But it’s not alone - never alone. And precisely because hydrogen must be extracted from another compound, the element gives Governor Brian Schweitzer the perfect opportunity to tap into the 120 billion tons of coal he’s been ardently eyeing. Likewise, Paul Williamson, dean of the University of Montana’s College of Technology in Missoula, sees hydrogen as the energy panacea and coal as an appropriate means to that celebrated end.
“Montana is the best situated state in the nation to lead the way towards a hydrogen economy,” says Williamson referring not only to coal but to the state’s wind, solar and biomass resources. “But we cannot look to the future without considering coal.”
Switching from a petroleum-based economy to a hydrogen one, says the U.S. Department of Energy’s website, means a world fundamentally different than the one we now know. Hydrogen, rather than gas and diesel, would flow from fuel pumps. Fuel cells, which produce energy from mixing hydrogen and air, would replace internal combustion engines, transforming noisy, smelly highways into exhaust-free, perhaps even peaceful places. And as hydrogen-powered fuel cells begin powering homes, offices and factories, global warming may wane into a concern of the past. Even national security would be strengthened on account of the hydrogen plenty on, below and lapping against domestic soil.
All this from the simplest element on earth?
Don’t crack the bubbly yet, skeptics say. Even Williamson and the DOE admit we are a long way from such realities. Plus, not all hydrogen systems are made equally.
A hydrogen economy is deemed dirty or clean, black or green, depending on the source of hydrogen as well as the source of energy used to extract the element from its parent compound. “Dirty” sources include carbon-based fuels like natural gas, petroleum and coal, which when burned, emit CO2 — the primary greenhouse gas associated with global warming. The leading source of clean hydrogen is water. Still even water can be dirty if the energy used in electrolysis — the process of separating hydrogen from oxygen by passing an electric current through water — comes from petroleum; to be green, wind, solar, geothermal or biomass-generated electricity must be used.
But if Montana has ample sources of clean energy—Montana currently ranks 5th in wind power capacity—why use coal at all? Why get dirty to get clean?
Infrastructure, says Williamson and a handful of experts at last month’s energy symposium in Bozeman. Plus, using coal doesn’t need to be dirty. Budding technologies promise to transform coal into hydrogen as well as gas and liquid fuels sans toxic nasties like sulfur, CO2 and mercury;
Williamson’s coal-based pragmatism for the short-term—his vision is a hydrogen future replete with renewables – mirrors the U.S. Department of Energy’s year-old hydrogen from coal research plan. This plan, inspired by the Bush Administration’s 2003 Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, seeks clean coal-to-hydrogen-to-energy test pilots by 2015 and the technology (or at least a start on it) to alleviate transportation, cost and storage barriers to a hydrogen economy.
Coal, while pragmatic to some, seems ludicrous to others.
Helen Waller, a member of the Northern Plains Resource Council from Circle, Montana, scorns coal, especially the governor’s proposed coal-to-fuels plant near Otter Creek in southeastern Montana. Coal, she says, whether it has been cleaned or not, involves strip mining.
“[Mining] may not be an issue to the governor,” she says in response to his contention that reclamation has made serious strides in the last 30 years, “but it certainly is to the communities and people who live on the land.”
Since Montana’s Strip and Underground Mine Reclamation Act was passed in the 1970s, she says, not one bond—deposits paid by mining companies to be reimbursed only after post-mining re-vegetation and restoration have been completed—has fully been released. “Those people who don’t live on the land have pretty sketchy information on what the reality is.”
Besides, she says, there’s no such thing as “clean coal.”
Waller isn’t the only skeptic of the coal-to-fuel technology gasification—which transforms coal into a synthetic, gaseous fuel similar to natural gas—or liquefaction—which uses a process called Fischer-Tropsche to turn gas into a liquid replacement for diesel, gasoline and heating oil (toxins such as mercury, sulfur and arsenic are said to be removed in both processes). NPRC, in a document entitled “Montana’s Energy Future,” points to the world’s commercial coal-to-fuels leader Sasol, a South African company that has been producing synthetic fuels since 1955, as dirty proof. According to the document, Sasol is swapping coal for natural gas to reduce hydrogen sulfides, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and CO2 emissions, as well as to curtail particulates, solid waste and water consumption.
“They keep talking about these new coal-to-fuel technologies,” Waller said referring to Schweitzer’s insistence on using cleaner technology, “but all those experts at the [Energy] Symposium kept talking about Fischer Tropsche and that is extremely dirty.”
Again, Waller wonders, if she and NPRC are right and coal is just a sully stepping stone to hydrogen, why not just step around it and build biomass, solar and wind infrastructure right off the bat?
“If we need a bridge and need it now,” she says, “We better go the alternative route. We should look forward rather than back at dirty technologies.”
Perhaps the
coal bridge is easier to swallow in current political tides; perhaps federal
and cooperate funding would otherwise be a pipedream. Who knows, perhaps
technology will prove coal clean after all. Any way, it seems, all this
pushing and pulling between petroleum coal, hydrogen and renewables decades
after the nation’s first oil crisis in 1973 is far from over.