Dr. Frank Kreith

Professor Emeritus
University of Colorado

Byron Short Lecture: Fallacies of a Hydrogen Economy

Four years ago the U.S. Department of Energy published the "National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap" and the following year President George W. Bush unveiled the Administration's Hydrogen Initiative in his 2003 State of the Union Message. The same year the National Academy of Engineering released a study describing the opportunities, costs, barriers and R&D needs of a hydrogen economy and cautiously endorsed its feasibility.

My colleague, Dr. R. E. West, and I have made a critical "cradle-to-grave" analysis of the production and utilization technologies for a national hydrogen energy system. On the basis of this analysis, we concluded that no currently available hydrogen pathway, irrespective of whether it uses fossil fuels, nuclear fuels or renewable technology as the primary energy source to generate electricity or heat, can compete with using the power or heat directly from any of these sources.

My talk will outline the steps and the reasoning of our analysis leading to the conclusion that it would be a mistake to rely on hydrogen as the energy carrier for a secure energy future. I will then offer some suggestions for de-carbonizing our energy and transportation system without using hydrogen as an energy carrier.

Dr. Frank Kreith has taught at the University of California, Lehigh University, and the University of Colorado, where he is now Professor Emeritus of Engineering. From 1988 to 2001 he was the ASME Legislative Fellow for Energy and Environment at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) where he provided assistance on energy, transportation and environmental protection to legislators in all fifty state governments. Prior to joining NCSL in 1988, Dr. Kreith was the Chief of Thermal Research at the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), currently the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He is the author of over a hundred peer-reviewed articles and of textbooks on heat transfer, solar energy and transportation.

Friday, March 31, 2006, at 3:00 p.m.
ETC 2.136

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