Renewable Energies and Barriers

Renewable energies could offer a solution to the plight of a large part of the world’s population. The developing world struggles everyday with energy related problems and green technology could be implemented more easily to solve them than our traditional hydrocarbon systems. The adoption of renewable energies is made difficult in developing countries as well as in the Western world because of systematic barriers that occur during their implementation.

The case study of the Maharashthra State in India by Reddy and Painuly (link), exposes the barriers to the diffusion of renewable energy technologies.

• A lack of awareness and information:

Obtaining information about renewable energies can be difficult for households and small firms. This represents a barrier to their diffusion in important parts of the population. This holds particular importance in developing countries, where information is less free and accessible.

• Economic and financial constraints:

Once again the problem of economic viability of renewable energies is paramount to understanding the difficulty of implementation. The original investment for green technologies is too high to be justified, this is especially true for developing countries and their populations.   

• Technical risks:

Site specific rejections make the efficiency of green energies unreliable in some places in the world and it therefore represents a major barrier to their dissemination.

• Institutional and regulatory barriers:

A lack of sufficient governmental regulations and incentives can slow the expansion of renewable energies. Once again this lack of political stimulus is most apparent in developing countries where governments have “better things to do”.

• Market barriers:

The way the market works pushes individuals to seek the most beneficial scenarios for themselves. This usually excludes expensive renewable energies because of the high investment cost. Furthermore, information is oftentimes lacking when these technologies are concerned which makes people even more sceptical of their economic benefits.

• Behavioural:

 

It seems to be entrenched in common belief that renewable energies represent a sacrifice for the user compared to conventional technologies. Individuals usually do not think rationally when it comes to the adoption of these technologies. Their decisions are mostly based on popular belief and myths.

For environmental friendly energies to be commonplace, these barriers must be overcome. The IPCC has recently started according more importance to their solutions (link). Similarly, both the World Bank (link) and academics (Oliver, Jackson: 1999) have been exploring the subject with more enthusiasm. However, more needs to be done in order to help green technology to become accepted and implemented correctly.

M Oliver, T Jackson, "The market for solar photovoltaics" Energy Policy, 27 (1999), pp. 371–385

The Hydrogen Economy: the future of our energy system?

The future of renewable energy does not necessarily rely on “traditional” renewable technologies. New ways of creating our power are being investigated, and they promise great things for the future. Could our renewable energy problems be solved by technological advances?

The Hydrogen Economy was coined in the 70’s by John Bockris at a General Motor conference. It represents a new energy system where power is delivered using hydrogen. The current economy is named hydrocarbon because most of our energy is delivered by burning hydrocarbons that are found in fossil fuels. Any hydrocarbon combustion necessarily creates Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and therefore pollutes the atmosphere. This is where the benefits of a hydrogen economy come in to play; molecular hydrogen can be used as a fuel that does not release any pollutants.

Why are new fuel sources such as hydrogen not used on a global scale?

1. Production

Hydrogen can be generated in different ways. The method most used today is steam reforming from hydrocarbons. This procedure makes steam react at very high temperature with a hydrocarbon such as natural gas. This method is very wasteful and still contributes to our dependance on fossil fuels. Other ways are known (electrolysis and thermolysis) but are not used as much.

The production of hydrogen can also be done by splitting the molecules of hydrogen (H) out of water (H2O). This method has however not yet yielded any industrially applicable results but as the science advances so do the hopes of using water as the source of our hydrogen.

2. Storage

Hydrogen can be stored in two ways. Liquid hydrogen has less energy intensity by volume than hydrocarbon fuels which means that less energy can be created out of a litre of pure hydrogen compared to a litre of gasoline. Furthermore, the storage of liquid hydrogen requires cryogenic storage because of the very low boiling temperature of the liquid (-253 °C). This storage method requires even more energy to keep the hydrogen cold and requires a specific costly technology wherever the molecule is to be stored.

Compressed hydrogen is stored quite differently under the form of a gas. Hydrogen gas has a good energy intensity by weight but very poor energy intensity by volume. This entails the creation of larger tanks in cars for example to store it.

Three other storage methods are also candidates but they all have their own barriers interfering with industrial application of the technology as described by Li Zhou in this article.

 

3. Costs

The production of a unit of hydrogen fuel by steam electrolysis (water splitting) is today six times more expensive than the production of an equivalent unit of fuel from hydrocarbon sources (source). The main problem with the cost of hydrogen fuel is that it is compared through the market to fossil fuels. For the case of hydrogen however, the cost of creating the molecule of hydrogen from water splitting or steam reforming contributes to the final price. For fossil fuels, only the extraction, refining, transportation and distribution contribute to the market price. Therefore, until the depletion of fossil fuels or government incentives push the price of hydrocarbons higher than hydrogen, it will always be more economically viable to use fossil fuels.

4. Infrastructure

A hydrogen infrastructure would require industrial hydrogen pipelines and hydrogen filling stations. This entails the transformation of our whole energy system to accommodate the new gas. Furthermore, the vulnerabilities of steel to hydrogen means that the steel natural gas pipelines would need to be changed if hydrogen were to be transported through them.

What can be done is a swap from centralized to distributed production sites. This means that hydrogen generating facilities can be created locally in order to bypass the distribution line (hydrogen creation necessitates less infrastructure than fossil fuel extraction and refining).

A final point must be made about the required personal infrastructures. All fossil fuel using machines would need to be transformed in order to use hydrogen. The hydrogen fuel cell would replace the combustion engine and therefore represents a huge investment in anything ranging from cars and buses to gas heating and cooking.

  

5. Safety

Hydrogen has one of the most potent explosive and ignition mix with air. This entails that whenever there is a hydrogen leak into air there will most likely be an explosion (see hydrogen bomb). To increase the danger further, hydrogen leaks are odorless and very difficult to recognize. This leads to worries about the safety of using hydrogen as a fuel where any accidents can lead to large explosions.

Each of these points indicate that hydrogen fuel is not yet an energy source that we are ready for. The production of pure hydrogen still uses fossil fuels at the moment and the technology is not yet present to significantly create it otherwise. Hydrogen storage is also lacking as we are not yet ready to store in at any industrial scale. The costs of both the fuel itself and the costs of adapting our infrastructures to be able to accommodate it are too high in particular when compared to fossil fuels. Finally, the dangers that hydrogen represent are hindering not only the large scaled adaptation of the energy but also the smaller scale tests and trials of the fuel. Until the science and technology solve these problems and governments and corporations enable the adaptation of the fuel through incentives, the hydrogen economy will remain out of reach.