I have just received a big press release from Ken Livingstone on hydrogen fuel buses which are going to save the day. Apparently, London will be getting the biggest fleet in the world - just 10 by the way - of these buses helping reduce the carbon footprint of the bus fleet.
Ken is then quoted as saying: "Hydrogen is a fuel of the future as it improves air quality and does not produce the harmful emissions which are causing catastrophic climate change''. But that is clearly patent nonsense. Hydrogen is not really a fuel, but a means of transmitting energy. Producing the hydrogen requires electricity and, at the moment, far more energy is used in making the hydrogen than is used in conventionally powered vehicles. So while there will be a reduction in pollution in the town centre, that is simply displaced elsewehere to the plant producing the hydrogen.
Yes, perhaps ultimately cheap and non-polluting ways of producing hydrogen will be discovered. But we are nowhere near that and organisations like Transport for London should not be putting out misleading press releases on its impact on the environment.
hydrogen fuel confusion
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
posted by Christian Wolmar at 05:10
3 Comments:
Hmm, they clearly got a bit confused here. The lack of harmful emissions is clearly beneficial for city-centre air pollution, but isn't on it's own beneficial to climate change.
Then and again, if hydrogen can be produced from electricity, the electricity can be produced from renewable sources. And perhaps hydrogen is a more efficient/more practical solution to powering buses than using charged-up batteries?
At least London is prepared to experiment with such things.
Of course it may be required for soem big cities to buy big (err 10) to help get the technology off the ground.
It's a shame that press officers have such poor grasp of basic scince that they write such twaddle - even worse that some journos cut and paste it into their reports!
Why can it not be the case that press officers should be able to handle the press AND understand the topic.
Assuming that (eventually) electricity is largely produced by non-fossil fuel methods, then hydrogen is one way of powering vehicles, without requiring much in the way of new infrastructure or advanced technology. I guess this is what the press officer should have said!