The Next Great Leap
A really interesting article appeared in the Toronto Star yesterday (I'd link it, but there's a shelf-life of 14 days anyways) by @Biz writer Tyler Hamilton discussing the credibility of the Hydrogen economy.
Geoffrey Ballard, father of Ballard Power, spoke at Queen's last year about how it would be economically unfeasible to set up the infrastructure required for the automobile industry to really get on board to mass produce hydrogen-fuelled cars and sell it to the public. Instead, his idea was to sell it to industry first (forklifts, etc.) and use existing node points (like a Walmart) to spread the infrastructure out. Really fascinating talk.
What really drew me to this article was the focus on China as the potential leader in the Hydrogen Economy for several reasons:
1) It's still facing an energy shortage even after the construction of the environmentally and culturally disastrous Three Gorges Dam. Therefore, the government's looking into various energy sources to make up that shortfall.
2) The size of the population itself is enough to cause the hydrogen industry to salivate all over each other. "If you can get mass adoption in China, you have economies of scale for selling elsewhere," was one person quoted. My concern would be how the labour used in setting this up would be treated
3) The most important point I found in the article: "China isn't tied down to an extensive, long-established fuelling infrastructure that oil incumbents in the West are determined to protect". That's right, no Ralph Klein, no Oil Lobby, none of that bullshit. Since they can build from scratch, they can leapfrog over our methodology/mistake (depending on how you look at it) and go straight into a cleaner driving environment (to make up for the current, absolutely lung scratching one).
Finally, the central government can dictate how fast this is adopted. Apparently, it took them three years to convert Beijing's taxis to use natural gas. Again, No G.W. Bush, no Chretien/Martin dithering, none of that political hand-sitting. Plus, if they start an energy race, maybe they could finally spur us North Americans to finally get our act together.
The ball's in the air. The question is, who's going to get to it first.
2 comments:
Ah yes. I knew the benifits of authoritarian state centred dictatorship would come in handy for us some day. That Martin/Chretien dithering is the result of democracy.
I agree that the dithering is partly from living in a democracy. But moreso, I think, is the lack of political will. If the communist government in China does not want to impose these changes, they won't and we'll never see the hydrogen economy infrastructure come to fruition there, regardless of its authoritarian nature. The question becomes, Are we ready to accept responsibility and make the necessary changes to transition into a hydrogen economy and do we have the political leaders who will lead that charge?
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