Your tax dollars at work- building hydrogen fueling stations

[miimura]

Can anyone send me the link from ?EPA that shows the relative carbon footprint of EV's, ICE's, an FCV's? I believe it shows it as a circular chart. I promised to send it to Jean in order to show that BEV's have a much lower carbon footprint that FCV's.

I don't know which document you're looking for, but it is inherently difficult to make a chart of relative carbon footprint when you have all of the following variances:
1. Electricity Generation has a varying carbon footprint depending on local sources. This dramatically affects BEVs.
2. ICE vehicles have varying efficiency depending on vehicle size, performance profile and engine technologies applied.
3. Fuel Cell Vehicles have varying efficiency and the carbon footprint of hydrogen synthesis varies by process.

UCS comparison of Hyundai Tucson with various propulsion systems (not including BEV):
http://blog.ucsusa.org/how-clean-are-hydrogen-fuel-cell-electric-vehicles-696

DOE comparison of various propulsion systems (not including FCEV):
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.php

I might be interesting to follow the UCS methodology and calculate the g/mi GHG emissions of a RAV4 EV for comparison to the Tucson. I don't have time to do that right now.

 

[user 340]

Don't assume the "green car press" will jump on H2 criticism. This stuff is their bread and butter. It would be like going to any university receiving grant money to study hydrogen and asking them to bad mouth hydrogen. Good luck.

I don't want to criticize hydrogen cars in the press. I realize that there are vested interests (oil money), and public criticism could backfire into a lot of untrue negative press for EVs.

Instead, I think that it would be good to feed the press some facts from the recent CEC report.
In the last 2 years:
- $40M has been spent on H2 fueling infrastructure, about $40,000 PER CAR!
(assuming there are 1000 hydrogen cars in CA - very generous)
- $22M has been spent on EV charging infrastructure, about $200 per car!
- Only 9 DC fast charging stations have been installed for BEVs with public funds

Punchline:
Installing ~100 DCFCs along long distance corridors would begin to enable long distance EV travel in CA, at a cost of only $1.5M total. That is the cost of only one H2 fueling station!

I think that the CEC owes us explanations about this big funding discrepancy since the our spending our (public) money.

 

[TonyWilliams]

I had a long talk with Jean Baronas of the California Energy Commission and tried to present our point of view. Hopefully I did a good job, but there are more able speakers on the forum. She did tell me that there will be an EV Infrastructure webinar on January 28th. Details are at:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/2013-ALT-01/documents/2015-01-28_workshop/2015-01-28_workshop_notice.pdf

I will try to attend but will be in Hawaii on vacation that day.

Can anyone send me the link from ?EPA that shows the relative carbon footprint of EV's, ICE's, an FCV's? I believe it shows it as a circular chart. I promised to send it to Jean in order to show that BEV's have a much lower carbon footprint that FCV's.

I tried calling her today, but she's out of the office for a few days. I did talk to both the CEC ahead of the EV program and the CEC head of the hydrogen program. I don't think the latter person liked me very much ;-)

I will be participating in the 28 January webinar, in addition to composing my thoughts on building the West Coast Electric Highway, while contrasting the hydrogen fiasco.

 

[Michael Bornstein]

Can anyone send me the link from ?EPA that shows the relative carbon footprint of EV's, ICE's, an FCV's? I believe it shows it as a circular chart. I promised to send it to Jean in order to show that BEV's have a much lower carbon footprint that FCV's.

I found the links I was looking for. Here they are:

http://cleantechnica.com/files/2014/06/Fuel_Cell_Whole_Truth1.jpg

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/06/04/hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-about-not-clean/

Tony, I am glad that You will attend the meeting on the 28th. As I said, I will do my best to dial in also.

 

[user 340]

I found the links I was looking for. Here they are:

http://cleantechnica.com/files/2014/06/Fuel_Cell_Whole_Truth1.jpg

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/06/04/hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-about-not-clean/

Tony, I am glad that You will attend the meeting on the 28th. As I said, I will do my best to dial in also.

Pretty interesting. So fuel cell vehicles have about the same level of CO2 emission per mile as a car that just burns natural gas.
From http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/natural_gas_emissions.html
" ... light-duty vehicles running on compressed natural gas natural gas emits approximately 6%-11% lower levels of GHGs than gasoline throughout the fuel life cycle." (Argonne Natl Lab GREET model).

Why don't they just burn natural gas in those things instead on using a fuel cell? Seems like that would be a lot simpler and no less efficient.

 

[dstjohn99]

Here is the email I sent to at [email protected]:

Dear respected officials,

In August 2014 I leased a 100% electric BEV. To date this is the best of 14 cars I have owned in my life. I love everything about it and I wish I could drive it everywhere I go. I will definitely purchase the car at the end of the lease, and I will likely buy only BEVs from now on as I am so impressed with the performance, low maintenance, ease of daily use and low environmental impact. However, the current infrastructure is not suited for much more than daily commuter use for BEVs. 90% of the time I can plug in at home, drive to and from work and do all my shopping and other errands with my BEV. However, I travel from Santee, CA to Yuma, AZ area at least 10 times a year and I take many other trips beyond the approximately 150 mile range of my Toyota Rav4 EV. For these trips I often use my HEV Toyota Prius or GMC Yukon internal combustion engine (ICE).

The Rav4 EV is suitable for all of these trips, but a lack of charging options along the travel corridors make it impossible for effective travel. Specifically, most public L2 EVSEs available are low voltage (208 VAC) and low amperage (well below 40 amps) and will not charge my car in a reasonable time. Even the L2 charging takes several hours under the best conditions and much longer under typical conditions - still not acceptable for long range travel.

However, DC fast charging (DCFC) allows charging of up to 80% in less than an hour. This would allow me to use my BEV in a reasonable manner for long trips. I strongly urge consideration of funding for L3 EVSE equipment at a maximum of 100 mile intervals along our major travel corridors. This would IMMEDIATELY allow a reduction in emissions and fossil fuel dependence by making long distance BEV travel a reasonable experience for the growing BEV community in CA. In addition, it would help the economy and local businesses, as people will need something to do during a 30 - 45 minute charge stop, such as buy a cup of coffee, a snack or sandwich at the nearby establishment. This will increase spending, tax revenues and be an overall boost to the state economic system.

In my case the most useful specific locations from the San Diego area will be along Interstate 8 corridor at perhaps the Jamul area or the Golden Acorn Casino, El Centro near a restaurant and Winterhaven. I typically stop in El Centro for a meal during travel, and a L3 EVSE charging station at or near In-N-Out Burger or similar would make fast charging invisible to my normal trips. The Jamul and Winterhaven locations would provide a nice backup or "top off" stop along the way in case other locations were out of service. L3 EVSEs along the I-5 and I-15 corridors should be spaced at similar intervals and convenient stop locations.

I strongly discourage spending for Hydrogen infrastructure. Contrary to the claims that it is a clean fuel, it is actually very GHG intensive from "well to wheel." Additionally a BEV can be charged at any home today, and in many cases by solar electric systems. A hydrogen vehicle will likely never be able to fill at a residence and the most economic methods available to produce hydrogen use natural gas, producing much more GHG than electricity from the grid. Also there are over 100,000 BEVs in CA and growing daily. How many hydrogen cars are there on our roads today? The electric grid is getting cleaner every day making BEVs even more friendly to the environment. The batteries have post-use value. I plan to use my car as a grid backup at home and perhaps when the car is retired, I will use the battery permanently for this purpose.

To summarize a robust L3 EVSE charging infrastructure will benefit thousands of existing taxpayers, increase spending and reduce emissions during longer trips and make existing BEVs available today from numerous manufacturers a viable option for more potential users. L3 EVSE infrastructure is a good investment in our future and our environment.

Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to using new Chademo type L3 EVSEs in the near future while driving my BEV across the state and / or country.

 

[user 340]

The San Francisco Chronicle published my letter to the Editor today in their print and online editions. I used their story on the VW / BMW / Chargepoint partnership as a lead-in for the CEC's actions. From http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/letters-editor/ :

Stay charged

Regarding “They hope charging spots fuel confidence” (Business, Jan. 23), I tip my hat to private industry for investing in long distance fast charging infrastructure that will be useful for California’s 100,000 electric cars. That is much better than the California Energy Commission who has ignored this need. Instead, the CEC has already wasted $40 million of taxpayer funds on hydrogen fueling infrastructure for cars that do not exist and have big carbon footprints.

Tom Greene, Emerald Hills

 

[4min]

As an alien in this country, I'm surprised to see cases like the iPad LA program being publisized, while this one remains quiet still. I guess funding here is a bit less than 1B but nevertheless is significant. However, impact I think is much more dramatic, as this steers entire industry towards FCV and in the end harms ecology for everyone. As much as compiance EVs are evil, our Ravs and compiance points market let Tesla emerge, and GM, BMW and Ford were able to launch successful products to the market. Compliance cars still contribute to the EV fleet and reduce emissions, and with a switch to FCV we'll be getting fewer alternative cars, with less carbon footprint savings (if any).

In my mind, democracy is when needs of 100k families are prioritized over the minority thousand (most of which are probably test vehicles anyways). CEC claims that FCVs improve carbon footprint with messed-up studies and misleads consumers. In the end it contradicts the government goal of reducing energy dependency on import fossil fueld. Most of us here find this illogical and confusing, but I see this as plain corruption, or best case criminal incompetence. Hopefully at some point it all will surface, I just wish it's not too late, as many of those advancements that happened so far in EV industry can be junked in favor of FCVs.