Estimates of the price of hydrogen as a medium for wind and solar sources

摘要

The rejection of hydrogen as a solution to global warming by becoming the medium of wind and solar was made when gasoline was priced at $1/gallon. From wind, H_2 would now cost (by electrolysis of water and steam) less than $3 for an amount equivalent in energy to that in a gallon of gasoline ("equivalent"). From solar photovoltaics (pv), H_2 would be sinking in price between $8 toward $5 equivalent as the efficiency of solar pv increases toward 20. Solar thermal's present prices offer about one-half the solar pv prices. Prediction of the maximum of the delivery rate of world oil is Laherre's Oil Production Forecast, 1950-2150. Reprinted with permission from correspondence with William Horvath, U.S. Department of Energy, March 29, 2001 2010. Future energy sources will develop inexhaustible energies from wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and wave sources. The common media will be hydrogen and electricity. These sources yield energy at around one-half the cost of nuclear fission. Growing corn to make alcohol involves a net loss of energy and need for a heating mechanism. It may increase the Greenhouse.