For the first time, the Olympic torch burned hydrogen. Does this herald a new hydrogen-powered age?
For the first time, the Olympic torch burned hydrogen . Officials will be ferried around in some 500 cars and 100 buses made by Toyota and running on fuel cells, portable power plants that consume hydrogen and emit only water vapour. The Kawasaki King Skyfront Tokyu Rei hotel gets energy from hydrogen sourced from waste plastics.
All nifty, to be sure. But also as immaterial as the lightest gas. Fuel-cell cars are miles from the mass market, despite 20 years of efforts by Toyota and other Japanese firms. The lack of refuelling infrastructure, difficulty of storing the stuff in small vehicles and fuel cells’ persistently high cost all argue against a big role for hydrogen in decarbonising transport.
And yet Japan does have a shot at hydrogen-superpowerdom. Behind the scenes its firms are pursuing unglamorous applications in heavy industry and other hard-to-decarbonise sectors. The government is egging them on. In June, for example, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry laid out a plan to slash carbon emissions from steelmaking by shifting to “direct-reduction iron” . This process both uses considerably less energy and can replace some climate-unfriendly ingredients of the requisite industrial chemistry .is lavishing billions of dollars on the industry to commercialise the use of hydrogen in blast furnaces by 2030.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Burning clean"
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