by guest blogger Stan Thompson In case you came in late, the synthesis epoch is when we started making stuff like fertilizer from renewable energy which, in the previous extraction epoch, we sourced by digging or pumping matter out of the ground. • Natural gas hydrogen is to electrolyzed H2 as jumper cables are to • Read More »
Archives: Hydrogen Economy
Hydrogen: lighting the path to liberty
July 26, 2020 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on Hydrogen: lighting the path to liberty | Filed in: Advocates, Green Hydrogen, History, Hydrogen Economy, Infrastructure, Political Issues.by guest blogger Stan Thompson Very different processes distribute the earth’s mineral wealth and the political configurations of its surface. Though different, they coincide in ways that profoundly impact our destinies. In the late industrial period, the relative value of energy has been so high, and energy extraction as oil and gas has been so • Read More »
“Why Nations Fail” — A great read with an H2 epilog
July 16, 2020 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on “Why Nations Fail” — A great read with an H2 epilog | Filed in: Advocates, Green Hydrogen, History, Hydrogen Economy, Hydrogen Education, Hydrogen Fuel Production, Infrastructure, News, Political Issues.by guest blogger Stan Thompson Davidson College is near our NC home and its proximity offers neighbors access to an astonishing parade of great minds. In 1962 I met cosmologist George Gamow there and got to ask him a few questions. Albert Einstein had died only seven years earlier; some would say Gamow was his • Read More »
The Hydrogen Transition: Kubrick’s “2001” monolith
June 20, 2020 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on The Hydrogen Transition: Kubrick’s “2001” monolith | Filed in: History, Hydrail, Hydrogen Aircraft, Hydrogen Economy, Hydrogen Education, Hydrogen Organizations, Infrastructure, Myths, News, Political Issues.by guest blogger Stan Thompson The world may little note nor long remember the routine June 8, 2020, press release by Germany’s venerable Thyssenkrupp industrial giant. But to me it is a transition marker that’s profound in the same way that the tiny band of iridium and ash around the world marks the cretaceous-tertiary boundary • Read More »
A case for chemelectricity
April 20, 2020 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on A case for chemelectricity | Filed in: Critics, Fuel Cells, Hydrail, Hydrogen Economy, Hydrogen Fuel, Hydrogen Fuel Production, Hydrogen Fuel Storage, Myths.by guest blogger Stan Thompson Many of us who saw the hydrogen transition coming over two decades ago are frustrated by writers today who feel obliged to apologize for the vast amount of hydrogen that goes into fertilizer and petrochemicals. Many of these folks probably feel they have to mention it because so many have • Read More »
Can we just acknowledge the “hydrogen transition”?
December 1, 2019 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on Can we just acknowledge the “hydrogen transition”? | Filed in: Advocates, Fuel Cells, History, Hydrail, Hydrogen Economy, Infrastructure, Myths.by guest blogger, Stan Thompson Let’s limit the damage to hydrogen progress caused by “friendly fire.” Good reportage, scholarship and fair play do not require that every article point out that most hydrogen comes from extracted carbon. It’s true, it’s undeniable—but it’s totally irrelevant. The vast amounts of hydrogen produced from hydrocarbons to make petrochemicals, • Read More »
Business Gets Down to Hydrail
December 3, 2018 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on Business Gets Down to Hydrail | Filed in: Competition, Conferences, Hydrail, Hydrogen Economy, Hyrail.by guest blogger, Stan Thompson When Dr. Holger Busche conceived wind turbine powered commuter trains for Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, back in 1998, he probably had a business model in mind, though he is a committed environmentalist. But by the time I presented the passenger hydrail concept to the US DOT in 2003, the environmental angle had become • Read More »
First presentation ride aboard Alstom’s German hydrail train
April 15, 2018 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on First presentation ride aboard Alstom’s German hydrail train | Filed in: Fuel Cells, History, Hydrail, Hydrogen Economy, Infrastructure, News.by guest blogger Stan Thompson A major milestone in railway history was passed on April 13, 2018, when Alstom Transport’s Coradia iLint hydrail [hydrogen fuel cell rail] train made a “presentation ride” from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt, in the federal state of Hesse, Germany. From my point of view it was a bittersweet occasion for two • Read More »
12th International Hydrail Conference: 27-28 June, 2017
May 17, 2017 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on 12th International Hydrail Conference: 27-28 June, 2017 | Filed in: Conferences, Fuel Cells, Hydrogen Economy, Hyrail, Infrastructure, News.Graz, Austria — 27-28 June, 2017 by guest blogger, Stan Thompson It’s been a dozen years since former Mooresville, NC, USA, Mayor Bill Thunberg, Appalachian State University Research Anaylst, Jason W. Hoyle and I first undertook to midwife hydrogen fuel cell based railway traction into being. Our goal was mostly environmental but we also had a • Read More »
Hydrail: A Pullet Surprise
April 13, 2017 | By Stan Thompson | Comments Off on Hydrail: A Pullet Surprise | Filed in: Hydrail, Hydrogen Economy, Hydrogen Vehicles, Infrastructure, News.by guest blogger Stan Thompson If anyone out there is a friend of CNN’s Nadine Schmidt, please do five things: Buy Nadine a really nice steak dinner! Thank her for her excellent segment on hydrail April 12 (http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/12/technology/germany-hydrogen-powered-train/). Give her my eternal thanks for exhuming perhaps the deepest—and most regrettably—buried environmental story of the 21st century. Tell her about • Read More »