How green is hydrogen fuel cell?
Hydrogen fuel cell cars do not produce greenhouse gas, but the industry that supplies hydrogen fuel does. Obviously, the emission level depends very much on the way hydrogen is produced. If it is produced by electrolysis of water, and the electricity comes from clean sources like wind or hydropower, the emission should be close to zero. If the electricity comes from coal power, then the emission could be very high.
In reality, most of the world’s hydrogen is produced by reforming natural gas (whose primary ingredient is methane). This process mixes natural gas and steam at very high temperature (700-1000°C) and converts them to H2 and CO2. This is the most cost effective way to produce hydrogen, but it emits greenhouse gas and takes a lot of energy, which indirectly produces more greenhouse gas. Toyota admits the hydrogen used by Mirai is most likely produced in this way.
So how green is the fuel cell when the hydrogen is produced from natural gas? It takes a comprehensive research. In 2014, European Joint Research Centre (JRC) was committed by EU to produce a report on emissions of various green car technologies. It used “well-to-wheel” emission as indicator, which covers the emissions resulted in the whole process, from oil production, hydrogen production, transportation and storage of fuel all the way to the generation of propulsion by the vehicle. Based on development trend of technologies, it forecasted the well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles beyond year 2020:
Plug-in hybrid vehicles, charged by EU-mix electricity*: 74 g/km
Battery electric vehicles, charged by EU-mix electricity*: 57 g/km
Fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen produced by electrolysis with EU-mix electricity*: >120 g/km
Fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen produced by natural gas reform: 55-75 g/km depending on production location, transportation and storage methods.
As seen, fuel cell cars are no greener than battery electric cars, and barely better than PHEVs like Chevrolet Volt. Moreover, as the world’s electricity mixture is shifting from fossil fuel to renewable and nuclear power, the well-to-wheel emissions of EVs and PHEVs are likely to fall faster than the case of FCVs in the next 2 decades. In addition to the lower construction and maintenance costs of recharging stations, no wonder Tesla’s Elon Musk believes governments and energy industry will put their money on recharging stations rather than hydrogen refilling stations. Without a widely available refilling network, the development of fuel cell cars will be seriously limited. Mirai or Tesla, which one will be the future? We shall see soon.
* EU-mix electricity: the average composition of electricity generation in EU, including coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind and solar etc.
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