Introduction to “stopping climate change: The case for coal and hydrogen”

Abstract

There are two grave threats to modern civilization: Climate Change, and Continued reliance on imported oil from the volatile Middle East. Both of these threats can be ameliorated by the development of hydrogen and particularly hydrogen made from coal as a major energy carrier to replace oil products such as gasoline and diesel fuel to power our motor vehicleswith electricity made by gasifying coal (rather than burning coal) with carbon capture and storage/sequestration (CCS). Most discussions of climate change emphasize extreme weather events, rising temperatures and rising sea levels. While these aspects of climate change may be very disruptive, the real catastrophic impact of climate change may be our inability to provide enough food for a growing world population due to the confluence of higher temperatures that reduce food production, coupled with increased global consumption of meat that requires more crop production than eating fruits, vegetables and grains as people aspire to the living standards in developed nations, and the production of biofuels from crops (Biofuels can also be produced from waste products such as municipal solid waste (MSW) without impacting crop production.) that limits farm land available for food production. Powering our light duty vehicles with hydrogen made from coal, and our electricity from a combination of nuclear energy, renewables and natural gas and coal gasification with carbon capture and storage/sequestration (In Carbon capture and sequestration, the carbon in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) is recovered at the power plant, compressed, and shipped by pipeline to an underground storage cavern where it is buried underground, thereby preventing the CO2 from entering the atmosphere where it would have exacerbated the impact of climate change.) (CCS) would drastically reduce or even eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, (The U.S. petroleum production is sufficient to supply all non-transportation oil requirements.) and, if the rest of the world follows our lead, could eliminate the influence of OPEC and our dependence oil imported from the volatile Middle East, and this approach would allow us to meet the climate change goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 while relying primarily on our huge inventory of domestic coal to supply both hydrogen and electricity. Many advocates of using hydrogen as a zero-emission energy carrier envision a future where hydrogen is produced by electrolyzing water using renewable energy. While this vision of a renewable hydrogen economy may be a long-term goal for society, it might be too costly or take too long to make the transition from our current predominantly coal- and natural gas-based electricity generation system and our nearly total dependence on oil products for transportation to an all-renewable future in the next few decades. This book therefore explores a more plausible transition strategy using coal, natural gas, renewable and nuclear power as the primary sources of energy over the next few decades as a practical pathway toward a renewable hydrogen future. Making hydrogen from renewables by electrolyzing water also raises the issue of water resources. It may be necessary to develop technologies to electrolyze sea water to make renewable hydrogen a sustainable long-term option with respect to water utilization.In the near term, hydrogen made from coal offers an alternative less dependent on our planet’s limited freshwater resources. While this book is focused primarily on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from electricity power plants, we also explore the option of jump-starting a near zero-emission hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) transportation system by installing “Tri-Generation” fueling stations at warehouses, distribution centers and “big box stores.” These “Tri-Gen” stations generate three energy carriers made from natural gas: hydrogen, electricity and heat; Chap. 7 demonstrates that such distributed “Tri-Gen” stations would provide a significant return on investment in Hawaii, California and the Eastern portion of the United States by displacing expensive electricity at the stores, thereby allowing the profitable introduction of hydrogen fueling stations to ramp up the introduction of zero emission FCEVs in the nation’s vehicle fleet. We show that these Tri-Gen stations could be profitable today by providing hydrogen at many warehouses that have already converted from battery-operated fork lift trucks to fuel cell lift trucks powered by hydrogen.