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The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact And Fiction In The Race To Save The Climate |  | Author: Joseph J. Romm
Publisher: Island Press
Category: Book
New (8) Used (24) Collectible (2) from $2.84
Rating:  27 reviews
Sales Rank: 827512
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 155963703X
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.7968
EAN: 9781559637039
ASIN: 155963703X
Publication Date: March 1, 2004
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Product Description
"Vital, very readable guidance for investors, environmentalists, and interested bystanders looking toward a future without fossil fuels." -BOOKLIST "It's hard to argue with the relentless logic...." -E/THE ENVIRONMENTAL MAGAZINE "Readers looking to separate facts from hype about cars running on hydrogen and large-scale fuel cell systems will find a useful primer here."-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Lately it has become a matter of conventional wisdom that hydrogen will solve many of our energy and environmental problems. Nearly everyone -- environmentalists, mainstream media commentators, industry analysts, General Motors, and even President Bush -- seems to expect emission-free hydrogen fuel cells to ride to the rescue in a matter of years, or at most a decade or two. Not so fast, says Joseph Romm. In The Hype about Hydrogen, he explains why hydrogen isn't the quick technological fix it's cracked up to be, and why cheering for fuel cells to sweep the market is not a viable strategy for combating climate change. Buildings and factories powered by fuel cells may indeed become common after 2010, Joseph Romm argues, but when it comes to transportation, the biggest source of greenhouse-gas emissions, hydrogen is unlikely to have a significant impact before 2050. The Hype about Hydrogen offers a hype-free explanation of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, takes a hard look at the practical difficulties of transitioning to a hydrogen economy, and reveals why, given increasingly strong evidence of the gravity of climate change, neither government policy nor business investment should be based on the belief that hydrogen cars will have meaningful commercial success in the near or medium term. Romm, who helped run the federal government's program on hydrogen and fuel cells during the Clinton administration, provides a provocative primer on the politics, business, and technology of hydrogen and climate protection.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 27
Actually he's too easy-going November 18, 2009
Ronald W. Garrison (Chapel Hill NC USA)
I'm one of those who really would like to be a fan of a "hydrogen economy." And there are some peak-oil polemecists who are putting forth objections against hydrogen that aren't entirely fair. (For more on that, read Amory Lovins's "20 Myths About Hydrogen" article.) But hydrogen comes up wanting. In fact, I don't see how it's ever going to be competitive, in either fixed or mobile applications. The reason is as simple as can be: The efficiency is just not there. As some reviewers (and the author) point out, it's hard to understand the hype about putting hydrogen on board cars soon (hard, that is, except as pork-barrel politics), when for the near future it works out a lot better for fixed installations. But even there, it doesn't compete. Its lightness (assuming you can contain it in a light enough tank, something that's problematical) is no big advantage, and other alternatives, such as compressed air storage and pumped storage, are more efficient, cheaper, and more established by long experience.
Given all that, I think Romm is much kinder to the hydrogen pork barrel that it deserves.
The real role I can see is in nuclear fusion, and unlike many, I can see that happening eventually. Progress there has been slow and difficult, more recently just because of the long delays and expenses of building any new, large tokamak such as ITER. But as experience is gained, those costs should drop, and we should finally see contributions from that new energy source, perhaps in 40 to 50 years. But for the next 50 years, my money is on, in rough order of occurrence: Efficiency, then wind, then solar, all the while backed up by supercapacitors and/or advanced battery technology for storage (and a bit of pumped storage and compressed air here and there).
concur with ASB May 10, 2009
Lance B. Sjogren (San Pedro, Ca United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I won't say much because I saw that there was already a review that gave an assessment of the book that is similar to mine, the one by ASB.
The book does an excellent job discussing the economic and technical limitations that preclude the widespread adoption of hydrogen as a major energy fuel any time soon.
However, the premise that permeates the entire book is that in the long term, "hydrogen is the future".
Thus the message is, hydrogen is the future, but it is going to take a long time for various reasons, the need for some technological breakthroughs included.
With regard to transportation, as ASB pointed out, this book did not consider battery-powered vehicles. Many recent books on alternative energy have pointed out that it is bound to be far more efficient to:
a). generate electricity, ship it over a transmission line, use it to charge up a vehicle
as opposed to
b). take that same electricity, convert it into hydrogen, ship it with great difficulty to the end user, store it in a vehicle with great difficulty, and then turn it back to electricity again in the vehicle
One of my firm beliefs as the world gradually transitions to renewable energy is that everything we can possibly do using electricity rather than chemical fuels, we will do so, because, in general, renewable energy sources produce electricity, not chemical fuels.
In the realm of electricity, will hydrogen have a role? Possibly.
For example, if solar thermal power is widely adopted as a major source of electricity, using some of the electricity during daylight hours to create hydrogen from electrolysis to serve as a fuel to run the generator when the sun is down might be a possibility.
What about chemical fuels? For applications where such fuels are absolutely essential, biofuels may possibly do the job. As the author does mention in the book, the big problem with biofuels is the extremely low efficiency with which plants use solar energy, so that you need a very large amount of land to produce a substantial quantity of biofuel.
If our energy future turns out to be one in which electricity dominates, with biofuels serving as a niche product for those applications that absolutely require chemical fuels, then it is not clear at all that we are headed to a "hydrogen economy", either in the short term as the rose-colored Rifkin would assert, nor in the longer term, as the much more astute and knowledgable author of this book would appear to believe.
The one other point I would like to bring up is the author's heavy focus on global warming. I believe we are at the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era both because of global warming AND because of peak oil.
I do commend the author for mentioning peak oil. Interestingly, he seems to feel that peak oil is liable to be much less of a driver leading to a shift from fossil fuels, because politicians simply pooh-pooh predictions of a scarcity of fossil fuels as simply another yelp from people who have cried wolf about running out of fossil fuels for several decades.
However, I think peak oil advocates would generally be of the opinion that it is coming very soon, and that the dramatic rise in oil and natural gas prices that it will lead to will force society to acknowledge that this time it is for real, and that we had better develop alternative energies promptly irrespective of how concerned one might be about global warming, simply because we just flat out will have way too little oil and natural gas to continue the status quo.
I guess that's one of the other beefs I have with the book, the author covers a great deal about use of hydrogen produced from fossil fuels.
The author looks at those alternatives to gauge whether they might provide a net reduction in carbon emissions. (and generally he concludes there is no net benefit)
But, as a peak oil guy, my inclination is to pretty much dismiss any "interim" energy approaches that involve fossil fuels out of hand. Although, I must admit that there is one good example where such a transitional technology does do some good, namely the hybrid vehicle.
Despite the philosophical differences I have with some of the author's premises, there is a wealth of information in this book on hydrogen-related technologies, as well as other energy technologies, and it is a very worthwhile book to read.
Hydrogen Hype July 5, 2008
keith renick (Peachtree City, Ga. USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I liked this book very much. I was ignorant about Hydrogen and I enjoyed Mr. Romm's book. Hydrogen is hype. I wanted to learn something about hydrogen and fuel cells and now I know enough that when I see these talking heads on CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNBC talking about fuel cells and hydrogen this and hydrogen that and a hydrogen economy, I know they are full of prunes and they've never read a book. I enjoyed the book and it was well written. But I can tell Mr. Romm, I am not worried about climate change. The lack of oil, natural gas and fresh water will kill us long before we have to worry about climate change. Regards, Keith Renick, Peachtree City, Ga.
 No mention of water fuel device inventors and their patents??? June 2, 2008
James A. Robey
3 out of 10 found this review helpful
How can you write a book on the promise of hydrogen fuel and leave out the true heroes - the international group of water fuel device inventors who patiently and skillfully developed, patented and publicly demonstrated their devices over the past 100+ years? What kind of cover-up is this? And to see all the positive reviews praising this work of apparent obfuscation! What a shame! It just goes to show that we have been very-well hoodwinked with regard to our alternative energy possibilities. We don't even know what they are! How else could it be that so many intelligent people, who seem to be "in the know", have never heard of:
Herman P. Anderson
Archie Blue
Bob Boyce
Yul Brown
Francois Cornish
C.H. and Henry "Dad" Garrett
Roy McAllister
Stanley Meyer
Francisco Pacheco
Andrijah Puharich
William Rhodes
Cliff Ricketts
Isaac de Rivaz
Ruggero Santilli
...and a host of others?
Isn't it about time we faced reality and admitted that the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen, is most readily available to us in our most abundant resource, namely, water? Let's stop denying the history of the successful use of this resource. See Water Car - How to Turn Water Into Hydrogen Fuel!
 Ehhh - a bit bland and repetitive January 1, 2008
Mark J. Luksic (Madison, CT)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The good; this book educated me on the promise and reality of hydrogen. Hydrogen (used for automobiles and even to power homes and businesses) hast the potential to seriously curb America's appetite for oil and to reduce carbon emmisions, but getting the technology affordable and scalable enough to distribute throughout the country is at least 20 and probably more like 30+ years away. Even then, the cost may still be higher than $3.00 gas is today, but that remains to be seen based on a number of known and unknown things about the future...
The not so good: a bit repetitive, and at times too deep technologically (of which the author warns about in the prologue)
If you are interested in alternative energy and its related issues like the United States' dependence on oil including the geopolitical impacts thereof, I would suggest reading a book that covers all energy alternatives (wind, solar, biofuels, nuclear, hydrogen, hybrid vehicles, etc.) and what the prospects for each are. Two books come to mind:
1. The Party's Over: Oil, War And The Fate Of Industrial Societies, and
2. The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
These books are easier to read, more interesting and enable the reader to better understand how all technologies may or may not be the panacea for improving our dependence on foreign oil and improving the impact that carbon emissions have had on our environment. Another book that is fairly new but which I have not read, is ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, which speaks directly about alternative energy as it pertains to cars and the automobile of the future. I plan on reading this one sometime in 2008.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 27
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