Commentators are suggesting that the budget surplus will be somewhere between $15-20 billion. Following my less than favourable analysis of ethanol in last week’s column I thought I should take the opportunity to look at where the money could go to promote alternative solutions to biofuels.
One of the problems that the introduction of biofuels has produced is a global food crisis that has mainly hit the world’s poor. Sir Bob Geldof has suggested that if every government in the world donated 0.8% of GDP to foreign aid, it would lead to a deceleration of global poverty.
Geldof is hardly the most popular of political activists but looking at the current climate situation it might be a half sensible idea.
Currently Australia donates about 0.4% of GDP in foreign aid. If the government donated this year’s surplus of about $15 billion in foreign aid, then that would cover the other 0.4% of GDP for the next 5 years. Not only would this plan get Geldof off our backs but we wouldn’t be increasing inflation by putting the money back into our own economy.
While some might find it nice to mute Bono and Geldof for the next five years, a much more sensible solution would be to campaign for the cancellation of debt for loans taken out by developing countries and removing the trade barriers from the developed ones.
Then the government could invest in better freight rail connections and increase the export capacity of our ports.
This would mean we would have to find an alternative fuel source to biofuels if we want to seriously tackle climate change.
Here are three options: improved efficiency, Hydrogen fuel cells and electric powered cars.
YourOpinionCounts. CLICK HERE >>>>>>>>>>>> Efficiency
Improving efficiency in cars and power stations is one of the easiest ways to reduce greenhouse gasses in the air. Unfortunately, it is not a politically glamorous option. No politician out there will win votes for making a Commodore give 9 km per litre instead of eight. Car companies don’t want to spend money on efficiency either.
Efficiency is the short term solution. While the major solutions such as green energy, clean coal and nuclear will take years to implement, improved standards could be introduced tomorrow, forcing car companies to spend money on fuel efficient technologies rather than introducing mp3 docks and free air conditioning.
Of course, an efficient fossil fuel based transport and electricity generation system is still producing greenhouse gasses. So let’s look at what can take us off the fossil fuel addiction.
YourOpinionCounts. CLICK HERE >>>>>>>>>>>> Hydrogen
Hydrogen has been dramatised as the saviour of the planet, a fuel that emits only water. There are two ways to use Hydrogen to move cars or power our homes; put it through a Hydrogen fuel cell or burn it in a similar way to the combustion energy. But there are several hurdles facing hydrogen.
The first most obvious hurdle is getting Hydrogen. There are two methods, extracting it from fossil fuels and electrolysis. Extracting Hydrogen from fossil fuels could cause just as many environmental problems as burning coal and oil anyway.
Electrolysis requires electricity to be run through water, separating the Hydrogen and Oxygen. Since most of our electricity comes from burning of coal, Hydrogen is still not clean. According to physicist and author Joseph Romm, one megawatt-hour of electricity in a coal power station produces 952kg of carbon dioxide. One megawatt-hour of electricity will produce enough hydrogen for a fuel-cell car to travel 1600km. At 9km a litre a petroleum car would produce 440kg of carbon dioxide to travel the same distance. The end result is that Hydrogen fuel-cells fuelled by Hydrogen from coal powered electricity generation is twice as dirty as petroleum.
To use Hydrogen in a combustion engine it has to be chilled to -253C to store it as a liquid, requiring even more energy. When it is burnt, the Hydrogen produces large amounts of torque but Hydrogen is one of the least efficient fuels in combustion engines. According to Romm the Hydrogen combustion engine is ‘the least efficient vehicle that you could invent.’
Further problems with Hydrogen include:
Production: We don’t have the infrastructure to produce Hydrogen in large volumes.
Stations: There are no more than a handful of Hydrogen fuel stations in the world.
Cost: Fuel cells are currently more than twice as expensive to produce as combustion engines.
Technology: The technology is fragile and has trouble starting in freezing conditions.
Hydrogen combustion engines may be one of the worst forms of transport ever conceived, fuel-cells still could overcome these hurdles with enough investment. If the world had spent the last 150 years developing Hydrogen fuel-cells since its first developments in the 1800s, instead of fossil fuel combustion engines a lot of these technical issues would have been addressed.
Fuel-Cell trials are already taking place all over the world. In Perth in conjunction with other cities are trialling fuel-cells in the city’s buses. The only issue raised is the placement of the cells on top of the bus has made the vehicle top heavy through corners.
One of Perth’s two Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Buses
Hydrogen does have the added benefit of being developed at service stations. In Iceland, a Hydrogen economy is being developed. Because of an economic need to reduce fossil fuel imports and an abundance of geo-thermal energy, Iceland is producing Hydrogen from renewable resources and encouraging Hydrogen cars. In Australia service stations could build solar panels and produce large amounts of Hydrogen all day through electrolysis. The price of fuel might only be influenced by the amount of sunlight that station got that day.
Realistically a Hydrogen economy will take a long time to implement and it would be better to replace electricity generation with renewable energy than replacing transportation fuels. But Hydrogen must be developed as way to supplement renewable energy for transport in the future.
Rudd’s budget billions should not be spent on Hydrogen for greenhouse gas reductions in the short term. Hydrogen is the long term solution and therefore some money should be put aside. Instead, Rudd should invest in the current infrastructure to increase efficiency in our power stations, improve efficiency regulations for our cars, offices and homes so that we can get short term gains.
Next week I will look at how electricity can fill in the gap between efficiency and Hydrogen technologies and where the rest of our billions should go.
YourOpinionCounts. CLICK HERE >>>>>>>>>>>> | 
