Web concept for fuel cells has promise

If only things would work out the way Jeremy Rifkin describes in his visionary books, what a wonderful world it would be.

Rifkin, who has taken on the future of work, biotechnology and ownership in previous works, turns to the energy crisis in his latest, "The Hydrogen Economy" (Tarcher/Putnam, $24.95). We met last month when Rifkin, who loves Seattle because the sun always seems to be shining when he visits, came to town on book tour.

I'm a fan of Rifkin's approach. As president of the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation on Economic Trends, he's an ideological guerrilla in Wall Street clothing. He's not afraid to take on Big Money, yet he's not so starry-eyed that he ignores the many obstacles his blueprints face.

Rifkin's current thesis: We're a decade or two from peaking in world oil production, meaning oil will get scarcer, harder to drill and costlier. The alternative, however, already is within our grasp: a Hydrogen Energy Web, where small, decentralized hydrogen-conversion plants, linked together by energy networks, supply fuel cells to run cars, homes and businesses.

"It's like the World Wide Web for energy," Rifkin said.

Fuel cells would proliferate like personal computers; hydrogen plants would be the network servers. As with a Napsterlike peer-to-peer network, you would upload excess energy to the "commons" and draw energy when you need it from wherever it's available.

"Soon, end users will not only produce their own electricity but be able to share it with others, posing a fundamental challenge to the current top-down, unidirectional energy regime," Rifkin writes.

Already this is happening in places like California, where savvy energy geeks store solar-boosted power during the day and sell it back to utilities at a premium during peak hours.

There's a lot of logic to Rifkin's argument. Hydrogen is ubiquitous, although it must be converted to be useful. Still, conversion is comparatively cheap, especially when wind, methanol or other natural sources are used.

Storage compression has improved to the point where it is about as efficient as gasoline and other liquid fuels. And compared with fossil fuels, hydrogen is pristinely clean.

The biggest rap against hydrogen — its volatility — may never have been valid, Rifkin said. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 forever scarred hydrogen's reputation. But recent studies showed atmospheric static electricity ignited the airship's cloth covering, not the gas within.

Those of us around for the 1970s gas lines are all too familiar with alternative energy. Instead of electric cars and solar homes, though, we now have gas-guzzling SUVs and megawatt mansions.

Still, a turning point has been reached. Even at the height of the energy crisis 25 years ago, car manufacturers were doing nothing about alternative fuels. Today all that's changed.

Daimler-Benz expects to produce 100,000 fuel-cell cars by the end of this decade, Rifkin notes. General Motors, Toyota and other automakers are following suit. The great-grandson of Henry Ford, Bill Ford, has said fuel cells "will end the 100-year reign of the internal-combustion engine."

Detroit's transformation makes sense: It wants to sell cars, not gas. Big Oil will be slower to come around, but multinationals that want to stay in the energy business, as opposed to preserving the oil economy, have at least paid lip service to hydrogen.

Still, with an American president closely tied to the oil industry and threatening a Middle East war with oil-access overtones, the forces against a hydrogen economy are imposing. Just as moneyed interests in the computer and content industries — abetted by government allies — are trying to control the Web, the energy industry will try to manipulate a hydrogen web for profit and power.

"Hydrogen is a promissory note for humanity's future on Earth," Rifkin writes. "Whether that promise is squandered in failed ventures and lost opportunities or used wisely on behalf of our specials and our fellow creatures is up to us."

Paul Andrews is a free-lance technology writer and co-author of "Gates." He can be reached at pandrews@seattletimes.com.