The prospects for a hydrogen economy (1): hydrogen futures

Abstract

Common to all discussions and projections of ‘a hydrogen economy’ is the widespread use of hydrogen as an energy carrier. Such use requires the development and application of a range of different technologies, some similar to and some quite different from those in common use in current energy systems. This paper starts by briefly introducing and describing the physical characteristics, economics and functionality of these technologies, before discussing some of the hydrogen futures that have been proposed, and the great improvements to the technologies which will be required before they become competitive with alternative means of delivering the same energy service. Technology cost estimates are then used to explore through the use of formal modelling techniques some of the futures scenarios.

Keywords:

• hydrogen economy
• hydrogen technologies
• hydrogen applications
• hydrogen futures

Acknowledgements

This paper, and a companion paper to be published in a subsequent issue of this journal, derive from work undertaken through the UK Sustainable Hydrogen Energy Consortium (UKSHEC) over the four years 2003–2007, which was funded by the EPSRC (the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), whose support is gratefully acknowledged. Acknowledgements are also made to our social science colleagues in UKSHEC from the University of Salford who participated in much of the work described here. This work produced numerous working papers (available at http://www.psi.org.uk/ukshec/publications.htm), and a number of journal papers, many of them referenced below, which between them range over a large proportion of the literature on hydrogen as an energy carrier that has been produced to date.