EnergyScape turns spotlight on future driving: biofuels, hydrogen fuel cells and electric cars

01 October 2008

Dr Tony Clemens - “We can do this without making any carbon dioxide emissions by capturing and storing left-over carbon dioxide from both coal and biomass.”

The EnergyScape team from CRL Energy, Scion, IRL, GNS Science and NIWA have been examining the technology and the resources that New Zealand has available to create energy and provide fuel for the cars of the future. The scientists, who presented their research so far at a conference in Wellington on 16 July, say that it is important for New Zealand and the rest of the world to have alternative technologies available so that we are not so reliant on petrol, diesel and oil. Especially as these fuels have to be imported, their prices do not remain stable, and they could eventually run out. Dr Peter Hall from Scion discussed ways to make biofuels from biomass to run existing combustion engines. He said that existing residues, such as tallow, fruit rejects, straw, dairy effluent etc., would only ever provide a very small percentage of demand, that these are widely distributed and could only be small scale operations. He proposed that purpose grown forests, probably pine or another fast growing species, are the best bet for generating large amounts of biofuel, and that New Zealand currently had some three million hectares available for such a process. He said that if current trends in oil barrel prices continue that prices could get to $185 a barrel by 2015, if that happens, large-scale forest biomass to liquid fuels could compete directly with fossil fuel even if no improvements in existing technology occurred. Dr Tony Clemens, research manager at CRL Energy discussed the potential role of hydrogen in New Zealand’s future energy mix. He says that using ‘fluidised bed coal gasification’ it is possible to make hydrogen from coal and biomass such as wood waste. “We can do this without making any carbon dioxide emissions by capturing and storing left-over carbon dioxide from both coal and biomass.”

The hydrogen can be used to run cars which have hydrogen fuel cells. Several large car manufacturers, such as Honda, Toyota, BMW, Ford and GM are already making hydrogen-powered cars, however, it is likely to be a decade or more before we have them here as New Zealand doesn’t yet have a hydrogen infrastructure (hydrogen stations instead of/as well as petrol stations). Many countries have already installed hydrogen stations and introduced hydrogen powered public transport buses. An increasing number of private vehicles are running on hydrogen. Dr Clemens discussed how such an infrastructure could be rolled out in New Zealand, beginning with a ‘hydrogen highway’ from Wellington to Auckland. Hydrogen powered electric vehicles are an attractive option for many reasons, not least of which is they have no emissions except for some water vapour. He also pointed out that the hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles being made by the auto-manufacturers are already able to match the performance of conventional vehicles in terms of range, refueling times and meeting customer expectations and to exceed them in terms of reduced emissions and efficiency. Neither of the alternative vehicle technologies – biofuelled vehicles or battery electric vehicles are able to do so.

Many car manufacturers are also making electric cars which you can plug in to a normal power outlet to recharge your car overnight, or combined fuel and electric vehicles. These might also be a good option for New Zealand car drivers and the Government hopes to have 5% of the vehicle fleet as electric vehicles by 2020, assuming we can generate enough electricity to meet both business as usual needs and an increased demand to run our vehicle fleet. Hyundai have just announced this September that they will be producing a retrofitted electric vehicle, the Getz, these should be available from November this year. A spokesman for Hyundai warned that while acceleration would be the same as a combustion vehicle, the maximum speed is about 120km/hour with a maximum range from a single charge of about 120km, they would, however, be ideal for urban driving. Fully recharging takes about 9 hours from a normal power outlet, the vehicle is expected to have a price tag of about $35,000.