Remember the great big hope to solve the twin problems of peak oil and global warming? THE miracle solution to power our cars with limitless energy – hydrogen fuel cells, literally using water to fuel our movements?
Well, besides the small issue that hydrogen is but an energy carrier which requires energy (in principle in the form of electricity) to be produced, the car makers are flagging another issue:
The car industry is preparing for the day when oil wells run dry by investing billions of dollars to develop clean and efficient hydrogen-powered vehicles.
But the new fuel comes with its own built-in commodity crisis. Today’s experimental hydrogen fuel cells use so much platinum that there is not enough of the precious metal to replace all the world’s petrol engines.
At the current 60g or so of platinum in each fuel cell, the world’s 780m cars and trucks would use 46,800 tons of the metal – just below the 47,570 tons estimated to be still in the ground. And this assumes each vehicle has only 100 horsepower
Of course, in all likelihood, carmakers will find ways to eventually reduce the quantity of platinum needed per car, and a lot of it will be recycled.
But we will keep on bumping on similar problems, foressen and unforeseen. The problems is not so much the availability of any given resource, it’s the fact that we have built an economy where these resources are essentially free, beyond their pure extraction cost and some amounts of taxes, instead of being treated as rare and valuable. What is free is wasted and used without care, until it runs out, but in the meantime we have built “wealth” and “growth” and “civilisation” on it.
It’s time we realised that “growth” is not a goal, but only a means to a better life for each of us (however we define it). As a means, and not a goal, it needs to be sustainable, but that’s not how our world is built. We need to think about this seriously, because our current growth-driven model is now bumping against physical limits on this planet. Will we manage that transition? Will we even get past the denial stage?
Cross posted on the European Tribune as this is an issue for everybody.
(Also on dKos for your kind recommendations)
but I caught a few moments of Jared Diamond’s talk aired the other night on the Univ. of California’s TV channel, and he talked about how the platinum industry here runs a very clean operation environmentally.
I’m glad to hear it. That certainly wasn’t always so. Extraction of metals has often involved using acid to leach materials from a mine, and the use of cyanide compounds to fix metals from ore. In plants that I visited 20 years ago (outside the US), the final separation of platinum from gold and other metals was done through an electrolytic process applied to a bubbling vat of what amounted to aqua regia and other fun stuff. They also vented plumes of chlorine gas. Not exactly something you’d want in your backyard. But then, I’ve not been involved in hard rock mining for years. Coal has certainly cleaned up its act at the prep plant level over that period, I wouldn’t be surprised if the metals folks had done the same.
A couple of quick notes on platinum. Demand for the metal has always been high, and demand has increased at a rate that keeps right on the heels of any increase in production. At any given time, were mining to stop, there would be about a 1 year supply of platinum available — which makes this a very tight material market.
Something like 90% of platinum is found in either Russia or South Africa, with the Russian government being the only one with significant refined metal on hand. Zimbabwe, Canada, and the US trail these two with much smaller reserves. The complex of materials from which platinum is produced is well understood, and it’s not expected that we’re missing any other significant reserves (the pay-back is too great, people have literally turned every rock).
Now I need to go and see about world-wide supplies of lithium.
The FT article mentioned that most of the reserves were located in South Africa. I am sure that Russia has loads, as usual (and it’s owned by an oligarch-controlled company like Norilsk Nickel or other, quoted on the stock market, but prohibited by Russian law from making public its reserves…)
LARefugee wrote a couple of diaries at Daily Kos about zinc-air batteries that look like they are much more efficient than hydrogen fuel cells. The Solution (to Peak Oil) is Here! and The Solution to Peak Oil Part 2: Think Zinc!
This looks like an amazing technology, if it works the way the articles linked in the diaries says it does. And it looks to be about ready for prime time right now.
The zinc-air battery articles are a great example. Not because zinc-air batteries are magic — they’ve been around for a while — but because the researchers involved found a clever way to “recharge” them. Instead of running electricity through them (the normal way to recharge a battery), they take the spent battery products and regenerate them in a huge solar furnace, with a little carbon to improve the reaction. This means that recharging uses renewable energy (the carbon might also come from biomass as well). By contrast, hydrogen can’t be created this way easily — you either need fossil fuels or lots of electricity or both.
Thanks, Jerome.
It’s really hard/frustrating for us laypeople to figure out energy trade-offs. It’s hard, both at the global level. . .If we switch over to fuel-cell cars, what’s the trade-off in platinum depletion. . .and at the personal level. . .if I wash dishes by hand, am I actually using more water in my effort to use less electricity? Those kinds of things.
I wish somebody would invent something like those measurement units that Weight Watchers has. “One piece of bread is worth x carb units in your daily allotment.” “This act of washing dishes by hand, saves approx. X units of Y & Z, but consumes W water units in your daily ecological allotment.”
Of course, that would mean we’d actually have to figure out how much of each resource we could actually use per day, etc., and that would mean admitting they’re finite, and that would mean. . .
It’s hard. Hell, with an anti-science, anti-environmentalist, pro-Rapture administration it’s nearly impossible. At this point, as a well-meaning progressive who does not happen to be a science whiz all I can do is the stuff I think makes sense: cut my consumption of pretty much everything way back, look for alternatives to doing things I used to do that consumed a lot of energy of one kind or another, vote for politicians who care what happens to the world. And read Jerome, of course.
in public bathrooms; when you have an electric drier to dry your hands, with a label that says ‘it is hygienic and environmentally sound – you save paper’ and I wonder what the trade off with electricity is (not to mention the manufacture of the drier…)
Tough questions, and clearly our civilsation is not oriented to make these assessments.
We neend market mased mechanisms quickly to put a “price” on such use, which is why I think that carbon trading is such an important step in the right direction, by allowing to put a price on some of these externalities.
We need market based mechanisms quickly to put a “price” on such use,
That’s it. Thanks for giving me a phrase to use to explain what I’m getting at. And your example of The Public Restroom Conundrum is a perfect example of what we struggle with. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that befuddle me, environmental-wise. Like. . .which is smarter. . .the pull-off kind of lids on dog food, or the kind I have to use my hand-opener with? Does it consume more energy to make millions of pull-off lids or to make thousands of hand can openers? Or is there available a container that’s better altogether? It sounds silly, but I don’t think it is.
We have calorie/nutrition lists on the food we eat. . .let’s have energy consumption info on the products we buy or use.
Seattle’s new City Hall is an energy hog
Higher utility bills take the glow off its ‘green’ designation
By KATHY MULADY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Seattle’s new City Hall was designed with the environment in mind, using the most energy-efficient technologies.
But the building acts like an old-fashioned electricity hog. It has lofty public spaces and walls of glass designed to welcome citizens and suggest an open and transparent government. It also uses 15 percent to 50 percent more electricity some months than the older, larger building it replaced, according to Seattle City Light utility bills.
The high energy use is an embarrassment for the city at a time when Mayor Greg Nickels is urging municipalities across the country to cut their energy consumption and voluntarily comply with the Kyoto environmental protocols.
City Council members last week reacted to the energy consumption news with shock, then shook their heads in disbelief…. All
This is one of the drawbacks of energy conservation. Anything energy efficient encourages behaviors that end up consuming more energy.
As another Seattleite, I shook my head at this news. The same building built with non-efficient technologies would be even less efficient, of course, but why build it in such a way that all the efficiency gains (and more) are lost? It’s emblematic of the failure of our local government that they’re more interested in the symbolism of being open and welcoming than in the reality of good government.