Pitch
One of the major roadblocks for hydrogen power is safety. How can governments trust citizens with this powerful tool?
Description
Summary
Hydrogen is abundantly available in H20 (water). When hydrogen power is consumed, the waste product is H20.
While advanced research is required to discover the most efficient method for extracting hydrogen from water, the discovery is likely to place governments unable to cope with technological advances; unable to limit the use of hydrogen to exploit natural resources; unable to prevent accidents; unable to limit hydrogen used for crime; unable to prevent hydrogen as a tool for terrorism.
What doesn't require advanced research, is a security plan for these probable events. It can possibly be discussed in the open, it can be lighthearted, serious or dystopian ( which will encourage people to participate ) and can welcome contributions from all nations.
What will the world look like if all appliances are fueled by rain water?
Category of the action
Building efficiency: Physical Action
What actions do you propose?
The security required for this fuel source is daunting. The most striking facts about hydrogen is that it can ignite with 1/10th energy required to ignite a gasoline-air mixture and it has 3x the specific energy.
A wiki for energy and security researchers to begin formulating the systems necessary to allow public use of hydrogen fuel.
What is probably required is a mix of technologies:
- cellular phones embedded into the storage systems for tracking and monitoring of the storage.
- credit scores for users purchasing hydrogen fuel.
- licensing for purchasing hydrogen fuel.
- storage units which have tamper alarms which notify police.
- official storage units which can only interface with other official storage units.
- storage units which can store and pass messages through neighboring storage units.
- limits on the amount that can be held by one user, and limits on the amount that can be in proximity to one another.
- limits on where and how the units may be used and in what quantities.
A wiki detailing the rollout hydrogen fueling stations, as the fossil fuel industry will oppose this technology. As with the history of streetcars and the electric vehicle, this technology will be strongly opposed by the fossil fuel industry. What is required is a slow century-long plan for switching to hydrogen, which will likely be inversely proportional to the dwindling of supply of fossil fuel resources.
Who will take these actions?
Technology, security and public policy officials need to begin formulating plans. The best planners will like be distinguished professors at our top Universities, the reward for their effort is prestige as chairs of the national board, premium placement for talks at clean energy conferences, notable placement in clean energy publications and featured alongside publicity for hydrogen cars.
Where will these actions be taken?
The best place to begin, is finding the most respected person in this field who can be the face and voice of this shift.
This respected person will need to recruit distinguished colleagues as participants, from every major university in every state to add legitimacy to the national board.
This board should also become responsible for choosing and/or rewarding government and commercial grants to clean energy research projects, so perhaps it is at least the figurehead for research funded by the fossil fuel industry and DARPA.
The heavy-lifting of adding legitimacy to the organization will require a fulltime staff to coordinate and create publicity for the supporters of this program. If the program becomes healthy, it should garner enough corporate, governmental and private sponsorship that it will become self-sufficient.
How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels?
This technology could also be adopted by the freight industry, where electric cars will not be able to make market penetration. This is is 10% of the U.S. CO2 emissions.
This program will begin moving highly-skilled workers and high-tech industries off of fossil fuels in the next 40 years. These are workers who hold master's degrees, such as pilots, chemists, scientists, engineers, and professors, and the companies which employ them. Roughly 3% of the U.S. CO2 emissions.
What are other key benefits?
The patents, products and other technology encouraged by this shift would probably begin seeing an ROI at the 40 year mark. Successful brands, intellectual capital, and strategic alliances could produce ROI for another 80 years.
What are the proposal’s costs?
$150,000 per year to hire the respected spokesperson as the founder of this organization.
$5000 x 50 states x 3 universities for recruiting.
$10,000 x 50 states x 3 universities for conferences, notable placement in publications and publicity for hydrogen cars.
$50,000 x 10 staff members for the heavy-lifting of coordinating and producing marketing materials.
$100,000 offices, website and phones.
$150,000
+ $750,000
+ $1,500,000
+ $500,000
+ $100,000
-----------------
$3,000,000 per year x 10 years = $30,000,000
Time line
10 years establishing the board as a fixture in the U.S. energy sector
and another 30 years sheparding hydrogen fuel solutions into the mainstream.
Related proposals
References
"Hydrogen Safety" Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety
"Educational Attainment" Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States
"Sources of Green House Gas Emissions" Wikipedia
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/sources.html
"Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2012" EPAhttp://www.epa.gov/climatechange/Downloads/ghgemissions/US-GHG-Inventory-2014-Main-Text.pdf
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