Las month, the small Long Island town of Hempstead began construction of the areas first hydrogen fueling station. The project is a collaboration between the town of Hempsted, New York State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the electric utility National Grid. The initial goal of the station, other than providing fuel, will be to educate the local population about alternative fuels for transportation. The station will utilize technology from Air Products to handle three fuel types; pure hydrogen, hydrogen with compressed natural gas, and natural gas. Though there are only a few scattered facilities such as this in the region as a whole, the plan is to eventually link them all together under the New York State Hydrogen Energy Roadmap.
I’m always encouraged when I see hydrogen being put to greater task as an energy source because I feel it has very strong long-term potential. However, despite the slow but steady efforts by many governments and leading companies to continue investing in hydrogen research and technology development, it has been receiving growing criticism in recent years. In fact, there seems to be a lot of people out there that have written-off hydrogen all together for use in transportation. Some of the most commonly cited reasons for dismissing hydrogen are the limited production and distribution infrastructures currently available and the high cost of available fuel cell technology. These are very good points, but they don’t seem to acknowledge that there is currently no demand for hydrogen as a transportation fuel, so why would there be an infrastructure to provide it? It’s the same “build it, and they will come” debate so often run into when advocating new technologies, and it has no good answer.
Those who support Hybrid and conventional electric solutions have had to deal with the same issues regarding batteries. Though battery technology is improving daily, the capacity to produce large amounts of high-quality, vehicle-ready units is quite limited in total scale, and almost nonexistent as an industry in the U.S. Additionally, batteries wear out after a certain period of use and require very significant amounts of raw material extraction and specialized disposal or recycling. These issues seem to epitomize the battery’s role as a “temporary” transportation solution. This makes it difficult to compare such solutions directly to the still emergent use of hydrogen fuel-cell Technology.
The reality is that those who are willing to start making more sustainable lifestyle decisions have a tendency to want to do so immediately. Thus a Hydrogen transportation infrastructure that may be 15-25 years down the road will invariably be brushed aside for the relatively cheap and easy alternative of a plug in hybrid or electric vehicle that is “theoretically” available right now. But I for one am very skeptical of the battery becoming our next transportation backbone, especially with regard to EVs which contrary to the on going media frenzy will not be flooding the entry-level market anytime soon. In the meantime however those companies already deeply invested in creating a variety of divergent technologies, will carry forward whatever plans they have in place, and we the public will be required to wade through the complex challenge of determining the best alternative to fossil fuel transportation.
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