7. Can hydrogen from water be a solution?
Apart from limiting CO2 production, climate scientists
propose the development of new sources of energy among which hydrogen is
more and more regarded as an attractive alternative
(Johnston
et al, 2005) provided it can be produced from water with regeneration of
water after exploitation as source of electric energy according to the
following catalyzed reactions: energy + H2O →
H2 + ½ O2 → H2O +
electricity. So far, hydrogen is primarily produced from fossil
resources. Catalytic electrolysis is of interest only if the energy
needed to dissociate water in hydrogen and oxygen is produced using
environmentally-friendly sources of electricity (Gardner, 2009). What is
presently missing to decide whether a source of energy is better than
another is a heat-cycle assessment from cradle to grave, as it is
currently done with life-cycle assessment to compare processes and
materials that impact the environment (Muralikrishna & Manickam, 2017).
So far, we did not find any quantitative information relative to
heat-cycles of wind turbines and of other CO2-free
sources of electricity in comparison with fossil and radioactive sources
of energy in terms of thermal impact on the climate. Hydro-electricity
may be of particular interest in this regard. However, one can wonder
whether large enough amounts of hydrogen will be producible from
CO2-free sources of energy. It will be the task of
specialists in thermodynamics, and physics together with climatologists
and chemists to collect information’s necessary to decide.