After nearly an hour listening to a panel of speakers at the Future Fuel Forum in Prince George discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for industry and governments adapting policies to stimulate new technologies and alternate fuel sources Monday, the audience was asked if anyone had a question they wanted answered.
Doug Beckett decided to it was time to switch from hearing about hydrogen and change the topic to electrification.
Beckett has been an EV owner since 2009 and has done his homework on electric vehicles and how they are radically changing the landscape as car manufactures scramble to find ways to meet more stringent carbon emission standards.
Beckett, who founded the Prince George Electric Vehicle Society in 2006, doesn’t think hydrogen is the answer.
“I’ve heard one of the barriers or limitations is the amount of electricity we have available to put into different activities to make the wheels turn or the propellers spin, and I’ve also heard we want to go to net-zero and we have limited public funds,” said Beckett.
“Hydrogen is very inefficient, I can drive four times as far on input electricity in an electric vehicle than I can in a comparable hydrogen vehicle, and all the data I’ve seen out there publicly for transport trucks, for trains, for airplanes all say the same.
“So if we have limited electricity and want to go to net-zero would it not make best sense, policy-wise, to focus our public dollars into battery-electric and direct-electric. We’ll reduce our carbon emissions 90 per cent or better compared to only a 30 per cent reduction, I believe, in hydrogen.”
Geoff Turner, BC Energy Regulator’s executive director of energy transition and Intergovernmental relations, said during the discussion Monday he agreed with Beckett’s assessment of the performance of EVs as compared to hydrogen vehicles. He cited the number of energy transformations needed to produce the final product and said in most cases the fewer changes needed to make energy, the more efficient the process is.
“Going from a hydro dam to a wire to a battery to an electric motor is going to be more efficient than going from a hydro dam to a wire, to an electrode, to a hydrogen storage tank to a fuel cell to an electric motor,” said Turner.
“One of the nuances about the (BC) Hydrogen Strategy is there are some parts of the economy where electrification doesn’t make sense, whether it’s high-heat industrial applications, whether it is remote communities, heavy-haul transportation corridors where you have long distances between communities and long-haul flights where you can’t necessarily stop,” he said.
“Given the current state of battery technology, I’m not expecting to be buying a hydrogen car anytime soon, I think my next car is probably going to be a battery electric one. I also haul a fifth-wheel all over the province in the summer and that kind of an application might make more sense given the need to refuel or recharge frequently, and if you take that to an 18-wheeler or industrial truck that’s where I think the hydrogen strategy is zeroing in on the opportunities.”
Beckett says hydrogen fuel cell technology and its push to make internal combustion engines more efficient has a ways to go to catch up to the science that goes into EVs and the efficiency of hydrogen-powered vehicles is their greatest downfall by comparison.
“With the fuel cell technology, about 70 per cent of the energy is wasted before the wheels move,” Beckett said. “With electric vehicles, about 90 per cent of the energy moves the wheels, so 10 per cent wasted.
“Ballard Power (fuel cells) was a big thing in the 1990s and they haven’t evolved the technology much from there. Hydrogen (industry) is secretive in their data, they don’t provide a lot on the highlights of the experiments that go on, but in the limited amount of data I’ve seen, the electric vehicle is lighter than the hydrogen vehicle and can travel further and you’re using one-fourth the electricity, so your fuel costs are going to be less.”
Beckett said putting hydrogen into an internal combustion engine can create greater nitrous oxide emissions and more greenhouse gases than a diesel engine would. To power the province’s 3.7 million vehicles, and make them all EVs he estimates would require the electricity of another 2.2 Site C dams. To convert all of them to hydrogen-burning fuels cells BC would require the power of another 10 Site C projects.
Panelist Todd Romaine, executive director for BC for the not-for-profit Canadian Hydrogen Association, said there’s room for everybody on the future fuels bandwagon when it comes to creating policies.
“Hydrogen has its utility, primarily in freight – trains, heavy trucks, ferry services and in servicing remote communities and it has various industrial applications very different from what electricity can offer,” said Romaine.
“I think they can complement, it’s not one or the other, it’s both. From an economic standpoint there’s a lot of benefits from the hydrogen sector in BC. The fuel cell sector in the Lower Mainland creates over 2,000 high-paying jobs, generates hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for the government and has tremendous export opportunities.
“There’s 42 countries that are now receivers of fuel cell technology from Metro Vancouver fuel cell companies, and there’s the export of hydrogen from BC to markets in Japan, Korea and the United States. We think what the government is doing on the Hydrogen Strategy is in alignment with their plans to be net-zero and their decarbonization objectives and we believe we have the manpower, the skill-sets and the resources in British Columbia to complement that objective.”
Beckett joined forces with UNBC a year ago to form the Energy Transition Group, which meets on the second Tuesday of each month from 6:30-8 p.m. to discuss EV topics. That group will be meeting tonight with University of Victoria researchers and community members at UNBC Building 5 Room 158.
The Future Fuels Forum resumes Tuesday at 9:15 a.m. at the House of Ancestors Uda Dune Baiyoh Conference Centre, 355 Vancouver St.
