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Title: The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth by Jeremy Rifkin ISBN: 1-58542-254-1 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: September, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.89 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Future of Energy
Comment: Jeremy Rifkin's book _The Hydrogen Economy_ explains the current fossil-fuel economy and how it got to where it is today and how it's going to be replaced. One interesting aspect of our modern system Rifkin points out is that with the advent of fossil-fuels current farmers put in more energy into producing their crops then they get out of them. This fact points to a larger point that Rifkin makes in the book. The energy balance of a civilization must be maintained for that civilization to survive as such. When a civilization can no longer take in enough energy the civilization will collapse. Rifkin also argues that the more energy a civilization can get and use the more powerful the civilization will be. I'm don't think that energy alone is what makes a civilization more powerful but it is an integral part of power. With fossil fuels our civilization uses more energy faster then any civilization in history. Rifkin also points out that as civilizations mature more and more energy is needed to maintain a civilization and that civilizations have much more difficult energy problems growing and developing more infrastructure.
The book points out several problems with the current system. One problem or potential problem is the threat from Islamic Fundamentalists. This threat could come in the form of sabotage of oil and other fossil fuel infrastructure. The threat could also come from the outright revolt and overthrow of regimes friendly to the US and are major producers of oil. If an Islamic Fundamentalist regime took control of Saudi Arabia for example they could cut the world off from the oil there or raise the price enough to hurt the world economy significantly. Another problem with the current energy system pointed out in the book is the dwindling of oil in the world. This seems to be the biggest problem. As oil becomes scarcer the price will rise. This will create major problems for our society and the world.
The solution to these and other energy problems including global warming is hydrogen. Rifkin explains how hydrogen can be used to store energy generated by non-polluting renewable systems. The ability to store energy generated from renewable sources is essential if these systems are going to replace fossil fuel energy regimes. Hydrogen according to Rifkin will also give people control over their own energy. Hydrogen will allow people to become less or non-reliant on the current centralized energy system.
This book is easy to read and can be understood by everybody even if you have a minimal background in the sciences. The book doesn't get very technical and doesn't try to explain the technical aspects of a switch to hydrogen, which is a good thing for people like me who don't have much of a background in the sciences. Rifkin spends much of the book explaining how fossil fuels changed society and how the switch to hydrogen will change society again.
Rating: 3
Summary: Rifkin's got the right basic idea
Comment: Jeremy Rifkin's latest effort at popularization tackles the energy problem, which never went away, but is back on everyone's mind after 9/11. He has the right idea, which is a shift to renewable energy, using solar and other sources to create clean hydrogen fuel as a replacement for oil. He goes further, proposing that the creation of a decentralized "energy web" based on local inputs from fuel-cells and PVCs will make giant energy companies obsolete. As others have noted, all this is only sketched in the last two chapters -- the first seven chapters focus on the problem of non-renewable fossil fuels. This first part of the book is fine -- incredibly important -- but it means that the title is quite misleading. And the fact that oil is running out is dealt with much more thoroughly in Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over" (see my review).
The Bush Administration recently announced funding for hydrogen auto research. This is good, but only symbolic, while the priority is still on oil and nuclear power. What is needed is more than symbolism -- we've got to shift gears to make renewable energy the absolute top priority. We have only a short window to use the remaining fossil fuels to build the renewable energy infrastructure. We're going to make an energy transition of one sort or another, but the one we're headed for is not the one we would choose if we were paying attention (ie, post-oil collapse).
Rating: 3
Summary: The Hydrogen Economy - Hard facts
Comment: Jeremiah Rifkin's book "The Hydrogen Economy" does not give what its title promises.
Most of the book is devoted to historical, political, social considerations, most of which I find well written and even convincing, but which have nothing to do with hydrogen.
However, to me as an engineer, his recourse to thermodynamics to explain the fall of past civilizations appears ludicrous and unnecessary - there is no need to appeal to thermodynamics to make us understand that our world will collapse if it will run short of reasonably cheap energy.
Whether the production of liquid fuels and natural gas will peak within the time frames advocated by Rifkin, or at some other time, there is no doubt in my mind that it will peak, and that well before that time the world must start to convert to renewable energies (assuming that energy from nuclear fusion is still far away from being harnessed).
However Rifkin sees everything easy and cheap. In his chapter on Reglobalization from the Bottom up he advocates the installation of fuel cells in every household or neighbourhood or community, but he seems to forget that "upstream" of each fuel cell there must be a power generator (wind turbine or photo-voltaic cell), electrolytic cells to produce hydrogen and a hydrogen storage facility. Scale economies will certainly reduce the cost of these commodities, but in my mind it is difficult to think that with their combined cost, and the energy losses that will be incurred at each step (electricity to hydrogen gas, hydrogen gas to stored hydrogen, hydrogen to electricity) electricity generation will be cheaper than present day cost from fuel or gas fired power plants.
Also the numbers are staggering. Rifkin writes "Providing these 100 million (per year) new users with an average per capita consumption of electricity equivalent to what US consumers enjoyed in 195 would require the creation of 10 million megawatts of new electricity capacity globally by 2005". Should this capacity have to be provided entirely by renewable sources, as a rough order of magnitude this would require the installation of either:
-From 300 to 500 million 300 KW capacity wind turbines, or
-from 1 to 1.5 million square kilometres of photovoltaic cells
All the above seems to me quite sobering. Particularly the shift to renewable energy sources does not give many hopes to be a way "to lift billions of people out of poverty". Therefore I cannot be as optimistic as Rifkin does - however I share with him the conviction that the shift to these sources is inevitable, and that the world must brace itself to meet the challenges and sacrifices that it will entail. The sooner, the better.
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Title: Fuel from Water: Energy Independence With Hydrogen by Michael A. Peavey, Peavey Michael A. ISBN: 0945516045 Publisher: Merit Products Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Power to the People : How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet by Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran ISBN: 0374236755 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 30 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Tomorrow's Energy: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and the Prospects for a Cleaner Planet by Peter Hoffmann ISBN: 026258221X Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 09 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Powering the Future: The Ballard Fuel Cell and the Race to Change the World by Tom Koppel ISBN: 0471644218 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 29 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Hydrogen: Its Production and Energy Uses : by Committee on Science and Technology U.S. House of Representatives ISBN: 0894990713 Publisher: Books for Business Pub. Date: 22 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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