PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

7. COMPETITION IS THE CREATOR AND THE REGULATOR
When Will Hydrogen Come?
One of the most recent (and most vocal) concerns of environmentalists
is CO 2 (carbon dioxide) pollution, presumably responsible for global
warming. Present levels of CO 2 in the atmosphere have reached recordhigh
values primarily due to coal burning worldwide and gas emissions
from automobiles in developed countries. However, the environmentalists
are once again blowing the whistle for a phenomenon that has been
following a “wise” natural-growth path for more than one hundred
years.
As we moved from one energy source to the next in Figure 7.6 we
see that the hydrogen content of the fuel increases. Wood is rich in carbon
but natural gas is rich in hydrogen. When hydrogen burns it gives
water as exhaust; when carbon burns it gives CO 2 as exhaust. When
wood burns very little hydrogen becomes oxidized to give water. Most
of the energy comes from the carbon that oxidizes to give CO 2 . On the
contrary, when natural gas burns lots of hydrogen become water and
very little carbon becomes CO 2 . The molar ratio hydrogen/carbon for
wood is about 0.1, for coal about 1, for oil about 2, and for natural gas
(e.g., methane) about 4. For a fuel like hydrogen this ration becomes
infinite and the CO 2 emissions to the atmosphere null. 16
The energy substitution described in Figure 7.6 took place in such a
way that fuels rich in hydrogen progressively replaced fuels rich in carbon,
and all that happened in a natural way (i.e., following an S-shaped
pattern). The combination of energy sources according to the shares
shown in Figure 7.6 yields a hydrogen content that increases along an S-
curve (see Figure 7.7). Society followed this S-curve on a global scale
without the conscious intervention of governments or other influential
decision makers. Bottom-up forces have safeguarded for one hundred
and fifty years a smooth transition to energies that are more performing
and less polluting.
The black dots in Figure 7.7 represent the mix of only fossil-based
energy sources (there is no hydrogen involved in nuclear energy). As a
consequence, a deviation from the S-shaped pattern becomes evident
around year 2000 and becomes progressively more pronounced
toward year 2050. The gray area in the figure represents the “missing”
hydrogen content. This amount of hydrogen should somehow be con-
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