Skip to main content

The Hydrogen Revolution - Marco Alverà ***

The idea of using hydrogen to aid our move to green energy is gathering pace. At one point it was described primarily as a replacement for petrol in fuelling cars - though Marco Alverà does mention this still as a possibility for some vehicles, the far bigger picture is for hydrogen's role as a potential replacement for natural gas and as a means to store energy to enable to it to be transported from solar-rich locations, or to hold energy for use at time when renewables aren't delivering, such as in winter in many European locations.

Despite portraying the seriousness of climate change's impact, Alverà is relentlessly upbeat about the capability of hydrogen in sorting out our problems. It ought to be said upfront (and perhaps isn't explored enough in the book) that Alverà is CEO of an energy pipeline company that is moving into hydrogen in a big way, so to say that he has a potential conflict of interest is, if anything, understating things.

This doesn't mean that some of Alverà's thoughts and suggestions aren't interesting, but it does mean that the way he brushes over the pitfalls and potential barriers is perhaps a little unbalanced. For instance, reading this, you would think that the US and China were doing great things on the climate front, rather than failing to deal with the situation. You would also think that the EU is a paragon of climate change action, when, for example, Germany's disastrous action on nuclear has resulted in a heavy use of coal.

Similarly, while it probably is a good idea in an ideal world to generate solar energy cheaply in the Sahara, say, and transport that energy as hydrogen rather than high voltage DC, Alverà underplays the concerns about putting Europe's energy future in the hands of potentially unstable countries and doesn't even mention threats from terrorism etc. In fact you'd think mostly hydrogen was a harmless substance without a track record of explosions - there's even a suggestion we might return to using hydrogen airships. That went well last time.

Alverà makes good technical points about the comparison of battery and hydrogen technology for long distances and heavy goods vehicles, though the comparison is very much dependent on today's battery technology and doesn't give any allowance for the speed at which this is developing. There is also some remarkable political naivety in a comment on the speed of China's development of hydrogen fuel cell capability saying 'One of the reasons why China is so good at making things happen is its economy is centrally planned...' - neither the Soviet Union nor China historically have shown that central planning is exactly a great way forward.

I don't want to be too hard on this book. It has genuinely made me more positive about hydrogen for some applications, notably energy storage to level out peaks and troughs in renewable supplies, though I'm still pretty certain I wouldn't like to travel in a vehicle sitting on a big hydrogen tank. It's also good to discover a climate change book that isn't all doom and gloom. But anyone reading the book does need to be aware this is a written from the perspective of someone whose company needs hydrogen to succeed and is perhaps talking it up beyond what may be realistic.

Hardback: 
Bookshop.org

  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...
Post a Comment
Read more