FUEL CELLS

Touted as the next big thing in the energy world by both environmental groups and industry, hydrogen fuel cells still have some major technological hurdles to clear. For example, there is currently no infrastructure for the delivery of hydrogen. Storage of such a volatile gas also presents problems.

Most hydrogen is extracted from fossil fuels. Although, it can be obtained from water via a process called electrolysis, great amounts of electricity are required to separate hydrogen from oxygen. Some fuel cells are designed to run on alcohol or natural gas, which they "reform," or extract hydrogen from. Reforming fossil fuels still causes an emission of carbon, but since fuel cells are often twice as efficient as conventional internal combustion engines it is a step in the right direction.

Fuel cells have great potential for a number of applications, from transportation, to remote locations in need of power, to seamless power supply for computer systems. In terms of global warming the source of hydrogen used by the fuel cells makes all the difference.

Rapid growth on a global basis of renewable and energy efficiency applications will require concerted action by national, state and local governments, international investment institutions, private sector energy and financial institutions and environmental and consumer organizations. Such an effort to leapfrog to a cleaner more decentralized energy system is likely to entail a shift in energy research and development (R&D) investment by industrialized country governments, public sector procurements of green vehicles and other products, tax incentives to encourage private purchases of such products, green labeling and public information efforts such as Energy Star and creative financing strategies to amortize the capital cost of green products.

Historically, less than ten percent of the roughly eight billion dollars in annual industrial country government investment in energy R & D has gone to renewables and even less to end-use efficiency. A shift of a much larger part of that investment portfolio to renewables and efficiency and a concerted emphasis on applications for the two billion people now lacking access to electricity, mostly rural dwellers in developing countries, would be a powerful stimulus to development of remote site renewables.

Many efficiency and some renewable technologies can be quite cost competitive with conventional fossil fuel technologies if they are of sufficient scale. They are clearly the lowest-cost options, when considering the hidden costs of conventional energy for supplying electricity. Harnessing of public procurements and green consumer power can scale these technologies to competitive levels ultimately emulating the successful examples of the information and telecommunications revolutions, marked by rapid movement of small component systems into the marketplace with constantly descending prices.