| View Larger Image | The Hydrogen Economy | Paperbackby Jeremy Rifkin (Author)
| List Price: | $14.95 | | Price: | $5.98 | | You Save: | $8.97 (60%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Tarcher | | Edition: | 1st Tradest Edition | | Page Count: | 304 Pages | | Publication Date: | August 25, 2003 | | Sales Rank: | 112,281th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The road to global security," writes Jeremy Rifkin, "lies in lessening our dependence on Middle East oil and making sure that all people on Earth have access to the energy they need to sustain life. Weaning the world off oil and turning it toward hydrogen is a promissory note for a safer world." Rifkin's international bestseller The Hydrogen Economy presents the clearest, most comprehensive case for moving ourselves away from the destructive and waning years of the oil era toward a new kind of energy regime. Hydrogen-one of the most abundant substances in the universe-holds the key, Rifkin argues, to a cleaner, safer, and more sustainable world. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 23 reviews)
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Extremely Informative by Timothy C. Ackerman (Tucson, AZ)  5 Stars
December 27, 2008
This Book brings our past,present and future energy issues into focus very clearly. I like the way author brought factual and statistical infomation and history of civilizations on earth together,the problems that we will face in the future and possible solutions.
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Where does all this Hydogen come from...for starters.. by B. Grant (Atlanta GA)  2 Stars
December 17, 2008
If you want nuts and bolts and some interesting discussion of a modern Manhattan Project.. this book covers about 30 years of progress in Hydrogen related energy research.
Fuel from Water: Energy Independence with Hydrogen, 11th Edition (Paperback). My highlighter just about ran out of ink! ;-)
Another good one was "HYDROGEN - Hot Stuff Cool Science 2nd edition: Discover the Future of Energy".. It is very entertaining (imagine that), and suitable as a robust primer to much of the existing knowledge base.
Elsewhere, these reviews of Hydrogen Economy seem to touch upon the same meme.. The book is a 1- History lesson on global energy 2- Skips discussion of nuclear 3- Polly anna ideas about hydrogen without presenting any real advice about where all the Hydrogen will be derived.
What many have failed to highlight is this author is a well-connected individual, apparently teaching at Whartons EMBA program and chairing a major public policy energy think tank in Washington. The idea that someone who can ignore, in a book about the Hydrogen economy, the importance of Nuclear power and how Hydrogen is produced from a primary power source, and THEN be allowed to TEACH budding young executives at Wharton AND pontificate energy policy.. all for meager 100's of thousands per year in salaries and perks..
When you watch CNBC tonight.. just imagine this character as just one of a legion of slack dilberts ensconced with too much power and too little intelligence.. being rewarded for their vaunted efforts.
With incompetent leadership like this, no wonder we are embroiled in a global recession.
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Brave new energy world? by Dennis Littrell (SoCal)  4 Stars
December 14, 2008
Or a new shell game?
The title of this book is a little misleading since most of the book is about the effect that energy has had on the rise and fall of human societies from hunter-gatherers through agriculturists and the Roman Empire to the ascendency of the United States in the 19th century and into the current world economy. Rifkin sees cheap energy and the high per capita use of it as a prime indicator of a flourishing society. He notes that Rome rose when it was able to commandeer energy sources from conquered lands in the form of tribute and slaves; but when the booty from military conquests began to fall to diminishing returns, Rome itself began to fall.
He sees the same thing possibly happening to the United States in another but similar manner. He notes that US domestic oil production peaked in 1970. (p. 4) Whereas up until then, domestic production supplied most of the oil the United States used; since then we have become more and more dependent on foreign sources. He foresees a peak in world crude production sometime in the next decade or so, and after that a slide toward more and more expensive oil and more and more of our wealth flowing into the last bastion of crude reserves in primarily the Middle Eastern states.
What to do about this? Hocus-pocus, usher in the hydrogen economy in which hydrogen fuel cells will replace not only gas from the pump but will generate electricity for home, farm and office. There is just one little catch: at current prices the cost of converting either gasoline, natural gas or water (all requiring energy, usually electrical power) is prohibitive. Rifkin de-emphasizes this little problem as he enthuses about how decentralized and how clean-burning will be the "decarbonized" hydrogen economy. At about the time Rifkin's book was written, according to Michael A. Peavey in his book, Fuel from Water: Energy Independence with Hydrogen, it cost $7.40 to create enough hydrogen fuel to equal the energy provided by one gallon of gasoline (at electricity costing $0.10 per Kwh). Rifkin does not go into this non-cost effectiveness to any great degree, partly because he believes both that the cost of conversion will go down and the price of oil will go up.
A quick read might give the impression that one can use electricity to produce hydrogen from say water and use the hydrogen to create electricity or run engines with a net gain. Not so. The efficiency of the process of electrolysis (getting hydrogen from water) is about 50%. This is a big net loss. So why are automobile manufactures, oil companies and Jeremy Rifkin so excited about hydrogen technology?
First and foremost of course hydrogen is clean burning. It does not produce any greenhouse gases that are leading to global warming. And second, when used in fuel cell technology there is the prospect that energy use and production will be decentralized allowing individuals and small organizations freedom from the vast infrastructure and top down organization that characterizes the oil industry today.
Both of these advantages of hydrogen however depend on the use of renewable resources, wind, sun, downward running water, evaporation, the burning of biomass, etc. to isolate the hydrogen which is always tied up in molecules with other elements as in water, natural gas, oil, etc. So what the advantages accruing from the proposed brave new world of the hydrogen economy actually depend on is the same thing we cannot do today, that is, get the bulk of our energy from renewable resources.
As others have pointed out, essentially hydrogen is an energy storage device. The initial energy must come from somewhere else. Although we definitely need storage devices that can be placed where we want them to be utilized even when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, storage devices themselves are not an independent source of energy and cannot by themselves be the solution to our energy problems.
Having said this, the book is still a very good read and an eye-opener about the coming end of the fossil fuel era, arriving at our doorsteps in just a few decades. Also Rifkin's speculations about the nature of the hydrogen economy are interesting and probably pertinent since the major car manufacturers and the major oil companies are already gearing up for the transformation. These mega-players in the energy game will dictate the rules in the years to come. They will use their existing infrastructures and their capital to ease the transformation for them and to maintain their power and profit margins. This is one of the salient points Rifkin makes in this book. The curious thing is, I'm not sure whether, amid all of his enthusiastic expression, he realizes what his message really is, namely that we are going to be burning fossil fuels and building nuclear plants well into the latter half of the 21st century.
Note well this quote on page 189 from John Browne, the CEO of British Petroleum, making the "bullish" forecast that "50 percent" of world-wide energy demand "will be met by solar and other renewable resources by 2050." That, folks, is the bottom line: fifty percent by 2050, fuel cells or no fuel cells.
The bottom line for this book is that it is readable, informative--even at times, fascinating--but not exactly what it purports to be. Read it and judge for yourself.
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Great intro into the state of the worlds energy situation by Owen Owens 4 Stars
November 06, 2008
The first few chapter are great. Lots of information. Well worth the read.
The last couple chapters seem a bit like filler. Certainly valid information, but could have been deeper in material or more concise.
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Light at the end of the tunnel by Anthony Lorizio (Boston, MA USA) 5 Stars
August 28, 2008
Rifkin, in easily understandable language, provides a history of the US's reliance on OIL for energy. After building the historical foundation of economic considerations regarding OIL, he takes the reader to the potentiality of hydrogen use for energy.
This reader, after The Hydrogen Economy's terrific presentation, feels secure that American industry and global free enterprise will smoothly transition away from the strangle hold of OIL.
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