Europe and its hydrogen economy

Energy has quickly moved to the top of the political agenda in countries across the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced an energy summit bringing together German businesses and policymakers, while Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee announced a EUR 500 million-investment plan to develop hydrogen-powered vehicles.

The EU is in the ideal position to lead an "exit strategy" from the oil era, introducing a new energy independence vision based on hydrogen and renewable energies abundantly available on its own territory, and not on far and uncontrollable fossil or nuclear sources.

In 2003 I provided the initial strategic memorandum that led Romano Prodi to establish the European Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform, for a transition into a fully integrated hydrogen economy. Prodi said then that the transformation of Europe's energy regime would be the next great development in European integration after the introduction of the euro.

I currently advise the European Parliament's leadership group for a renewable energy hydrogen economy, composed of members of all six major political groups, and led by Vittorio Prodi, an expert on hydrogen. This group is supported by the Parliament's President Josep Borrell and by Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas.

Hydrogen and fuel cell technologies are now entering the commercial market for industrial, office and home use. Consumers will be able to power up their cell phones, lap-top computers, digital cameras, MP3 players, and PDAs up to 35 hours with a single cartridge. The major automakers have spent billions of dollars developing hydrogen-powered cars, buses, and trucks that are expected to be in the showrooms before 2012.

But hydrogen needs to be produced in a sustainable way, by simply generating a surplus electricity from renewable energies and then electrolysing the water, or extracting it directly from biomass (which could also generate a partial shift in subsidies away from agricultural crops and toward energy crops providing a long-term solution to the question of the EU's agricultural subsidies).

While the costs of extracting hydrogen from renewable energy are increasingly reduced by new technological breakthroughs and economies of scale, the direct and indirect costs of oil and gas on world markets are continuing to rise. Goldman Sachs is already warning of oil spikes of up to $105 a barrel.

The EU has already agreed to generating 22% of its electricity and 12% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010, with even higher benchmarks by 2020. Because renewable energy is intermittent using hydrogen as a "storage carrier" will be essential if the EU is to ensure a reliable supply of energy.

Hydrogen will also dramatically cut down on CO2 emissions and mitigate the effects of "real-time global warming" of which the hurricanes in the US gulf coast, the record flooding in Europe and the spreading drought in the southern hemisphere are clear signals. The hydrogen economy will also defuse the dangerous geopolitical game being played out in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Because hydrogen is so plentiful, every human being could be "empowered," in the first truly democratic energy regime in history, making obsolete today's centralised, top-down flow of energy, controlled by global oil companies. In the new "distributed generation" era, businesses, municipalities and homeowners could become producers and consumers of their own energy. But this will require reconfiguring the power grid with the same architecture and smart technologies of the internet, so that billions of people on Earth can share energy peer-to-peer, just like they now share information at the speed of ligh!

t. This is the third industrial revolution.

All the major automobile, chemical and electronic companies are in a race to the hydrogen era. Energy companies such as BP and Shell sport hydrogen divisions. Japan is making hydrogen technology a critical national priority, while the state of California - the world's fourth largest economy - is operationalising a broad programme to become a fully integrated renewable energy-based economy over the next two decades. Also local regions across Europe are introducing hydrogen R&D projects. Sixteen of the 20 Italian regions have endorsed the eNergency Manifesto for a renewable energy hydrogen economy. In Germany, the Speicherstadt development area just outside the city of Potsdam is pioneering an ambitious biomass and hydrogen project.

The hydrogen economy makes possible a broad redistribution of power on Earth: how soon the world will get there depends on how fast Europe moves today.

• Jeremy Rifkin is the author of The hydrogen economy: the creation of the world wide energy web and the redistribution of power on earth.

Commentary feature in which the author says that a third industrial revolution, namely a move towards an economy based on hydrogen as an energy storage carrier should be an urgent priority for the European Union.
Article is part of a European Voice Special Report, 'A Common EU Energy Policy'.

European Commission: DG Research: Research Topics: Energy research: The European Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform http://europe.eu.int/comm/research/energy/nn/nn_rt/nn_rt_hlg/article_1261_en.htm

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