Scientists Discover Cheap Hydrogen

  • The new, efficient oxygen catalyst in action in Dan Nocera's laboratory at MIT (Photo courtesy of MIT and NSF)

We hear a lot about the coming
hydrogen economy. Hydrogen has a lot of
promise because it’s a clean burning gas.
But, for the most part, you have to burn
dirtier fossil fuels to make hydrogen.
Scientists can produce hydrogen from water.
But the process is expensive. Julie Grant
reports on new science that has researchers
buzzing:

Transcript

We hear a lot about the coming
hydrogen economy. Hydrogen has a lot of
promise because it’s a clean burning gas.
But, for the most part, you have to burn
dirtier fossil fuels to make hydrogen.
Scientists can produce hydrogen from water.
But the process is expensive. Julie Grant
reports on new science that has researchers
buzzing:

MIT researcher Daniel Nocera has found a cheaper way to get hydrogen
from water molecules. Researchers already have been able to do this – but
only with a precious metal – platinum. It costs nearly $2000 an ounce.

Nocera’s team discovered a material based on cobalt that does the same job.
Cobalt costs more like $2 an ounce.

James McCusker is an expert on solar energy conversion at Michigan State
University. He says the discovery has researchers excited.

“A, it works. But B, it works in such a way that it’s very, very easy to put
together. And it’s made of very inexpensive materials. They’re really
potential game changers in this field.”

McCusker says there’s still a lot of work left before we’re ready for a
hydrogen economy.

The new research was published in the journal Science.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Taxpayers Subsidizing Record Ethanol Profits

The nation’s leading food processor is making big profits from ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland has had two straight years of record profits. And in its latest quarter, the company nearly set another record. Dustin Dwyer has more:

Transcript

The nation’s leading food processor is making big profits from ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland has had two straight years of record profits. And in its latest quarter, the company nearly set another record. Dustin Dwyer has more:


ADM’s profits on corn processing, which includes ethanol production, more than doubled in its latest quarter. Total profits for the period were about $400 million.


Daniel Kammen studies energy policy at the University of California – Berkeley. He says while ADM is making lots of money from corn-based ethanol, future profits could go to companies that make ethanol from switchgrass and other woody products.


“It’s really the first companies that switch into cellulosic sources that I think are going to be the big winners, because they’re going to capture the environmental prize as well as the offsetting gasoline prize.”


ADM executives have laid out a new strategy that includes plans to expand ethanol production from fuel sources other than corn.


Daniel Kammen notes that there might not even be a market for ethanol if not for government subsidies, which also helped ADM reap its bigger profits.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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Cleaning Up Coal-Fired Power Plants

  • Tom Micheletti (right), and Excelsior Energy Vice President of Environmental Affairs, Bob Evans (left). They are locating where the proposed power plant will be built near the town of Taconite, Minnesota. (Photo by Bob Kelleher)

Acid rain, mercury pollution, and huge amounts of the heat-trapping gas carbon-dioxide are the down sides of burning coal in electric power plants. And yet, some energy experts are saying America should be using more coal. They say new coal technology can produce electricity with few of the pollution problems of traditional coal power plants. Bob Kelleher reports:

Transcript

Acid rain, mercury pollution, and huge amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are the down sides of burning coal in electric power plants. And yet, some energy experts are saying America should be using more coal. They say new coal technology can produce electricity with few of the pollution problems of traditional coal power plants. Bob Kelleher reports:


Coal has a well deserved bad reputation. Typical coal burning power plants release mercury, sulfur, nitrogen oxides, and lots of carbon dioxide. Those releases mean toxins in the air, soot, acid rain, and many believe global warming. But Tom Micheletti says there’s a way to use coal with very little pollution.


Using heat, steam, pressure, and oxygen, coal can be broken down to a relatively clean gas, and a handful of other chemical products. The gas is burned, to turn generators and produce electricity. The technology is called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle. Micheletti says, the technology isn’t new, but applying it this way is.


“All we’re doing is marrying the gasification technology, with a technology that’s been well established, the combined cycle gas technology – power plant technology. And all we’re doing is simply putting those two technologies together.”


Micheletti is Co-President of Excelsior Energy, a company formed to build the nation’s first large scale coal gasification electric power plant in northeast Minnesota. At 600 megawatts, it would dwarf demonstration plants now online in Indiana and Florida.


Some experts say coal gasification is not only promising, it’s more practical than nuclear power, natural gas, solar or wind. Daniel Schrag is a climatologist and head of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.


“We have a lot of coal in the US. We’re very fortunate that way. The problem is that coal produces more carbon dioxide per unit energy than any other fossil fuel. And so, when we burn coal and make electricity, it’s really bad for the climate system.”


Schrag says there’s more carbon dioxide around us now than humans have ever experienced. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Most scientists believe it blankets the earth, forcing temperatures higher.


Schrag says, when used to generate electricity, coal gasification has big advantages over conventional power plants, because it can capture CO2.


“You get more energy for the amount of coal you put in, and that’s good for carbon emissions. The other thing is that it seems to be cheaper in an IGCC plant, or a gasification plant, to capture the carbon dioxide after one extracts the energy from the coal, and then makes it much easier to capture it and inject it into a geological reservoir.”


The key, Schrag says, is a process called sequestration. You capture, and then sequester it, or lock that carbon dioxide away, where it won’t escape into the atmosphere. It’s already being done.


This is the Dakota Gasification Company, just outside Beulah, North Dakota. Here they turn coal into a burnable gas and almost a dozen other products. They also produce plenty of carbon dioxide, but the CO2 is not vented into the air; it’s trapped and compressed. That’s the noise.


The CO2 is piped more than 200 miles into Canada where it’s pumped into oil wells, forcing the last oil out and leaving the CO2 underground. Near oceans it can be pumped under deep ocean sediments, where it stays put.


And that’s all very good, but others say even good power plants might be a bad idea.


Ross Hammond is with the Minnesota based organization Fresh Energy. Hammond says gasification’s proponents are overlooking conservation and the opportunities for clean energy.


“When we’ve exhausted all the clean options including biomass and photovoltaics, and wind and the other options, then we need to look at coal.”


But Harvard’s Daniel Schrag says it’s not as simple as pushing money toward pollution free energy.


“And the answer is complicated. The answer is perhaps not. It may be that coal is so cheap that even the extra cost of capturing the carbon and storing it underground may still make it cheaper than the alternatives, than wind and solar.”


Schrag says we’ll need it all – nuclear, hydro, wind and biomass. But to satisfy the nation’s hunger for energy, he says we’ll need coal – best used in coal gasification.


For the Environment Report I’m Bob Kelleher.

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Epa Report: Fuel Economy Remains Stalled

Today’s cars and trucks are the heaviest, fastest and most powerful vehicles on the road in a generation, but according to a new report from the Environmental Protection Agency, these vehicles have stalled when it comes to fuel economy. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer has the story:

Transcript

Today’s cars and trucks are the heaviest, fastest and most powerful vehicles on the road in
a generation, but according to a new report from the Environmental Protection Agency,
these vehicles have stalled when it comes to fuel economy. The GLRC’s Dustin Dwyer
has the story:


The EPA report says carmakers made big progress on fuel economy from the mid-70s to
mid-80s. But since then, average fuel economy numbers have actually gotten worse.
That’s mostly because cars and trucks are getting bigger. By 2005, the EPA says SUVs
alone made up a quarter of all vehicle sales in the U.S.


Daniel Becker of the Sierra Club says auto companies are to blame:


“Americans are being fed this diet of these vehicles with TV ads, but then they end up
paying at the gas pump, and they end up paying with more global warming, pollution and
more oil addiction.”


Auto companies say they’ve only made bigger cars because that’s what consumers
wanted to buy, but for now, high gas prices seem to have put a halt on demand.


Truck sales for the entire auto industry were down nearly 20 percent this June compared
to a year ago.


For the GLRC, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

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