Happy Birthday! America

Happy Birthday! America.  As we begin the second half of another trying year, my feelings are that we are in for some very difficult times ahead.  The enormous issues of climate change, energy security and affordability, and the inevitable transition from fossil fuels to renewables are again being held hostage by a handful of rich old men who have no sense of what the reality of the outside world is, other than their private domains of money and power.  This has always been the case, but their actions and inactions today are leading to the slow demise of sustainability of our environmental, economic, and social systems, on a global scale.  The other 99% can only sit back and watch.  Good luck!

As for our energy situation right now, the fossil fuel and nuclear industries continue to dominate the conversations with their wealth and buying power over almost all media and social platforms.  The new generations of nuclear power they are pushing for, nor fusion, will not help in the near term, nor will it make any significant impact on the energy supply in the future.  On a positive spin the current prices and constraints on all fuels worldwide, are bringing into focus the understanding that renewable hydrogen is the most viable solution, and it is finally beginning to make some major headway.  Just in the last year or so, the world is moving toward making hydrogen from water, wastes, and carbohydrates at an incredible exponential rate.  Not so much here in the US, as the stranglehold of information and dollars by the major energy players continues to play out; but throughout the world, hydrogen as a transportable fuel for transportation, industry, and energy storage is gaining enormous traction.  Just as we move oil, gasoline, natural gas, and propane worldwide, we can move hydrogen from areas where it is produced by plentiful renewables to where it is needed; and it can even be produced locally for fleet transportation, powering new and existing gas turbines, manufacturing, storage for microgrids, etc.  It will not replace batteries for some appropriate uses, but it can complement and supplement renewable storage.  Its uses are so huge and varied, compared to oil technology.  We already have hydrogen-powered aircraft, ships, trains, buses, steel and concrete production, repowering old generation plants, new ways to electrolyze water, new fuel cell technology…the lists go on and on. There is an amazing shift in investment and actual development of various hydrogen technologies now in Northern Europe, Australia, China, Southeast Asia, all over…even Greece!  This transition is happening, and will eventually become mainstream, but it will take time.  Meanwhile, blah, blah, blah here in the US.  Too expensive, too dangerous, and too disruptive to the current economic system!

I remain frustrated at what I see taking place in this country, and I may not be around to see that once again America’s supposed great technologies have been wasted on creating wealth for the few as we lag behind the rest of the world.  But maybe we will get to Mars!