NationStates Jolt Archive

A good new from Italy: last evening italian media reported that near Venice, a small hydrogen-powered power plant (12 MW) is under construction. The interesting thing is that the hydrogen that will be used there is the byproduct of the nearby oil refinery in Porto Marghera.

While using byproducts in a environment-compatible way (zero CO2 emission) is a very good thing, I think that this open some issues.
1.How is going that to interact with the rise of crude oil?
2.Will the "hydrogen economy" be ruled by the very same oligopolist rulers of the "oil economy"?
3.Will the "hydrogen economy" bring a real change into our CO2 emission figures?

What do you think?

hydrogen will have little effect.
hydrogen as always been a by product of oil refinery this small power plant just helps make fuel production a little more efficient. hydrogen has no stand alone production potential and as crude oil production drops so will hydrogen production.

1.How is going that to interact with the rise of crude oil?
If the technology turns out viable, it may become standard for oil refineries to produce a bit of power, maybe even enough to feed back into the system. That's basically all the interaction I see.

2.Will the "hydrogen economy" be ruled by the very same oligopolist rulers of the "oil economy"?
You mean the shareholders and owners of the various energy companies, from Exxon to Aramco?

Who are the "oligopolist rulers", and why are they in this position? Once you know these, you can figure out the rest yourself. I'm not particularly good at this kind of talk, I always seem to miss the point.

3.Will the "hydrogen economy" bring a real change into our CO2 emission figures?
Well, I think hydrogen will probably be the basis for portable power generation, ie transport, in place of combustion engines. But in terms of power generation (which is a much bigger proportion of output and growing a lot faster than transport emissions as well), it doesn't have much of a future, barring some sort of super technology that allows us access to lots of cheap and clean hydrogen.

More likely are renewable energies, ie solar- and wind parks, more decentralisation with houses and smaller businesses being able to provide part or all of their power needs through solar cells and the like, and big nuclear power plants to take care of the needs for industry.

That being said, I can't see into the future, I just base this on what I know and what seems realistic, given current movements.

You mean the shareholders and owners of the various energy companies, from Exxon to Aramco?

Who are the "oligopolist rulers", and why are they in this position? Once you know these, you can figure out the rest yourself. I'm not particularly good at this kind of talk, I always seem to miss the point.


There are precious few corporations and organisations 'round the world who are effectively ruling the energy market: the remnants of the Seven Sisters, the russian almost-monopoly Gazprom and its subsidiaries, and OPEC, plus some other mid-sized players like ENI and EdF, generally former state-owned corporations. They are an oligopoly, and they rule.

There are precious few corporations and organisations 'round the world who are effectively ruling the energy market: the remnants of the Seven Sisters, the russian almost-monopoly Gazprom and its subsidiaries, and OPEC, plus some other mid-sized players like ENI and EdF, generally former state-owned corporations. They are an oligopoly, and they rule.
Well, there are plenty of energy companies: http://www.energy-online.net/companies/

The question is the degree to which they "rule" anything, which is a question of collusion and market power, which in turn is a question for empirical research. I'm sure it's been done.

In that case, considering that the reason for their size and number varies between state ownership/sponsorship and economies of scale, yes, you'll see the same phenomenon for hydrogen.

solar and wind will likely never be large scale enough to provide the worlds energy needs. what the future is going to is nuclear energy.

solar and wind will likely never be large scale enough to provide the worlds energy needs.
Solar energy is so abundant that it can easily satisfy our energy needs for the foreseeable future. Yes, we suck at catching it and converting into useful form. The plants, however, perfected this trick, and it seems that at last we are close (http://www.valcent.net/s/Ecotech.asp?ReportID=182039
) to utilizing them as a source of fuel for our cars and power plants and a source of raw materials for the plastic industry.

In that case, considering that the reason for their size and number varies between state ownership/sponsorship and economies of scale, yes, you'll see the same phenomenon for hydrogen.

I hoped that at least the birth of hydrogen technology would shake up a bit the status quo ante in the energy market - maybe with the arrival of new players on the field, so to break de facto monopolies. Too bad. :(

Solar energy is so abundant that it can easily satisfy our energy needs for the foreseeable future.
Exactly. Combine thermal solar (parabolic trough and heat reservoirs) with hydrogen as vector, and bingo.

Yes, we suck at catching it and converting into useful form.
We already know how and do it perfectly - still there are precious few solar plants at the moment.

The plants, however, perfected this trick, and it seems that at last we are close (http://www.valcent.net/s/Ecotech.asp?ReportID=182039
) to utilizing them as a source of fuel for our cars and power plants and a source of raw materials for the plastic industry.

Plastics from maize? Already done. Italy, mid '80s, by Montedison. Today it's marketed as "Mater-Bi" iirc.

solar and wind will likely never be large scale enough to provide the worlds energy needs. what the future is going to is nuclear energy.

A link that might change your views about solar power. Take a peep about Desert-TREC, www.trecers.net or www.trecers.org, cannot remember.

We already know how and do it perfectly - still there are precious few solar plants at the moment.
15% efficiency is far from perfect, the solar power plants generate electricity, not fuel, they need to switch to another mode for the night which raises complexity, they need to be built first and using it to generate hydrogen via electrolyse lowers the efficiency further.
On the other hand the plants absorb only 5% of the solar energy, although they utilize up to 50% of what they absorb.

hydrogen has no stand alone production potential

As has been pointed out to you in other threads when you tried saying this...

You are wrong.

I hoped that at least the birth of hydrogen technology would shake up a bit the status quo ante in the energy market - maybe with the arrival of new players on the field, so to break de facto monopolies. Too bad. :(
Well, obviously some new firms will come in, and some of the current ones will have much trouble and disappear. That's capitalism for you.

But the basic reasons why energy companies are such huge (and thus relatively few) entities don't go away if you introduce hydrogen. The technologies change, but the market structure doesn't.