Friday, 24th September 2010
Hydrogen technology ‘the next Industrial Revolution’
Investing in hydrogen technology can form the basis of a new ‘Industrial Revolution’ with zero carbon emissions, Scottish Conservative MEP Struan Stevenson said today.
And he cautioned against the SNP Scottish Government’s new target for 80% of electricity being generated from renewables by 2020 from becoming a fixation with inefficient windfarms.
Mr Stevenson made the comments after test-driving a pioneering new hydrogen-powered car, the Honda FCX Clarity, which runs on clean electricity and emits only pure water from its exhaust.
The car has a top speed of over 100 mph and can do 350 miles on a single charge. Instead of a petrol tank, hydrogen and oxygen are combined to generate electricity.
Mr Stevenson said:
"It's more than a century since the birth of the automobile and in that time we have become increasingly dependent on fossil fuels to the detriment of our environment. We have to change.
"We need to aim for zero CO2 emissions and the technology is already here to achieve this goal.
“The Honda hydrogen car, the first of its kind, is what the planet has been waiting for - a car that runs on hydrogen and emits no CO2 or other harmful emissions whatsoever. The exhaust only emits pure water which you could drink. It is an amazing breakthrough.
“We need to invest a lot more resources into developing the hydrogen economy which, I believe, will be the next great Industrial Revolution.”
But he added:
“The new Scottish renewable energy target must not be used as an excuse by the SNP to pepper Scotland’s priceless landscape with towering, inefficient windfarms.
“The wind in Scotland blows enough for wind turbines to produce electricity only around 27% of the time. In the cold snap last spring, we experienced widespread high pressure and low wind speeds across the country. For several days, Britain's wind turbines, said to be capable of delivering 5% of our electricity, in fact delivered only 0.2%.
“And in Denmark, the public has become so fed up with their countryside being littered with these creaking monsters that the state-owned energy company has pulled the plug on any future onshore windfarms.
“In our transition to a green economy we have to be smart. Hitching Scotland’s energy future to windfarms is a risky strategy that could literally see the lights go out when the wind changes.”
