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  The Fuels of the Future: Farming the World's Energy

The Fuels of the Future Farming the World's Energy

By Christian Wüst

Part 5: Part V: Vegetation is more powerful than oil (potentially)

According to a prediction by the FNR, some 3.5 million hectares of German agricultural terrain will be available for biomass production in 2020. If one takes an optimistic view of future technological development, this terrain could provide about one-fourth of the vehicle fuel consumed in Germany.

Globally, however, "the potential of biomass is enormous," says FNR expert Birger Kerckow. And Konrad Scheffer, a professor at the Institute of Crop Science at the University of Kassel in western Germany, claims that the energy content of the vegetation that is constantly reproducing itself on the Earth's surface exceeds humanity's current energy needs by a factor of between eight and 10. In the scenarios developed by the agricultural industry, plowshares will replace oil drills. Former Agricultural Minister Renate Künast, a member of Germany's Green Party, has already dubbed farmers the "oil sheikhs of tomorrow."

Hydrogen, the last frontier

The magic gas that some car companies like to evoke as the future elixir of guiltless mobility isn't much talked about today -- hydrogen.

Engineers long considered the lightest of the elements in the periodic table the universal energy source of the post fossil fuel age. Produced from water by solar or wind energy, the explosive gas was to be used as an unlimited energy source -- perfectly clean and infinitely reproducible.

Car companies invested billions in the development of prototypes. Vans and cars with combustion units that transform hydrogen into energy highly efficiently and without producing significant emissions can still be found in many places.

Combustion engines can be powered with hydrogen too. BMW developed a hydrogen-fueled 12-cylinder race car that broke the 300 km/h (186 mph) barrier in an entertaining "green" car race. Mercedes even planned to begin selling cars with hydrogen combustion units by as early as 2004.

But no one is talking about the new technology anymore. Daimler Chrysler is now aiming for 2015 -- and will probably have to revise this goal as well. There are plenty of cars that could run on hydrogen -- what's missing is the hydrogen itself.

Nowhere in the world can one even find the beginnings of a project for producing the ecologically clean gas on an industrial scale. Even Shell, one of the most open-minded companies in the petroleum business, is tentative when it comes to making statements on hydrogen fuel: "Hydrogen could be the ultimate fuel," reads the caption on one of the images that research and development director Warnecke likes to hand out.

According to Warnecke, one of the greatest obstacles is hydrogen's incompatibility with existing fuels: "Ethanol and BtL can just be mixed in with conventional fuel. Hydrogen requires a shift to a completely new infrastructure."

And this infrastructure would be many times more complicated and costly than that required by natural-gas-powered cars. Hydrogen needs to either be cooled down to minus 253 degrees Celsius (minus 423 degrees Fahrenheit) or pressurized at 700 bar (three times the level of pressurization for natural gas) before a car can use the fuel to drive a reasonable distance. The existing petroleum-oriented infrastructure is therefore completely inadequate.

Apart from economic obstacles, even experts without close ties to the oil industry are also sceptical about the environmental benefits of hydrogen. The ecologically "clean" production of hydrogen requires a tremendous surplus of electricity from ecologically viable sources. Such a surplus exists only in a few locations, such as the geothermal paradise Iceland (where thermal heat can be used to produce energy) or Paraguay (where water power is plentiful).

The Wuppertal Institute, a respected German institute that studies the environment, climate and energy, examined the risks and opportunities of a forced transition to a hydrogen economy. The sobering conclusion was that such a transition "won't make ecological sense anytime during the next 30 to 40 years." It would be much more effective to introduce the energy produced from ecologically viable sources directly into the electricity grid, rather than to use it to produce hydrogen.

If, however, the clean and large-scale production of hydrogen did begin in the middle of the 21st century, then the gas wouldn't likely end up in the fuel tanks of hydrogen-powered cars.

The producers of botanical-based fuels would likely turn out to be eager purchasers of hydrogen. The production of BtL-diesel is suffering from an acute lack of hydrogen. Introducing the highly reactive substance into the Choren production process could double the total output of BtL-diesel plants.

The result would be a fully sustainable production chain, one that follows the example of millennia of natural history. Hydrogen is an element that likes to bond with other elements. Only when it is combined with carbon does the basic building block of organic life result -- and with it the energy resources petroleum and natural gas.

"Nowhere in nature does hydrogen appear in a pure form," says Choren-founder Wolf. "Why should it do so in industry?"

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