Natural gas the next 'green hope'
My March 7 column pointing out how much sense it makes, from a supply security and ethical superiority standpoint, for the United States to import oil from Canada`s oil sands rather than from unstable Middle Eastern and tyrant-led North African countries, drew this reader response: `Canada should be encouraging both countries to detox and pursue the very energy alternatives casually dismissed by Morgan.`
So what are those `casually dismissed` alternatives? Remember hydrogen? It has been more than a decade since the prospect of autos powered by hydrogen fuel cells sent shares of Ballard Power to stratospheric levels, only to collapse when the great `hydrogen highway` turned out to be the road to nowhere. Basic laws of physics were lost amid the hype. First, there`s no way of storing hydrogen at ambient temperatures, so if your car sits for a few hours, the hydrogen seeps away. Second, there are no natural hydrogen resources. It must be manufactured from a fossil-fuel based petrochemical process or through a costly electricity-intensive electrolysis process.
The next `green hope` to replace oil was biofuels, ethanol blended with gasoline, and vegetable oil blended with diesel (biodiesel). But even initially enthusiastic environmental groups have realized the folly of trying to farm our way off oil.
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