Solar Hydrogen

The threats of Climate Change to society are much more dire than typically portrayed, up to and including the demise of modern civilization as we know it due to the world's eventual inability to feed a growing population. Meeting the climate change community 2050 greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goal will require major emission reductions from both electricity generation and transportation sectors. Business-as-usual such as adding some renewable electricity to the power grid and adding battery electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles to the transportation system will not be sufficient to reach the GHG reduction goal. We do not know of any organization or author that has proposed a plausible scenario to achieve the GHG reduction goal and to avoid the estimated societal cost of climate change that could reach $13 trillion over the 21st century. This book describes one bold new approach to achieve the 2050 GHG reduction goal by using solar photovoltaic energy to generate hydrogen gas as the main energy carrier for the transportation system and the main energy storage mechanism to smooth out renewable electricity fluctuations over time, which would eliminate all GHG emissions from generating electricity. We show that such Solar-Hydrogen Energy Systems (SHES) will be affordable without any government support. Private industry can make a robust return on their investments in SHES's. We also show that a full implementation of SHES for the transportation sector would eliminate the need for any oil imports (most vehicles would run on hydrogen fuel), since the growing US oil production can supply all non-transportation petroleum requirements including jet fuel, lubricants, pipeline fuels, and feedstocks for industrial processes, etc.