Reply #55: All the replacements are much more complex [View All]

[pschoeb]

with all sorts of possible rate limiters to their use, for example fuel cells could be limited in their total energy production by platinum, that is, even with efficient platinum use, you might be able to only make so many fuel cells. Also the hydrogen sources for fuel cells are now, natural gas, petroleum, propane, coal gas, other sources would be ethanol. Obviously if oil/gas is expensive, fuel cell costs will rise as well unless you use non fossil fuel sources, the only sustainable source of hydrogen would be from gasification of biomass, ethanol, electrolysing water(energy intensive) which would require power from some other fuel(wind,solar,burning fuel,hydro) or from amonia decomposition. These have many rate limiters including productive land and water, the rate limiters of solar or wind power. If demand is higher than these rate limiters allow, the cost will still rise.

There are some new more energy efficient electrolysis techniques, but they still require water usage, which is already becoming a scarce resource, it uses a platinum electrode(adding to the fuel cell platinum requirement), and of course a solar cell which could have a rate limiter of silver in large scale use, besides others because this cell is not conventional and uses gallium indium phosphide, and gallium arsenide.

Oil refinement is comparitivly simpler(distilation) with vary few other possible scarce resources needed in any quantity. The only real rate limiter is the oil itself.

Patrick Schoeb