The search for a carbon alternative

Iit looks like an experiment from the school chemistry lab, but this could be the solution to the world’s global warming woes. This is a hydrogen fuel cell. While oil and gas continue to pollute the atmosphere and become more scarce, hydrogen is pollution free and infinitely abundant.

Hydrogen could drastically reduce our reliance on carbon: with hydrogen boilers in the home, hydrogen pipes underground, and hydrogen fuel cells under every car bonnet, global warming could become history.

This is not science fiction or blue sky thinking. At King’s Cross developer Argent is planning to install a hydrogen fuel cell – albeit a larger one built by professionals – in one of the early phases of its 67 acre development. ‘Unless we start taking these technologies seriously we’re never really going to know what the problems are and what the benefits are,’ says Argent chief executive Roger Madelin, adding that because King’s Cross is a commercial development, any energy successes will have to be seriously considered by other developers. ‘Yes it’s going to cost more, yes, we’re learning things as we go along, but if our initiatives work, others in the industry will have to raise their game.’

However, Madelin is under no illusion of the difficulties entailed in developing a ‘hydrogen economy’, the term used to describe a society fuelled by hydrogen rather than fossil fuels. ‘Until America is ready to do something dramatic about the internal combustion engine and replace it with a fuel cell, the hydrogen economy will be on hold,’ he says.

A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. Because it’s an electrochemical process, not combustion, it is quiet, efficient and clean – water vapour and heat are the only by-products. At King’s Cross, the cell, which Madelin says will be around 5m3 in size, will provide fuel for a combined heat and power system in a hotel or office development of around 50,000 sq ft.

The downside is that most experts say running costs of fuel cells are at least four times those of equivalent diesel engines and the system Argent is considering costs ‘a million quid a pop – at least’. And because hydrogen does not occur freely in nature, producing it in a pollution-free manner – by electrolysis of water – further adds to the price. ‘At the moment it’s still cheaper to drill for oil,’ confirms Madelin.

But how would a switch from carbon to hydrogen transform our built environment?

‘It won’t be much different,’ says Madelin. ‘The internal combustion engine will be replaced by fuel cells, that’s the bonus. We’ll still drive cars, it won’t change the way people live. That’s handy in a way because we’ve built hundreds and thousands of towns and villages whose inhabitants rely on private transport – fuel cells won’t change that.’

Climate change expert George Monbiot also suggests the hydrogen economy’s impact will be less drastic than some might think.

In his book Heat (reviewed in CM last month) he envisages localised hydrogen micro-generators and a new piping system to move molecular hydrogen around the country. And family homes will burn hydrogen in their boilers, or use combined heat and power units run by fuel cells, which, he admits, ‘will need to be scaled down if they are to be widely used in houses’.

And while Madelin is passionate about the technology – and committed to using it at Kings Cross – he’s quick to reaffirm doubts that a full-blown hydrogen economy will take root in the immediate future. ‘That’s a little way down the line yet. There are huge geopolitical issues to consider. We’re experimenting with the technology at King’s Cross – and I’m only a developer!’