Alberta’s Hydrogen Economy – the New Energy of Alberta

Other than vast Oil, Gas and Agriculture reserves, Alberta with proper leadership could also lead in the new future of energy. Hydrogen produced from clean coal will be the futures energy of choice, clean, abundant, profitable and secure. Multiple billions of dollars have already been spent on development. This new single energy source could fuel your house, workplace, car, laptop and cell phone. Alberta needs a leader to fast track this new energy source to benefit all Albertans.
See the “Hydrogen Economy plan” detailed below.

 

Alberta’s Hydrogen Economy: The Plan – The new energy of Alberta
Although this is not a brand new idea, but some of the contents form a new direction or priority for Alberta’s future. Currently Alberta is funding the Clean Coal Collation and Energy I Net which is good for Alberta, It is not nearly enough to set Alberta at the forefront of being the Energy Leader of the World.

The average North American does not understand the real potential benefits of a hydrogen economy. People talk about ethanol, hybrids, bio diesel, solar etc, these ideas are good, but they are not the king of energy and never will materialize into the eventual potential replacement of oil. Hydrogen to be a cost effective source of clean energy needs to be produced from coal.

Imagine an Alberta where multiple medium sized Clean Coal Plants convert coal to hydrogen, CO2 and electricity. The hydrogen is shipped to every Albertans home through switched over natural gas lines, residential hydrogen powered fuel cell units provide heat and power to their home and they fill their hydrogen fuel cell cars in their garage.

Right now you are thinking yes, very nice I know this and the basis to this concept but today’s technology and infrastructure in Alberta is not ready for a commercial hydrogen economy. Opponents claim it would take twenty years before the technology is ready. You are also thinking hydrogen fuel cell cars and home units are too expensive for individual Albertans to purchase.

If this is your perception you are only partially correct.

But with a determined leader, a fast track plan and funded properly, this concept can be a commercial possibility sooner than anybody can imagine.

How can this be done? The following concepts are only a few of the many possibilities available:
 
The Plan: Clean Coal Plants
1. Construct multiple clean coal plants – expand the royalty – tax exemption infrastructure program in this area. Currently the oil royalty programs in Alberta are unpopular, but that’s because they are severely misunderstood. Public education and a proper plan with constrained results and objectives explained would overcome this issue. A “can not refuse” limited tax exemption program where investing companies pay no tax until their initial investment is paid off is required. Companies will invest heavily because it would be virtually free for them to do so. This is a dramatic approach but is required to ensure success and fast track development. This method would not cost Albertans or the Albertan treasury anything because it would be based on new companies and technologies that are not currently producing this product. Actually it would benefit Albertans greatly because the employees who work on these projects would pay new additional provincial income tax and create regional economic benefits.

look where the clean coal is located in Canada

2. In addition to the aggressive limited tax exception program, the Alberta government would provide one billion per year or one third of the surplus to develop and construct a portion of the clean coal plants. Once built, they are sold to the private industry for the cost of constructing the zero emission plant. These two programs will ensure the clean coal plants would be constructed. To receive the investments benefits they would have five years to build the plants to qualify.

So, step one would be accomplished – the creation of the hydrogen producing plants. The next step is to provide every Albertan home owner with a residential fuel cell.
 
The Plan: Residential fuel cells
1. Government funded fuel cell factories, how does Alberta provide all the fuel cells required at an affordable cost? Invite private industry, governments and private investors to participate in creating two large production factories, let’s say for example one in Edmonton and the other in Calgary. These production facilities would again be approved to join the new tax exemption program and fifty percent would be funded by the Alberta Government and then sold back to the private industry when they are completed. One condition of the fuel cell manufacturing would be that they are produced in mass quantity and a reasonable price will be charged for each unit.

2. Provide incentive or even legislate home owners to purchase the fuel cells. This can be achieved by several or a combination of methods. Home owners who purchase the unit outright will receive a tax credit on their year end provincial tax return to the amount of double of what the unit cost. Plus they would receive a substantial subsidy on their first year hydrogen bills. This will ensure people with available money would purchase a unit and would provide required income to the production facilities. For the people who can not afford to purchase a unit, one would be provided for them, but their taxes would not be subsidized and they would not receive a subsidy on their first year hydrogen bills. In addition, their hydrogen bill will be increased slightly for the first two years to pay for the unit. Legislate that all new residential subdivisions require fuel cells to be installed.

Now, up to this point in the five year plan Alberta would have Residential fuel cell production facilities and all home owners would have a fuel cell in their home and Alberta would have multiple environmentally friendly hydrogen producing power plants. Another large advantage of residential fuel cells is that they can produce electrical energy and heat for your home from various fuel sources like propane and natural gas. The creation of Alberta’s hydrogen infrastructure will take time to complete. The fuel cell can be fuelled by natural gas that is already piped to your house. This will be a seamless switch over from natural gas to hydrogen when the infrastructure is completed.

 

The Plan: Fuel cell cars
This is the only part of the plan that might be difficult accomplish in the time frame required. Some extra ordinary measures may have to come in to play.

Some ideas to meat this goal may be:

1. Again, offer an irresistible subsidized limited tax exemption plan. Invite General Motors, Ford & Chrysler to participate (if the incentive is good enough they will join). They already have proven prototype fuel cell vehicles and currently are in financial trouble – better for Albertans because they will try anything right now. Now would be a perfect time to act. The deal would be that they set up fuel cell car production factories in Alberta. They pay no tax for the first ten years or until their initial investment is paid off, which ever comes first. In addition, legislate that no other companies can sell fuel cell cars in Alberta for five years. This will entice the car manufacturers to come on board because they will have a five year monopoly and would benefit economically. Car manufacturers have already spent multiple millions of dollars on fuel cell development and all they need is a reason to mass produce them. Alberta will be their answer.

2. Creating a fuel cell car manufacturing base in Alberta will further diversify the Alberta economy and produce thousands of new jobs and provincial taxpayers. Currently British Columbia is the leader in Canada for fuel cell technology. With Alberta’s surplus money it would be wise to expand the economy so future generations can benefit from it. In recent weeks BMW, Honda and Toyota have announced major plans to provide limited commercialization of their hydrogen fuelled vehicles. These commercialization plans are not for twenty years from now but some manufactures aiming for 2008. These hydrogen car manufactures however do admit they see a problem of slow commercialization because there is not currently sufficient hydrogen fuelling stations available. Alberta with a plan could have a system set up in the province that eliminates and addresses this issue.

 

The Plan: Hydrogen Infrastructure
Now that Alberta has clean coal plants producing hydrogen, home owners have fuel cells powering and heating their house, and Alberta is mass producing Hydrogen fuel cell automobiles, how do you transport the Hydrogen to their homes?

1. For the first five years of the plan, hydrogen will have to be transported to home owners by tanker truck until residential subdivision by subdivision is switched over from natural gas lines to hydrogen. (They can use the same natural gas lines that feed into their homes, once switched over.) Note – the fuel cell will be powered by natural gas until they are switched over to hydrogen.

2. The new infrastructure system would require limited community fuelling stations saving construction costs because you would fill your car with hydrogen at home in your personal garage. Until the switch over is completed there will be filling stations strategically placed in residential areas. Another benefit is once business are switched over (they should be done first), many companies would offer car filling units at work. For example, you work at Wal-Mart in Leduc, you drive to work, fill your car with hydrogen at the filling pump your employer has supplied and when you get home at the end of the day you top off your home fuel cell with hydrogen from your car. You would have to do this a couple times a week until your residential area is zoned to be switched over from natural gas to hydrogen. Once Alberta is switched over you will fill your car at home reducing the infrastructure currently required for gasoline. Remember Hydrogen will heat your house, provide electricity for your home and you fill your car with it. The infrastructure required when it is complete would be simple and cost effective. No gas stations (only some for tourists visiting), no big current style electricity generating plants, no need for natural gas in your home and no pollution.

 

The Plan: Hydrogen to fuel the Oil sands
With Alberta switched over to a hydrogen economy, hydrogen will also power the oil sands. Steam generated from hydrogen will replace the need for natural gas and electricity to feed oil sands production. Reducing the cost of producing heavy oil and freeing up extra natural gas to be sold to the Americans and abroad.

 

 

The Plan: CO2 sequestration
One of the main benefits of the hydrogen economy is that when coal is gasified and turned into hydrogen, electricity and most importantly CO2. Wayburn Saskatchewan is the leader in CO2 sequestration and imports its CO2 from North Dakota where the CO2 is injected into old dying oil wells and then recovering and increasing oil production. Not only does the environment benefit but you make money doing it. The Chinese want to pay us to sequester their captured CO2. Alberta receives the CO2 imports and increases production in our conventional oil wells saving the environment at the same time. This is a triple win scenario.

Saskatchewan is the leader in CO2 sequestration and British Columbia is the leader in fuel cell technologies.

 

Its time for Alberta to be the leader. Just because we have income generated from oil and natural gas does not mean that we can not also benefit from the clean coal to hydrogen economy.

Hydrogen Economy – Summary
Not only is Alberta’s Hydrogen economy good for business It is the best solution for Alberta to meet its environmental concerns. Once the provincial energy economy is based on hydrogen it will meet and surpass Alberta portion of Kyoto requirements. Although the Kyoto Protocol is flawed in so many ways, it will be meaningless because Alberta’s vision goes far beyond and surpasses Kyoto to make Alberta the environmental envy of the world.

The United States Department of Energy and private industry have invested multiple billions of dollars into developing technology for their hydrogen economy and by 2025; it is the American’s plan to convert the U.S. economy over to hydrogen and fuel cells. Some examples of the United States lead in this area are the one billion FutureGen – hydrogen from clean coal electricity power plant and the state of Texas is constructing a nuclear power plant for the sole purpose of providing hydrogen for future demand.

Saskatchewan has just announced it is constructing Canada’s first clean coal to hydrogen plant. Alberta needs to be first and it needs to compete aggressively to achieve this goal or lose out.

The advantages of an Alberta hydrogen economy is unfortunately not realized by Alberta leaders. We are sitting on one of the world’s greatest potential hydrogen producing coal deposits in the world. The above plan for residential fuel cell generation has benefits that no one can comprehend until it is built. An example of this is if every home in Alberta has a compact 7 KW fuel cell generator in their house, they would be producing more energy than they consume. Selling excess power back to the grid would be on average like having millions of tiny electricity generators in Alberta. Not only would they have benefited from the tax exception program but they will make money selling their excess electricity to the grid and reducing their utility bills.

The benefits are too many to be listed in this simple plan but with every Albertan being their own tiny electricity generator there would be no need for large expensive electricity generating plants. Selling all net excess electricity to the Americans for profit and using all remaining excess to power SAGD operations and the oil sands.

Once Alberta is almost fully converted over to a hydrogen economy with hydrogen producing clean coal plants, your house and car will run on hydrogen, electricity and building heating systems will be run on hydrogen. What do we do with all our oil and natural gas Alberta produces? We sell it to the Americans, China and markets internationally because they will be still 10 to 20 years behind Alberta in converting over to a hydrogen economy.
Sounds simple, with a plan it is. We have the coal resources and the technology and the money, all we need is a leader and the will to implement the plan. Any premier of Alberta that quickly carries out this plan will have a legacy like no other.

Alberta advantage – small in population, flush in money, Alberta could easily switch over  to a hydrogen economy compared to the Americans.

The only reason I can think of why Alberta has not put this issue as the most important topic of Alberta’s future economic security is that people are afraid it will ruin the oil and gas industry. This is nonsense, yes hydrogen will eventually replace oil and gas, however this will take many decades and until then Alberta could prosper with four booming commodities, oil, gas, clean coal and hydrogen. With hydrogen eventually equalling and surpassing oil in revenues and profit.

I am neither a tree hugger nor an environmentalist. Renewable sources like solar, bio diesel and ethanol are losers; they are fair but will only supply a small percentage of the worlds energy needs.

Alberta, to become the world’s energy superpower, must act now and bring this new clean energy source to the market and Alberta needs a determined leader to drive and direct this new economy.

Don’t worry, hydrogen would not immediately replace the oil and natural gas industry, it will enhance it. Alberta’s oil and gas industry will be prosperous for many years.