Want to see the back of fossil fuels? Calm down, hippies. CAPITALISM has an answer

Want to see the back of fossil fuels? CAPITALISM has the answer

The idea of non-fossil fuel energy costing users less money to use is what gets the economists' hearts racing, as once (if ever) that is true then everyone will quite naturally move to adopt that new and non-polluting system, and the coal plants and oil rigs will crumble away into dust. Hurrah! We're done!

However, here's the thing: I do think we've already put in motion a course of action that is going to lead to that cheaper (and cleaner) energy. I'm not saying there's a magic box buried away somewhere, full of answers, but rather, that research and development is all moving in the right direction for us to be able to have non-carbon-producing energy systems within the time limits required (no, not the ones Greenpeace and the like are babbling about — we've a few decades yet).

A little technical snippet that encourages me in that view. It came from new research on printing your solid oxide fuel cells on a $100 ink jet printer. Not only is this of course cheap in capital, it also economises on the very expensive scandium that makes the most efficient type of these cells. So much so that my back-of-a-envelope calculations gives me a raw materials cost of $120 for making a 5kW stack suitable for a household.

And such a cell stack is very efficient: used as a combined heat and power unit you should get 80 per cent efficiency with hydrogen as the fuel.

Yes, I know, hydrogen is difficult to get, which is why I'd like to make a second point. By combining a pair of solar cells made with a mineral called perovskite and low cost electrodes, scientists have obtained a 12.3 per cent conversion efficiency from solar energy to hydrogen, a record using earth-abundant materials as opposed to rare metals.

However, we need to add a clarification. While there is a mineral of the same name, Perovskite is really a structure of matter, or a lattice of atoms if you prefer. The point is the materials to make it are cheap, very cheap. And if we've a cheap method of making hydrogen and a cheap method of making efficient fuel cells, well, haven't we just discovered the technology to make that economist's eyes light up, one that's going to be cheap enough that people will quite naturally adopt it over time, and thus our entire problem goes away?

OK, sure, this only solves the domestic and heating market problem. Moreover, I'm not suggesting in any way at all that it's going to be the two specific advances mentioned that solve that problem. But as a rough guide, a UK yearly household gas and 'leccy bill is some £1,400. So, if anyone comes along with a piece of kit that works for 10 years and costs, say, £5,000, then people will buy and install it.

I would say that, given there are other such technologies constantly coming out of the labs and research institutes these days, we're getting close to this being technologically and economically possible.

Given that you can, just about, run an internal combustion engine on H2, then cheap H2 production solves that transport problem too.

All of this is, of course, the “technology will save us” argument. But it's also an argument that the profit motive will save us. People have been screaming about energy Armageddon for long enough that engineers and financiers are now out there in pursuit of the cash to be made from a solution to the problem.

This does tickle me rather, namely that the fossil fuel-free world the hippies have been demanding is going to be delivered to them (and the rest of us) by capitalism. ®