The Problem For Electric Alternatives

Today there are several hydrogens powered cars and busses in the world. Those vehicles, thanks to their zero emission, are a step towards the environment melioration, a positive trait nullified woefully by the actuality of not being cost efficient yet.

The human race is in the midst of an energy crisis. The gasoline used around the world is currently a non-renewable resource. As the title suggests, the gasoline will eventually be totally consumed in part by the gas guzzling vehicles common today. For this reason, scientists have spent decades researching and developing alternative sources of fuel in order to power daily life on Earth for many years to come. There is a wide array of renewable fuel sources in use presently. These alternatives vary in efficiency, affordability, and many other aspects. Hydrogen powered and electric powered vehicles are two comparable alternatives that have increased in popularity and functionality in recent years and will continue to do so in the near future (10 Reasons, 2015).

The Hydrogen Fuel Cell could revolutionize the world. This ingenious technology, which creates electricity from the chemical reactions of hydrogen and oxygen has, in its 150-year history, passed many of the critical tests along the path from invention to innovation. Recent developments in fuel cell technology and concurrent developments within the energy and automotive industries have brought the world to brink of the fuel cell age and the hydrogen economy.

Olsen, Jon. “Natural Gas Is An Energy Solution That Works Today.” Web. 9 Mar. 2016.

However, some pundits are concerned that adopting hydrogen energy as the sole strategy for the issues facing the automobile’s future is problematic because of the lengthy time frame in which they are projected to become ubiquitous. Furthermore, the present infrastructure for the distribution of hydrogen fuel sources or the production of hydrogen fuel cells is not only insufficient, but slow to develop. As such, fossil fuels are presently the main source for hydrogen production, which means that hydrogen vehicles do not successfully decouple the automobile from a fossil fuel economy. This is also widely inefficient because it will generate four times the carbon dioxide emissions generated by gasoline efficient automobiles. Furthermore, compressing hydrogen for the purposes of

Because of technical improvements, nonrenewables are found, extracted, and employed more efficiently than ever. Since 2000, companies have located more natural gas sources in the United States. This occurred because of advances in exploration methods. New ways to process coal have led to fewer impurities. The energy efficiency of coal has also improved so that more energy can be created from less coal.

Federal Government and oil companies put forward hydrogen fuel cells as a better alternative to gas and battery electric cars. In contrast, interviews with two hydrogen experts gave details why fuel cell vehicles are not likely to be available for another 15-20 years if ever, whereas battery electric technology is available now, has been rapidly improving since the mid 1990s and is cost effective.

The automotive industry is one of the largest industries in the entire world. As the world’s population grows and economic development occurs, the auto industry also expands. Unfortunately the growth in car numbers has had a negative environmenta, impact due to carbon dioxide and particulate emissions generated and released from the combustion process. Technology has developed a solution by utilizing the concept of hydrogen fuel cells. As the years have passed, there has been continuous development on automotive fuel cells and now it has come close to mass production of these vehicles. The main problem is the continued development of hydrogen fuel cells and their infrastructure may not be worth the cost.

Balat, Mustafa. "Potential Importance of Hydrogen as a Future Solution to Environmental and Transportation Problems.” International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. (2008): 4013-029. Web. 24 June 2015.

The use of a hydrogen fleet, would solve many of the existing emissions issues associated with diesel fuel usage. ”Vision Motor calls their hydrogen tractor a Zero Emissions Terminal Tractor, or ZETA. It's the right thing for southern California because of its benefits to people's health, says LaRosa, citing lung and respiratory diseases blamed on exhaust smoke from internal combustion engines.” (http://www.truckinginfo.com/article/story/2012/04/hydrogen-fuel-cells-could-be-socal-fleets-future.aspx) Hydrogen offers no emissions in the air other than vapor, and fuel economy is better than most gasoline powered vehicles, roughly in the 30-50% range. Currently hydrogen is very costly to produce, and there isn’t enough infrastructure to support a full fleet of

Fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas provide the U.S. with over 80 percent of its energy supply (McNerney & Cheek, 2012). Fossil fuels, formed from organic materials over the course of many centuries, have fueled the global and U.S. economic development for the past two centuries. Nonetheless, fossil fuels are finite resources that cause irreversible harm to the environment. Scientists consider them nonrenewable forms of energy since they take hundreds of years to form. According to Rand (2010), fossil fuels were responsible for 79 percent of the greenhouse emissions in 2010. Poor efficiency practices and higher energy demands have increased the usage of fossil fuels, and it is now important to find substitute means of generating

Honda has already produced a hydrogen fuel cell concept car they claim is “overall 64% energy efficient”. To put this into perspective in the average gasoline combustion engine “only about 20 percent of the thermal-energy content of the gasoline is converted into mechanical work”, making it 20% energy efficient [5]. This new line of cars could bring about jobs in the automotive industry and all industries that branch from it. As of right now the commercial market for hydrogen gas produced from the use of fossil fuels is at about $100 billion. A majority of this hydrogen goes into producing fertilizers and petrochemicals [1]. All it would take is an inexpensive source of green hydrogen, such as the one recently discovered, to completely change this industry.Overall hydrogen has the ability to bring about jobs and continued advancements in every market and industry touched by it. This could be just about every industry when considering how important transportation and shipping are to the economy; hydrogen would give them an inexpensive fuel for transport. Hydrogen fuel could do this all the while solving our most important problem of finding a renewable energy source.

(LLNL, 2010) The difference, however, is that the world is trying to get away from high Carbon emitting fuels such as petroleum and coal. Since this is the case natural gas is currently the front runner for alternative methods with politicians and scientist agreeing that there must be a change to the old habits of achieving energy without costs. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) natural gas has edge out all other fuel sources for electricity generation in the United States with 31.7%, however, coal is still only 1.6% behind with 30.1% overall. As coal based power plants are retired or converted into natural gas based plants hopefully we can see these number start to separate in favor of natural gas as carbon emissions will drop

Recent years have shown an increasingly large need for a practical renewable energy source for such reasons as diminishing fossil fuels and increases in greenhouse gasses. Hydrogen appears to be a way out of this gasoline-dug hole, or at least, a way out in the future. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are being engineered as we speak as the technologies to refuel them cleanly are being proposed. Unfortunately, most of the technologies associated with hydrogen are still in the prototype/pre-production stages and require better enhancements before becoming mainstream. This paper assesses the practicality of hydrogen power in cars both now and in the future while explicating the actual process of how a

For the past three decades Oil dominates the agenda of political discussion. With scares over price volatility, sizes of reserves, international imports and least of which are the environmental impacts due to carbon dioxide and other emissions. Various speculations and educated guesses place our total depletion of crude oil within the next 50 years and there is a general consensus between environmentalists that we steer toward a hydrogen transportation system given the projected work and nonexistent carbon dioxide emissions (Environmental Technologies class lecture, Santa Clara University). However many barriers stand in the way of attaining such a goal, most of which pertaining