The electric car

I have a strong childhood memory of being on the footpath of Gillygate in York, struggling to breathe, gagging on the fumes from the stationary cars.

It's a fairly narrow street of two-four story buildings with a building across one end that restricts the through breeze and, coupled with the pretty much constant heavy traffic, the fumes hang around.

It was an awful feeling, and a vivid memory. Every so often I get the same sensation and it takes me straight back there.

Most recently this happened during in August, during the covid lockdown. With people staying home from work the number of cars on the road plummeted. The air quickly got cleaner. We all noticed.

I was waiting in a socially distanced queue outside the post office where I somehow also found myself involved in a funeral... but that's another story.

A single diesel van drove past. Unusual at the time given the absence of road traffic. I felt that same, awful, gagging sensation from the fumes. From one van. 

There are two reasons we've recently made a significant financial commitment and replaced one of our two cars with an EV: CO2 emissions and local air pollution. They're related of course, but actually different issues.

I'm fully aware the Kia e-Niro sets off from the factory with an underbelly of emissions in the shape of that 64kWh battery. However I also know that over its lifetime the car will result in far less CO2 emissions than even the super efficient petrol car it replaces.

Equally important to me, this car doesn't directly pollute the air as it's being driven. I can drive past a queue of people and they won't be left gagging from the smoke and nitrogen oxide emissions, because there aren't any.

I don't consider this a silver-bullet to solving climate change and all atmospheric pollution. 

I do consider EVs are better, and the direction of travel is what's important to me.

Hydrogen wash

When people discuss electric cars, and the need to decarbonize our economy, I've noticed how quickly the topic of hydrogen power comes up as the answer to all problems.

I suspect this is a continuation of the well worn tobacco companies tactic of spreading FUD to hold on to the financial advantage for as long as possible. This is no surprise when one considers many of the petrochemical firms are investing in hydrogen production. I don't criticize them for this, just that they should have done it decades ago instead of holding us back.

The trouble is I think they're still holding us back.

The problem with considering hydrogen fuel cell powered cars to be the future is essentially it's saying "I'm not going to do anything now, because I'm waiting for this wonderful new technology". Meanwhile we carry on buying and running petrol and diesel cars... while we wait.

It's important to acknowledge that, yes hydrogen works now as a fuel for vehicles where a fuel cell is partnered with a small battery and used to power the electric motor. It's clever stuff but there are problems.

Firstly, right now, most hydrogen comes from natural gas. It may not create harmful emissions when it's used in the fuel cell, but actually making the hydrogen is far from clean or renewable.

Let's say we solve that one and can use renewable electricity to make hydrogen through electrolysis. There's still the thorny issue of how inefficient this is.

Using electricity to produce hydrogen which then has to be transported before it can be converted back into electricity by a fuel cell is considerably less efficient than generating electricity and storing that in a battery. Sure there are transmission losses in getting electricity from a wind farm to a car battery, but much lower than with hydrogen and nothing new needs to be built.... we already have domestic electricity.

Maybe we'll end up with so much renewable, clean electricity that it doesn't matter. Right now we're a long way from that.

But there's more.

If we're talking about decarbonising the UK's energy requirements we need to think about heat. The vast majority of people I know heat their home with a gas boiler. As well as the inevitable CO2 released, these are also a source of nasty air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides. Not good. With some work, the gas network could be converted to hydrogen.**

There's lots of concern about the instability of renewables on the electricity grid, what happens when it stops being windy at night, for example. Energy storage is therefore a big part of the conversation. If we're able to make and store lots of hydrogen this can then be burned in a gas turbine to make electricity.

So I agree that using hydrogen as a fuel does seem to be a good idea. Burn it for heat, pass it through a fuel cell for electricity and in both cases the waste product is water. Lovely. Providing the electricity used to produce the hydrogen is generated cleanly, hydrogen can be a carbon neutral fuel. Effectively it's a storage method for the electricity and it does have advantages over batteries.

What I don't think we should be doing is using hydrogen for cars. There are other things that we also need, that hydrogen is better for than batteries while batteries work really well for cars.

If we get to the stage there's so much cheap, clean electricity available.... I still don't think it makes sense to use hydrogen, but then... maybe, whatever.... the market will decide that.

So back to my initial accusation that oil companies are essentially using hydrogen as means to hold things back. I'm not sure this is even a deliberate strategy, more a 'happy' accident. What's clear is switching to electric transport threatens the existing business model of people who find, extract and refine oil in order to sell you petrol and diesel. 

If they can switch to making hydrogen, quite a lot of the business model looks really similar doesn't it. 

That's a huge part of the appeal for hydrogen cars. People understand driving to a place where they pay money to fill the tank. 

The difference with battery electric vehicles, once you've lived with one, is you realise that's something you don't need to do any more, and it really isn't something I miss.

** Hydrogen, being smaller than natural gas molecules will likely just leak out everywhere without an enormous and therefore costly effort to upgrade the network. However experiments to mix hydrogen with natural gas show promise. Whilst this doesn't lead to the possibility of carbon neutral domestic heating, it could significantly reduce emissions on the road to better heating technologies.