Jun 27 2014
“Japan is a little behind in this regard,” Yokohama National University professor and hydrogen technology expert Kenichiro Ota told JRT in a telephone interview. Yet he pointed out there are some underutilized renewable energy sources across the world that can be used to generate CO2-free electricity to extract hydrogen from water. One solution might be to harness wind power in the large northern prefecture of Hokkaido, he said.
When Toyota Motor Corp. announced Wednesday it would hurry up the commercial launch of its hydrogen-powered car, JRT readers may have thought about the Prius hybrid. With the technology in this darling vehicle of environmentally conscious drivers around the world for two decades now, and with other technological innovations, Toyota led the way in fuel-efficient driving, with rivals struggling to keep up.
Still, hydrogen fuel-cell cars are widely seen the next big thing after hybrid cars. Hydrogen is abundant, easy to produce and leaves no carbon dioxide when burned. A car can be filled in a few minutes and travel as far as gasoline-powered cars on one fill, compared with longer charging times and shorter distances for electric cars.So the era of Japanese fuel-cell cars is just around the corner, right? Not so fast.
The company said this week it would move forward the introduction its hydrogen-powered car to March 2015 at the latest, and sell it for about $70,000. Previously, it said it would roll out the car “around 2015″ at a price of up to $100,000.The announcement came just a day after the government released a “road map” on developing the nation’s hydrogen fuel-cell infrastructure and production capacity, including the commercial production and delivery of CO2-free hydrogen to Japan by around 2040. But the plan was short on details.
Although hydrogen is plentiful, the cheapest ways to convert it into a usable form is to extract it from fossil fuels or resolve it from water by applying electricity. But Japan has neither abundant fossil fuels nor cheap electricity. And unless it is produced from water using electricity from renewable sources, hydrogen is as bad for the environment as oil, gas or coal.
Other major car-producing countries may be in a better position to press ahead. The U.S. has a large amount of oil, gas and coal, and would have little problem producing hydrogen. Germany has been developing the technology to make hydrogen using its abundant wind power resources.
Japan’s dream of leading the way in next-generation, low-emission vehicles could come to nothing unless a stable, reasonably priced hydrogen supply can be secured — even if hundreds of hydrogen stations are built across the country to encourage the adoption of fuel-cell cars.
“If we use it wisely, we may have cheap hydrogen,” Prof. Ota said. “The technology is already there. The issue is how much we can invest in it.”Contacted by JRT, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry didn’t immediately comment on how it planned to address the challenges facing the development of hydrogen-fuel technology.
