But what IS the cost of power ?????

The cost of energy as perceived by the public has no scientific justification

Oil cartel (!!!!)

Taxes

Political manipulation

Ignorance

Emotion

Environmental and social impact

JAKARTA (AFP) –

Les négociations sur le réchauffement climatique cette semaine à

Bangkok s'inscrivent dans un contexte de critiques sévères contre les

biocarburants, qui ne sont plus désormais considérés comme une

solution miracle.

La combustion d'un carburant issu de la canne à sucre, du maïs ou du

palmier à huile est plus propre que celle d'un carburant fossile.

Mais les experts assurent que la demande en biocarburants entraîne des

effets fâcheux pour l'économie et la sécurité alimentaire mondiales, et

pourrait finalement causer davantage de mal que de bien à

l'environnement.

02/04/2008

"It is widely understood that as populations and

economies grow global demand for energy will

increase, but the hard truth is that energy demand is

accelerating.

Under a business-as-usual scenario worldwide

energy demand is estimated to grow by 60% over

today's levels.

Demand for energy in China and India alone is

expected to grow at over 3.4% per annum to exceed

5300 million tonnes of oil equivalent by 2030."

"If provided by an energy system similar to

today's, that is to say largely using energy from

fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions can be

expected to exceed 14.7 billion tonnes by 2030, an

increase of fifty five percent above current levels.

This would spell imminent disaster for mankind."

"We believe that coal use will increase under any

foreseeable scenario because it is cheap and abundant.

Coal can provide usable energy at a cost of between $1

and $2 per MMBtu compared to $6 to $12 per MMBtu for

oil and natural gas. Moreover, coal resources are

distributed in regions of the world other than the Persian

Gulf, the unstable region that contains the largest

reserves of oil and gas."

"In particular the United States, China and India have

immense coal reserves. For them, as well as for importers

of coal in Europe and East Asia, economics and security

of supply are significant incentives for the continuing use

of coal. Carbon-free technologies, chiefly nuclear and

renewable energy for electricity, will also play an

important role in a carbon-constrained world, but absent a

technological breakthrough that we do not foresee, coal,

in significant quantities, will remain indispensable."

GM awards battery development contracts for Volt : Detroit, June 5 2007 (Reuters) - General Motors Corp. said on Tuesday that it had awarded two advanced battery development contracts for work on its electric-driven Chevrolet Volt car.A division of Germany's Continental AG and Compact Power Inc., a unit of South Korea-based LG Chem Ltd. won the contracts to develop the next-generation lithium-ion batteries for the Volt.

GM has said it was aiming to build the mass-market Volt by 2010 if it makes a battery pack to drive the vehicle cheaply enough and ensure its safe operation......

The push to develop environmentally friendly cars is an attempt by GM to distance itself from its close association with gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, a reputation executives say has hampered its sales in some markets.

This misleading nonsense is worth 4 080 000 pages of free web publicity for BMW.

Once the media have convinced the general public that

hydrogen is the key to our energy future, no politician will

dare to claim the opposite.

Search Google for:

"Hydrogen sustainable transport" : 2 470 000 web pages

"Hydrogen inefficient transport" : 511 000 web pages.

How many press articles ask the question where this

marvellous fuel came from, and how much energy was

consumed (elsewhere) to produce it ?

"In a culture like ours, long accustomed to

splitting and dividing all things as a means of

control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be

reminded that, in operational and practical fact,

the medium is the message."

Marshall McLuhan,

University of Toronto, 1964

Four months later, on May 31, 1807, Emperor

Napoleon granted a 15 year patent to Isaac

François de Rivaz, citizen of the Republic of

Valais, for his discovery of the hydrogen-fuelled

Internal Combustion engine. The decree was

published in the October 1807 issue of the

"Bulletin des Lois de l'Empire Français".

For a brief historical introduction, please refer to the

hydrogen page of www.aecono.com. Many thanks to

the personnel of the Archives de l'Etat du Valais, in

Sion, who kindly provided numerical copies of the

1807 patent granted to Isaac de Rivaz, a remarkable

personality who more than 200 years ago invented

the hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engine.

Who says science does not pay?

In 1789 Napoleon was elected member of the French Academy of Sciences

In 1799, he staged a coup d'état and became First Consul of the French Republic

In 1801 he was appointed President of the French Academy of Sciences

In 1803 he became Mediator of the Swiss Republic

In 1804 he crowned himself Emperor of the French

In 1805 he was crowned King of Italy

Mass Liquid Vol. Gas Vol.

kg l, 1 atm m3 15°C, 1 atm

1 14.13 11.740.0708 1 0.8310.0852 1.204 1

para normalHydrogen

Any analysis of the hydrogen-vehicle concept must take into account the steps necessary to make the hydrogen and then get it into the fuel tank. And any comparison between hydrogen vehicles and other existing and potential technologies must include all steps in the technology, a process called well-to-wheel analysis.

From a paper in Mechanical Engineering. The original research cited in this article was first published in Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1, Winter 2002 (pp. 51-73).Frank Kreith is ASME's Colorado State Government Coordinator. R.E. West is professor (emeritus) of chemical engineering at the University of Colorado.

ABSTRACT : The establishment of a sustainable energy future is one of the most pressing tasks of mankind. With the exhaustion of fossil resources the energy economy will change from a chemical to an electrical base. This transition is one of physics, not one of politics. It must be based on proven technology and existing engineering experience. The transition process will take many years and should start soon. Unfortunately, politics seems to listen to the advice of visionaries and lobby groups.

Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 94, No. 10, October 2006

Bossel: Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense?

Hydrogen for Energy Storage? – Probably, but not in my Car,

and preferably not in yours either.

Thomas R. Govers

Aecono Consulting

59, rue de Prony, 75017 Paris, France

www.aecono.com

(Presented as "Hot Topic" at SASP 2008, Les Diablerets, Switzerland, January 20-25, 2008)

http://sasp2008.epfl.ch/

Air Liquide's LH2 plant at Waziers, in the North of France10 Ton = 141 300 liter LH2 = 117 400 m3 GH2 per day

1 000 000 small car km per day

Louis Schlapbach & Andreas Züttel, Nature 414 (2001) 353 – 358

Courtesy Toyota

Note: autonomy of a diesel car to-day most often exceeds 1000 km

As access to oil and natural gas becomes more difficult

and costly, hydrogen will increasingly be produced by

gasification of coal under the form of syngas (a mixture of

hydrogen and CO) which is burned in a gas turbine to

drive an electricity generator. Such IGCC (Integrated

Gasification Combined Cycle) technology can also be

fuelled by asphalt, refinery waste or petroleum coke. The

syngas can also be converted by Fisher-Tropsch

technology to produce synthetic high-quality diesel fuel,

naphtha, LPG and methanol. The methanol can be used

as base chemical, it can power fuel cell vehicles, or it can

be upgraded to high-octane gasoline.

Coal-based power generation and fuel synthesis,

however, generate large amounts of CO2, and are

sustainable only if the carbon dioxide is efficiently

captured and sequestered. Industrial sites that integrate

coal gasification, power generation and the production of

syngas-derived chemicals with reliable sequestration of

CO2 will provide opportunities for buffering electric

power requirements through large-scale storage of

hydrogen. Such storage facilities may also serve to fuel

buses and other transportation vehicles for which the low

energy to volume ratio of hydrogen is not as serious a

problem as for private cars.

The British chemical concern ICI stores hydrogen in three

brine compensated salt caverns in Teeside, England. The

hydrogen is stored at pressures up to 50 bar in these up to

366 m deep caverns. From 1957 until 1974, GAZ DE

FRANCE stored towngas with a 50% hydrogen content

without problem in a 330 Mio. m3 aquifer storage. This

underground hydrogen storage method is about two

orders of magnitude cheaper than tank storage.

http://www.hyweb.de/Knowledge/w-i-energiew-eng4.html

http://www.h2cars.biz/artman/publish/article_152.shtml

Madrid, Spain; partners are Air Liquide, Gaz Natural, Repsol YPF and EMT Madrid; hydrogen is produced onsite from natural gas by a Carbotech compact reformer, H2 back-up supply is provided by CGH2 tube trailers from chemical by-product generation, This is the first CUTE station to become operative by APR2003 (http://www.h2cars.de/filling/h2fueling.html)

High-energy career lines

Virginia Gewin, Nature 434, 936-937 (14 April 2005)

In addition, safety precautions required by the

characteristics of hydrogen (low ignition energy, broad

flammability range, risk of destructive shock-wave

detonation when confined) will be more reliably mastered

in an industrial site than at a highway gas station.

Preparing a possible future for hydrogen as an energy

carrier, I would argue, does not require highway filling

stations, but technology for large-scale sequestration of

CO2, development of industrial fuel cells and efficient

electrolysers for power buffering, and large-scale, safe

storage of hydrogen that preferably avoids energy-

intensive liquefaction.

Thanks for your interest !