Chemical Industry and Chemical Engineering Quarterly (Jul 2008)
THE PHOENIX PROJECT: SHIFTING TO A SOLAR HYDROGEN ECONOMY BY 2020
Abstract
The most serious energy, economic and environmental problems are related to the use of fossil and nuclear fuels, which are rapidly diminishing and highly polluting, and many distinguished atmospheric chemists, including Dr. James Hanson at NASA, Dr. Steven Chu, the director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and Professor Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences have documented that climate changes are now occurring much faster than predicted just a few years ago. The methane hydrates in the oceans and the permafrost in vast areas of the Artic regions of Siberia, Alaska and Canada are now starting to rapidly melt, and given this could release 50 to 100 times more carbon into the atmosphere than is now generated from the burning of fossil fuels, humanity is rapidly approaching an exponential “tipping point” of no return. Given this sense of urgency, Hanson and others have warned that fossil fuels need to be phased-out by 2020 if irreversible damage to the earth’s climate and food production systems is to be avoided. The Phoenix Project plan seeks to do exactly that by mass-producing wind-powered hydrogen production systems and simply modifying all the existing vehicles and power plants to use the hydrogen made from the sun, wind and water.
