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The onlinewsletter of Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik GmbH (LBST) and the German Hydrogen Association
(DWV) · 2nd Quarter 2007
· 11th Year
ã Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik GmbH
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f-cell award 2007: Invitation for application
HyWeb, 2007-06-29: For the seventh time now the Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation has been advertising the Europe-wide Innovation Award Fuel Cell – f-cell award 2007. Closing date for applications is July 13, 2007. The Awards ceremony will be held within the f-cell symposium, September 24-25, 2007 in Stuttgart, Germany. The f-cell award is endowed with up to EUR 25,000.
Thanks to its closeness to this year's Grove Fuel Cell Symposium (London, 25-27 September), it has been possible to gather a number of International speakers in coordination with organisers of the Grove symposium. John Tak, President and Manager of the Canadian Fuel Cell Association H2FCC has already accepted and will provide an overview on the North American market. Alison Setton, of H2FCC as well, will report about the Hydrogen Highway which is being built at the moment and which will extend from Whistler near Vancouver, site of the Olympic Games 2010, to San Diego in California. Akiteru Maruta of Technova Incorporated in Tokio will give a lecture on the Japanese fuel cell market with special emphasis on mobile applications.
Links:
:: f-cell award: www.f-cell.de/award/english/
:: f-cell symposium: www.f-cell.de/english/program.phpPS/SG
EHA: Where will hydrogen come from?
HyWeb, 2007-04-25: The European Hydrogen Association (EHA) has published an English translation of the paper "Woher kommt der Wasserstoff?" – German for "Where will the hydrogen come from?" – written by Munich-based Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik consultants and published by the German Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association. The paper is already vividly discussed in Germany. With its translation into English this discussion can now be continued on an international level.
In recent years, the question has been asked repeatedly “Where will the hydrogen come from?”. This question is important, but can only be answered if one considers a more fundamental question “where will our energy come from in the coming decades?”. Today, it mainly comes from finite fossil and nuclear energy carriers; in the long term, it will come from renewable energies. The basic question of availability of raw energy materials is to be covered in this brochure and an answer proposed.
Title: "Where will the Energy for Hydrogen Production come from? – Status and Alternatives"; Published by the European Hydrogen Association (EHA); Commissioned by the German Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (DWV); Authors: J. Schindler, R. Wurster, M. Zerta, V. Blandow and W. Zittel of the Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik GmbH (LBST); Brussels, Belgium, 2007
Download [pdf, 3.4 MB]:
http://www.hyweb.de/Wissen/docs2007/EHA_WhereWillH2ComeFrom_2007.pdf
Links: www.h2euro.org, www.dwv-info.de
PS
World coal resources and future production
HyWeb, 2007-04-12: End of 2006 the Energy Watch Group (EWG) published a report on Uranium Resources and Perspectives of Nuclear Energy (see HyWeb Archive 4/2006). EWG members and responsible authors of this report are Dr. Werner Zittel and Jörg Schindler of Munich based strategy and technology consultant Ludwig-Bölkow-Systemtechnik GmbH. The two scientists now have taken another fresh look, this time on coal resources and future coal production.
Background
When discussing the future availability of fossil energy resources, the conventional wisdom has it that globally there is an abundance of coal which allows for an increasing coal consumption far into the future. This is either regarded as being a good thing enabling the eventual substitution of declining crude oil and natural gas supplies. Or it is seen as a horror scenario leading to catastrophic consequences for the world's climate. But the discussion rarely focuses on the premise: how much coal is there really?
Data quality
The first and foremost conclusion from the latest EWG investigation is that data quality of coal reserves and resources is poor, both on global and national levels. But there is no objective way to determine how reliable the available data actually are. On a global level the statistics generally overestimate the reserves and the resources. Both reserves and resources have been downgraded worldwide over the past two decades, in some cases drastically.
The most dramatic example of unexplained changes in data is the downgrading of the proven German hard coal reserves by 99 percent (!) from 23 billion tons to 0.183 billion tons in 2004. Large reserves formerly seen as proven have been reassessed as being speculative. The responsible German administration did not publish any explanation, and thus the downgrading went unnoticed in spite of the intensive public debate of the future of coal production in Germany. Also the German lignite reserves have been downgraded drastically, which is noteworthy because Germany is the largest lignite producer world-wide.
Poland has downgraded its hard coal reserves by 50 percent compared to 1997 and has downgraded its lignite and subbituminous coal reserves in two steps since 1997 to zero.
For some countries such as Vietnam proven reserves have not been updated for up to 40 years. The data for China were last updated in 1992, in spite of the fact that about 20 percent of their then stated reserves have been produced since then, and another 1-2 percent have been consumed in uncontrolled coal fires.
Only reserve data are of practical relevance, not resource data
The logic of distinguishing between reserves, which are defined as being proved and recoverable, and resources, which include additional discovered and undiscovered inferred/ assumed/ speculative quantities, is that over time production and exploration activities allow to reclassify some of the resources into reserves.
In practice, such a reclassification has only occurred in two cases over the past two decades despite increasing coal prices: India (hard coal; 1987: 12.6 Mt; 2005: 90 Mt), and Australia (hard coal; 1987: 29 Mt; 2005: 38.6 Mt). All other countries have individually downgraded their hard coal reserves by a combined 35 percent over the same period. In total, global hard coal reserves have been downgraded by 15 percent. Adding all coal qualities from anthracite to lignite reveals the same general picture of global downgradings. The cumulative coal production over this period is small compared to the overall downgrading and is thus no explanation for it. For global resource assessments, the trend is even more severe: World coal resource assessments have been downgraded continuously from 1980 to 2005 by an overall 50 percent.
Few countries dominate coal globally
Largest
2nd largest
3rd largest
4th largest
Combined share
of top 6Reserves 2005
USA
120 BtoeRussia
69 BtoeIndia
61 BtoeChina
59 Btoe85%
Production 2005
China
1,108 Mtoe/aUSA
576 Mtoe/aAustralia
202 Mtoe/aIndia
200 Mtoe/a> 80%
Net Export 2005
Australia
150 Mtoe/aIndonesia
60 Mtoe/aSouth Africa
47 Mtoe/aColombia
36 Mtoe/a85%
USA beyond peak production, fastest reserve depletion in China
The USA, being the second largest producer, have passed peak production of high quality coal already in 1990. Production of subbituminous coal more than compensated for this decline in terms of volume and – according to its stated reserves – this trend can continue for another 10 to 15 years. However, due to the lower energy content of subbituminous coal, US coal production in terms of energy has already peaked 5 years ago – it is unclear whether this trend can be reversed. Also specific productivity per miner is declining since about 2000.
The fastest reserves depletion worldwide is taking place in China with 1.9 percent of reserves produced annually.
Global coal production to peak around 2025 at 30 percent above present production in the best case
Even though the quality of reserve data is poor, an analysis based on these data is deemed meaningful. According to past experience, it is very likely that the available statistics are biased on the high side and therefore projections of future production profiles will give an upper boundary of the possible future development.
The following figure provides a summary of past and future world coal production in energy terms based on a detailed country-by-country analysis. This analysis reveals that global coal production may still increase over the next 10 to 15 years by about 30 percent, mainly driven by Australia, China, the Former Soviet Union countries (Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan) and South Africa. Production will then reach a plateau and will eventually decline thereafter. The possible production growth until about 2020 according to this analysis is in line with the two demand scenarios of the International Energy Agency (IEA) in the 2006 edition of the World Energy Outlook. However, the projected development beyond 2020 is only compatible with the IEA alternative policy scenario in which coal production is constrained by climate policy measures while the IEA reference scenario assumes further increasing coal consumption (and production) until at least 2030. According to our analysis, this will not be possible due to limited reserves.
Again, it needs to be emphasised that this projection represents an upper limit of future coal production according to the authors' best estimate. Climate policy or other restrictions have not been taken into account.
Link: EnergyWatchGroup.org
Download: Energy Watch Group (EWG), "COAL: RESOURCES AND FUTURE PRODUCTION. Background paper prepared by the Energy Watch Group", EWG-Series No 1/2007, March 2007 [pdf, 470 kB]
PS
Total opens public hydrogen refuelling station in Munich
HyWeb, 2007-04-05: In cooperation with BMW energy company TOTAL opened the first public hydrogen filling station in Munich on 26 March 2007. Linde AG has developed the filling station technology and also provides the liquefied hydrogen for the filling station, at which also conventional fuels can be obtained. For the first time liquefied hydrogen is stored in a subterranean tank. Both cars and busses can be refuelled with liquefied hydrogen at this filling station. The filling station can be retrofitted to also dispense gaseous hydrogen.
From left to right: Messrs. Monatzeder, Scheuerer and Mallet (Bild: LBST)Already in October 2006 Linde had opened an LH2-/CGH2 filling station in Lohhof near Munich. The until then only hydrogen filling station project in the Greater Munich area and pioneer throughout the world – H2argemuc at Munich airport – ended beginning of 2007. Another hydrogen filling station for research and development purposes is located on the premises of the company ET in Brunnthal near Munich. Please see H2stations.org for details.
Bild: TOTAL
Bild: LBSTAs for hydrogen TOTAL and BMW have cooperated since the beginning of 2006. In this context TOTAL will build and operate three hydrogen filling stations for part of BMW's fleet of Hydrogen 7. The filling station in Munich is the second TOTAL hydrogen filling station after Berlin, a third one will be built in another European capital by the end of 2007.
PS/SG
Greece starts work on fuel cell bus
HyWeb, 2007-04-03: Greece is starting to build its own fuel cell bus for public transport. Transport Minister Michalis Liapis handed over a 40-seater bus to the scientists from the National Technical University of Athens earlier in March which they will equip to run on fuel cells with hydrogen as a fuel. The project is expected to take about a year. The bus will then be tested for 12 months in Athens to check for kinks. If all goes well in the test period, the Transport Ministry is expected to urge the production of more of the buses.PS
Interesting Websites www.H2Mobility.org
All hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles, trains, ships, aircrafts, ...www.H2Stations.org
All hydrogen filling stations world-widewww.Infotools.HFPeurope.org
Database information tools on hydrogen and fuel cell projects, centres of excellence, introductory information on energy, hydrogen and fuel cellswww.H2Data.de
Fact sheet on hydrogenwww.EnergyShortage.com
Information and facts about fossil energy resources
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