. The only difference would be that this world would be powered with clean hydrogen. It is a dream that started with the dream of cheap and abundant energy that nuclear plants were believed to be able to produce. The idea changed shape many times, but it always remained a dream, and probably will continue to be so in the future.Before discussing the history of the concept of “hydrogen economy” we should try to define it. As you should expect, there are several variations on the theme but, basically, it is not about a single technology but a combination of three: 1) energy storage, 2) energy vectoring, and 3) fuel for vehicles.
This “hydrogen triad” misses the fundamental point of how hydrogen should be created. Often, that’s supposed to be done using electrolysis powered by renewable energy but, alternatively, from natural gas, a process that would be made “green” by carbon sequestration. There are other variations on the theme, all have in common being multi-step processes with considerable efficiency losses. And all have in common the fact of never having been proven to be economically feasible on a large scale.
Indeed, the immediate problem with replacing fossil fuels is not vectoring or storage, surely not powering individual cars. It is the enormous investments needed to build up the primary production infrastructure that would be needed in terms of solar or wind plants (or nuclear), which don’t seem to be materializing fast enough to generate a smooth transition…
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