Global Possibilities of Future Methane and Hydrogen Economies

Management Jules Verne, the father of science fiction, wrote several books using ideas that eventually became reality. Some examples include: From the Earth to the Moon in 1866, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1870 where he envisions submarines, Robur the Conqueror in 1886 where he describes the precursor of helicopters, and The Mysterious Island in 1875 where he wrote: Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Vaitheeswaran (2003) asks, "Could the man who forecast the development of such technological marvels as submarines, helicopters, and space travel have gotten energy right, too?" We believe that the answer is most likely positive. Hydrogen accounts for approximately 75% of the universe's mass and is the most abundant of all elements. Stars are made mainly of hydrogen. However, hydrogen does not generally exist in a free state in Earth. Consequently, it has to be extracted from different materials including, for example, biomass, fossil fuels, and water. This means that it takes energy to free hydrogen for use, no matter how it is produced. As a result, hydrogen is not strictly an energy source but an energy carrier much in the same way as electricity. At present, while society is deeply concerned about the environment, hydrogen might emerge as a white knight. There is evidence that, since 1850, the relative hydrogen consumption has been increasing steadily (Fig. 1). Research shows continuous decarbonization from 1850 to 1970. At this point, the hydrogen/carbon (H/C) ratio becomes approximately constant (in the order of 1.8). Hefner (2002) describes this history for the US as follows: "For more than 100 years, free markets and the ingenuity of humankind worked efficiently to decarbonize our energy systems…. It was only starting in the 1950s, when governments began to tinker with price controls and later, reacting to the ‘sky is falling’ cries of shortages by the energy industry, allocated fuels among sectors of consumers, that we once again began to recarbonize the energy system." The recarbonization period described by Hefner occurs between approximately 1970 and 2006. However, the Global Energy Market (GEM) model tends to show a slight improvement in the H/C ratio as we advance toward the year 2030. This suggests an increase in production of natural gas which, we anticipate, will pave the way to an "energy revolution that will transform an industry, change our lives, and maybe even save the planet" (Vaitheeswaran, 2003).

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