In the last few days, there’s been some dicussion in the blog comments over hydrogen vehicles, and whether anything will come of them. One commenter has referred to http://www.cellaenergy.com/, a new startup which is trying to find solutions to some of the problems faced by hydrogen vehicles. Of course, there’s lots of research going on, into hydrogen vehicles, battery electric vehicles (or “BEVs”) and so on. Some of it will pan out commercially and some won’t.
Here’s a picture of a hydrogen car. Eagle-eyed observers will note that it says “hydrogen” on the side (and “fuel cell” where the numberplate would normally go); other than that, all the interesting stuff is under the hood.
The Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell SUV. They plan to bring this car into low-scale production in the near future. Picture source: Hyundai
The rest of this post is quoted from my thesis; it’s a couple of years old, and may not reflect the latest developments. But it should be a fairly good introduction to hydrogen vehicles, and the obstacles that need to be overcome if they’re going to be implemented on a large scale. If anyone wants to share their own views, the comments box is just down the page, but remember to keep the discussion respectful.
One potential source of transport energy is hydrogen. Hydrogen reacts with oxygen to produce water, a reaction which can take place through combustion – in which case the hydrogen-powered vehicle would make use of an internal combustion engine – or via a “fuel cell”, in which case the energy is converted into electricity and used to charge a battery.
Because water is the only chemical product of the hydrogen-oxygen reaction, hydrogen-powered vehicles produce negligible tank-to-wheels emissions. It is possible that fuel cell vehicles could match the range of traditional vehicles, overcoming one of the potential issues with battery electric vehicles. However, this will not be achieved in the near future (Ajanovic, 2008).
Although there has been much discussion and research towards promoting a “hydrogen economy”, most sources believe that fuel cell vehicles are decades away from large-scale production. Even in the International Energy Agency (IEA’s) low-carbon 450 Scenario, fuel cell vehicles are expected to have a minimal role by 2035, with plug-in hybrids and BEVs being much more important (IEA, 2010, p. 431). Ajanovic (2008, p. 4223) believes that hydrogen-powered vehicles will only have “significant” penetration into transport “at the earliest by about 2030”, and then only “under very favourable conditions”. The New Zealand Government (2007, p. 58) stated that “storage, transportation and other technical issues are likely to prevent hydrogen having anything other than niche uses for the next 25 to 30 years”.
There are a number of pitfalls with hydrogen as a transport energy source. Firstly, it is typically produced through the steam reforming of natural gas (Ajanovic, 2008), a non-renewable energy resource. Secondly, the infrastructural investments will be much larger than those needed for BEVs, with a “nearly complete lack of fuel distribution and production infrastructure” existing at present (IEA, 2009, p. 151). Thirdly, a shift to hydrogen-powered vehicles would be “disruptive” for the car industry, compared to the more evolutionary process of moving towards BEVs (IEA, 2009, p. 151). Fourthly, hydrogen is likely to be more expensive than electricity (IEA, 2009).
New Zealand researchers Page and Krumdieck (2009, p. 3330) argue that hydrogen “provides an inefficient link between a renewable electricity resource and demand for transport energy compared to an all-electric transport mode.” They also note that “electricity offers the same environmental and security benefits as hydrogen” (Page & Krumdieck, 2009, p. 3329), and are sceptical of the benefits from large-scale implementation of hydrogen technology in vehicles.
The IEA notes that fuel cell vehicles could eventually reach a similar cost level to BEVs and achieve much greater range, and that they do offer “significant” potential to reduce emissions if the hydrogen is produced appropriately, although to no greater an extent than BEVs (IEA, 2009, p. 151). On the whole, though, the IEA believes that BEVs are more likely to become the preferred technology; these vehicles have “a natural advantage [over hydrogen vehicles] given the existence of the electricity grid system, and a clear transitional path from plug-in hybrids” (IEA, 2009, p. 114).
In summary, a range of sources agree that hydrogen vehicles are much further away from commercialisation than BEVs; will require greater infrastructural investment; and offer the same of perhaps fewer benefits than BEVs. BEVs and hydrogen vehicles both require infrastructure to reach their full potential, and this, along with network externalities, means that one or the other technology is likely to dominate. The points noted above suggest that hydrogen vehicles are unlikely to become the chosen technology.
Sources – note some of these won’t be available online without subscriptions to the various journals:
Ajanovic, A. (2008). On the economics of hydrogen from renewable energy sources as an alternative fuel in transport sector in Austria. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 33(16), 4223-4234.
New Zealand Government. (2007). New Zealand energy strategy to 2050: Powering our future. Wellington.
IEA. (2009). Transport, energy and CO2: Moving toward sustainability.
IEA. (2010). World Energy Outlook 2010.
Page, S., & Krumdieck, S. (2009). System-level energy efficiency is the greatest barrier to development of the hydrogen economy. Energy Policy, 37(9), 3325-3335.
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Interesting article on New Scientist this week. To store hydrogen in a convenient form you may only need a tank for storing ammonia :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929286.600-grab-ammonia-out-of-thin-air-for-fuel-of-the-future.html
I have always understood that the major barrier to Hydrogen Vehicles is the difficulty and cost associated with the production of hydrogen gas. If we could develop renewable sources of hydrogen, is this likely to swing the balance in favor of Hydrogen Vehicles in the long-term? (The link below is about recent developments in solar production of hydrogen gas)
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/05/hydrogen-gas-solar-reactor
Interesting article but please explain acroyms as you go.
I had to google BEV (battery electric vehicle) which was used throughout your article without explanation – we are not all policy wonks.
Thanks Graeme, I’ve updated the post with the abbreviations now explained.
This completely misses the point. Its not what cars are powered by that is the problem, it is the room cars and the provisions for them take up that is the problem. Using cars for commuting for the majority of us has no future no matter what they are powered by. 1/4 of cities like Auckland is taken up by cars, roads and carparking – none of the great cities that we love overseas are this car dominated. Do we want a city for people or a city for cars this is the question, not what the bloody things are powered by.
ps the whole hydrogen powered car thing was just a smokescreen for inaction on electric cars by US administrations. It was always going to be in the never never. Now Tesla has blown the cover off that and conventional car companies are scrambling to get up to speed with electric cars (and we’ll no longer put up companies producing good electric vehicles like the GM1 and the electric Rav 4 just to comply with the California clean air regs (until they managed to get those abolished) and they wouldn’t let people buy them.
Hi Peter, I absolutely agree re: the first paragraph. That thought, along with the need for an absolute overhaul of the world’s electricity production before these things could be sustainable, and the massive costs involved, was what got me interested in public transport in the first place.
It’s both the fuel and the cars. Alternative-fuel cars will take a long time to become commonplace overseas, and longer still to become commonplace in New Zealand (13-year average fleet age, and increasing). The gap between those occurrences and the point where oil-based fuels become unaffordable for most New Zealanders needs to be filled, and if it’s filled well the number of alternative-fuel cars will be considerably lower than the current number of oil-fuelled cars that are needed because there are few alternatives.
It is exceptionally unlikely that there will ever be high-quality public transport in our small rural centres and for our multitudinous rural dwellers. Those people need something to get them around.
I agree with the sentiment Peter. But I think there are also going to be vehicles such as buses, taxis, delivery trucks, and there is always going to be private vehicles, and whilst we shouldn’t succumb to their every whim and build them every new motorway they ask for, and we should put existing roads on road diets, reduce speed limits, take out parking for separated bike lanes etc, there’ll always be some vehicles left and we may as well make that fleet of vehicles as clean as possible. Electric vehicles are all good, but maybe hydrogen, ammonia or compressed air vehicles will be more economic in certain situations. Whenever there is a practical cleaner technology that is almost as cheap we should regulate the dirtier technology out of existence. For instance with present technology I think we could move to a ban on diesels and use compressed natural gas instead as diesel exhausts are lethal so there is amoral argument to getting rid of diesel. (And for those who know me – the same applies to the way we heat our houses – the dirtier technologies should be got rid of).
I think a more promising future lies more the way of lighter vehicles where electric makes more sense – http://wellingtoncycleways.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/the-elf-a-cheaper-but-not-quite-perfect-velomobile/
Everyone is entitled to an opinion and I respect that but does anyone really believe that the population want to be rid of cars? I don’t know anyone outside of this blog that doesn’t lust after a nice Aston Martin, aspire to be Jenson Button, or enjoy the thrill of a sneaky bit of speeding.
Apart from a general love of cars they are also very practical. I enjoy a good ride but Id rather be in my AM on a cold wet day than cycling 30kms to work in the rain. As someone in oil trading I often get a bit of grief from people about the price of filling the car. When I point out that a couple of bucks is a cheap way to travel 30kms (in the cold wet or dark especially) I never fail to gain agreement.
So whilst I respect your opinion Peter that the world would be better off without cars, I can assure you the overwhelming majority of the planet disagree.
Switching cars to a lower or zero carbon footprint would make a big difference to the world we live in and I think this article from John is great because it opens awareness to the possible solutions of the not too distant future.
There’s a huge difference between “I want” and “I demand”. Demanding means that you must be willing to and able to pay for it. People may lust after an Aston Martin, but 99% won’t ever get one.
And if the externalities of motoring were charged to motorists and public transport is improved, then I think we will find fewer and fewer people being willing to and able to pay for the privilege of driving.
There’ll be precious few people on this blog who don’t lust after a nice Aston Martin either. Just because we advocate for a change in transport vision away from worshipping at the altar of the private motor car doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate fine examples of the automotive engineering art.
“I don’t know anyone outside of this blog that doesn’t lust after a nice Aston Martin, aspire to be Jenson Button, or enjoy the thrill of a sneaky bit of speeding.” – Really? Maybe you just need to expand the group of people you associate with. I know lots of people who dont give a rats arse about the car they drive (and lots who do). And sorry, most people I know (and me) have no idea who Jenson Button is. Is that really a person’s name?
I think we would be better off without PRIVATE motor vehicles. Of course for moving stuff around or even taxis, ICE vehicles are great and we only use a small proportion of our fuel for that. It is providing for massive numbers of vehicles and worse, storing them for 8-10 hours a day in the city centre that has killed cities.
I often think what the world would be like if there had been some minimum size to ICE engines – eg if for some reason (I have no idea why) it wasnt possible to produce anything smaller than a 5 litre engine. So we could still have trains, planes, buses, trucks and of course some large cars but not the ubiquitous private onwership we do now. When I see photos of cities in the 1950s with streetcars and nice green leafy suburbs, i think it was an opportunity for much nicer cities that we missed.
You can still take photos of such things today, just like you could take photos of congested roads in the 50s if that’s what blows your whistle.
Where can I take pictures of streetcars in leafy suburbs? I am thinking of the photo that Patrick has posted of Jervois road in the 1950s before it was raped by auto dependence and the disastrous decision to route SH1 through the Harbour Bridge (not the original plan).
Car congested? Well I know you have an interesting idea of what congested means so I wont ask you to justify that.
And yes looking at nice leafy streets with streetcars blows my whistle very much – it is soothing and gives me some hope for mankind (like the trams in Melbourne and Prague) – as opposed to Jervois Road now which is just awful and one to be avoided – in my opinion.
Well, clearly you haven’t taken your whistle off to MOTAT and the zoo as it be blowing out of control over there.
But if it’s just leafy streets do it for you without the street car there are plenty of places round Auckland. Where I live in Epsom almost every side street is lined with big old trees and plenty of leaves. Can’t say I’ve seen anyone blowing their whistle over them however.
We can dream Goosoid.
Surely it’s not either or. I would like to have a mix of public transport – so you take the train most of the time for your daily communte and then you can take your Aston M. on a lovely driving road at full clip because it’s not clogged with congestion. Aston Martins at 5k in gridlock sad. It’s like a caged tiger in a bad zoo enclosure.
Phil, where in this article or elsewhere on the blog is there the view that the population should be rid of cars? This article is about how unlikely hydrogen vehicles are to hit the mainstream anytime soon. I don’t see where the author has suggested this means we shouldn’t have any cars. Any new technology is up against what we have now and current diesel and petrol powered cars are going to be hard to beat anytime soon.
People have misconstrued my comments – I was not saying there should be no cars, just that cites shouldn’t be car dominated, just that the majority of us shouldn’t be commuting by car.
Companies like Toyota, Nissan and Honda have been working towards electric cars for decades. The entire point of the hybrid program is to get a large scale testing bed for electric drive and battery systems.
PS: Peter, what ‘great cities’ are you thinking of that are not dominated by cars? I cant really think of any and Ive been to a lot of places round the world.
London, New York, Paris, Rome, Chicago, Sydney, Hong Kong = grid locked
Are you a ‘one eyed cantabrian’ because Christchurch is about the only city I know that doesn’t have any traffic…lol..jokes!
There’s a huge difference between auto dependency and gridlock. The gridlock is because of the high population. Per capita wise, I’m pretty sure car usage and ownership would be lower than Auckland or any NZ city. Still though, most of the cities you list still have work to do to improve their PT.
All the cities I mentioned above are pretty grid locked regardless of population density. I actually find driving in Auckland a doddle… I appreciate that I tend to compare Aucklands traffic to major European cities but any city where you can have diagonal crossing at traffic lights can not really complain that it has too many cars. We are lucky NZ has a vast amount of land and even in Auckland, bugger all cars….lets enjoy it for as long as it lasts 🙂
Are you sure you arent SF Lauren’s split personality? Sounds like you two should get togerther and talk about how great transport is in Auckland.
I’m sure Phil and I would have a gay old time talking about how easy it is to drive around Auckland.
That’s the primary reason why PT use is so low here, not because the provision of PT is extremely bad but rather it’s just so darn easy to drive.
It’s just like walking from your kitchen to your bedroom, would you rather just walk straight there or do you really want to wait 5mins so you can take a train for all of those 10m?
So why then should we spend a tonne of money building new motorway if it’s so easy to drive around Auckland? You can’t have it both ways.
Good question with an easy answer Louis, we shouldn’t. All we need to do is fix up a few deprived aspects around the place and then improve the PT system for peak time performance.
And provide for population growth of course.
Prague – Budapest – Lisbon – Copenhagen (and pretty much any Scandinavian city except maybe Oslo) – any city in the Netherlands except Rotterdam – Vienna – Zurich – there are lots. Coincidentally some of those are ranked some of the most liveable cities in the world.
New York is trying very hard to stop the dominance of cars and is rapidly expanding its very successful bike share plan. I see today it is being expanded to Astoria.
I dont think he means great as in the “world’s great cities”, he means great in that they work really well.
Southern Europe is a disaster transport wise in general including France/Walloon Belgium (not the Dutch part). The Northern Slavs, Germans and Scandinavians have a much better grasp of what makes a city work well. The Latins have no idea in general.
Hey goosoid, in your last sentence the words “transport wise” may be superfluous 😉
The northerners may win as places to live and work, but all the same, the Latins consistently win as places to visit. Is that despite the way they’re thrown together (over the centuries) or because of it?
I never felt nationalist and Italians in general like to complain about Italy all the time so it’s really not in my character to defend Italy (or the other “Latins” as we are called) but this kind of racism is not very helpful. You might have noticed that the Italian economy has been based on manufacturing for decades, with a very big chunk of it being cars. FIAT, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini, Lancia, Maserati, Autobianchi are just the most famous. Unsurprisingly the various governments decided to subsidize automotive industries and the milions of jobs that came with it.
Also doesn’t help that it’s not possible to dig a hole in Italy without finding a bone of Julius Caesar or similar.
I wonder why Jan Gehl went to Italy to get inspiration for his revolutionary theories about cities? Maybe Stockholm isn’t such a nice place, once you get off the very successful public transport?
My self, I am thinking a few years ahead (4ish) to when I next upgrade my car. I really like the look of the new electric BMW i3 and this would serve those trips arround Auckland that require the car.
BUT generally speaking we are already spoilt for road choices so I would really want a massive improvement of choice of alternative modes of transport.
What ever happened to the likes if Iceland who had plans to be a hydrogen economy by now powered by geothermal power?
It seems like one of those things where each year you get closer to the target date it gets pushed back 11 months.
Yeah a bit like fusion energy – it is always 30 years away.
I do see this happening in France – but still 30 years away:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
You still need to put in more energy than you get out to keep the reaction going.
You’re right…in Energy there is never a free ride! The closest we are going to get to ‘free energy’ is solar but its not really ‘free’ or ‘perpetual’. The Sun is burning hydrogen to make it, and it won’t last forever, just another 5 billion years or so..so longer than fossil fuel but still finite 🙁
Iceland is bankrupt, I don’t think economy and Iceland are two words that can be associated
Icelane WAS bankrupt, they are doing wuite well after getting absolutely battered in ’08.
Praque… clearly you have not been outside of the historic centre. Budapest, Lisbon, Copenhagen…..hardly ‘great cities’ are they, more backwaters…the Palmaston North of Europe. Zurich (I Lived in Switzerland for a number of years) is a car heaven. The Swiss have fantastic motorways that include lovely tunnels all under Zurich although have you tried crossing from the airport to Zug? Unfortunately you have to drive right through the centre of Zurich 🙁
The Walloon part of Belgium is NOT in SOUTHERN EUROPE (nor is most of France) and I don’t know what you have against any of the cities in Walloon… its all pretty quiet although the motorway intersection on the E4 is a bit confusing around Liege. I am quite fond of one bit of road in Walloonia… Spa Francochamps, I won a little race there.
I did have a good laugh at your suggestion that Slavs, Germans, and Skandis have a ‘much better grasp of what makes a city work well’ and your suggestion that ‘Latins have no idea’…. apart from being incredibly xenophobic, the Latins taught the Northern Europeans how to build cities…Have you not heard of the Greeks or the Romans? Maybe you heard of the Renascence?…it didn’t start in Hamburg 😀
I think you are owned Goosy… but there is hope….Google Maps can help you sort out north and southern Europe 😀
It all depends on what your idea is of a city that works well.
I livede in Prague for three years – so yes I did once or twice. It certainly has cars – noone is saying they dont have cars. But they are not dominated by cars. The Prague metro is the most used per capiota in the world. Everyone travels by tram/metro, even the partners at my international law firm and the executives at the company I was seconded to.
Yes I said Southern Europe including France/Walloon. I am aware of their geographical loaction having lived in Normandy. However, culturally, the French are Southern Europeans, not Northern Europeans.
You mean the Prague that is one of the most visited cities in the world – a backwater? Small maybe but if you think they are backwaters then perhaps you have a very Western European focus. Between the wars some of the Slavic cities (especially Prague and Budapest) were very influential in arts and culture.
I think you are misinterpreting both what is meant by “great” and “dominated”. I explained “great” in my post above. Dominated as in the car is not given the priority over PT/cycling/walking that the other cities you mentioned do – not that they are car free. Paris for example is very car dominated and so is Rome. Prague however gives a lot more priority to people on PT and walking. Not so great for cycling as culturally in the Czech Republic (and Eastern Europe in general) it is seen as something only village people did. Copenhagen and all Dutch cities have very little traffic and what there is has very low priority.
I lived and travelled in Southern and Northern Europe a lot. And I am not xenophobic – as my Romanian wife will tell you (who I met living in Romania). But in general I dont like the culture in Southern Europe – I assocaite much more with the Northern European culture. And yes I did hear about the Greeks and Romans in my Classic papers at University. However you may know that the Roman Empire collapsed 1500 years ago and the Greek Empire long before that.
Walloon cities? Charleroi would have to be one of the saddest and most autop dominated crap hoels I have ever been too. Northern French cities are in general horrible too – with Le Havre (where I had the misfortune to live for a few months) being possibly the worst place I have ever been and even Rouen is so car dominated that it has been ruined.
In modern times – post WWII – Northern Europe has far outstripped Southern Europe in the quality of cities. I consider the Germans and Scandinavians to be the premier city designers and buildersof public spaces in the world.
So I am not speaking from ignorance at all and I respect that you are not either. Your opinon may differ but I am presenting mine. For me, Northern European cities are the standard we should be aiming for. Far from pwned.
I remember mentioning this before however size wise Prague is not to different from the size of Hamilton.
If you measure the perimeter of the actual developed area excluding the large empty forests Prague has a perimeter of 47km with a population of 1.3 million.
If you do the same for Hamilton it’s 31km with a population of 140k.
So although Prague is less than twice the land size it’s got 10 times the population.
Also of interest was that when I did my international suburb to suburb test Prague came out worst with a long PT trip and huge walking distances.
The post was banned so sadly I didn’t get to show it.
Yes and at the time I cited multiple evidence (that’s right – evidence) to show that was not true including references to the websites of the local authorities and the EU figures – which you never replied to and never supplied any evidence to support your assertion. I am not going to cite them all again but Wikipedia is a good start.
To suggest Hamilton and Prague are the same size, let alone Prague is smaller – is just wrong and not supported by any evidence.
I dont know why a post on travel between suburbs in Prague would be banned – sounds bizarre to me.
However, I travelled suburb to suburb every day in Prague for two of the years I lived there (as an English teacher) and I can tell you that it was FAR more pleasant and quicker than travelling around Auckland suburb to suburb. You can choose metro/tram or walk. Prague is a fantastic city to travel around without a car – unlike Auckland.
Actually goosoid when you provided your evidence I responded with the above which you never replied to.
If you refer to a map you will see why you wiki or google numbers are not much use. You will see that the vast majority of the metropolitan area of Prague is Forrest and farmland. That’s why I compared the size of the actual developed area. In a way your area for Prague was like quoting the area of the entire waikato and saying that was the size if Hamilton.
Can I ask what suburbs you were going between.
My test was between Prague 15 and Prague 14 which resulted in a PT trip time of 1 hour and 14 mins with 25mins worth of walking. The driving time in a private car was 17mins.
Yes but that isnt evidence – that is just a statement – a common problem. I can tell you that Prague is much bigger than Hamilton.
I travelled all over Prague, as in the two years I was a teacher I had students all over, even in villages on the fringes of Prague. I NEVER wished I had a car – it would have been a nightmare. I later went back to Prague and drove around as a tourist and it was confirmed – nightmare.
I just popped that into Google maps and you can take the 181 bus from Prague 14 to Prague 15 and it takes 19 minutes. 🙂 And I bet that bus is very frequent and comes bang on time – that was always my experience of buses in Prague.
What do you mean it’s not evidence and a common problem? You can go look at a map yourself and see that Pragues metropolitan boundary includes vast amounts of forest and farm land.
In addition I already said Prague is much bigger than Hamilton, it has 10 times the population being close to that of Auckland. The point is that the developed area is less than twice that of Hamilton and about 1/3 the size of Auckland.
If you tripled the density of Auckland even the most under used bus route would become popular.
Question though, why was driving hard in Prague? And does this go some way to explain why people may prefer to take PT? If you made driving just as bad in Auckland and made no changes to the PT system you would likely see a massive boom in PT use.
Just did my test again however, based on my addresses I get travel times raging from 37 to 57 mins for a 2pm arrival. Not too sure why it’s reduced from last time.
Well I did that quick google search and google maps proves you wrong
https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=prague&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.50500085,d.dGI,pv.xjs.s.en_US.ciY8R2R6XC8.O&biw=1366&bih=667&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
https://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=Hamilton&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wl
Hamilton is approximately 12×14 kilometres, and Prague is 30x 20, almost 4 times as large.
Also, I tried Prague 15, to Prague 14 arriving at 2pm and got a 25 minute bus trip with the bus leaving every 20 minutes.
Well done sailor boy at including all the large forests and farm land, the very thing that I have been highlighting as to why the city appears to have a large area when in fact it’s about 3 times more densely developed than Auckland.
Also for the travel time I went from specific but random addresses in each area rather than the town centre as the town centre pretty much always has a PT hub right on it.
See that would be closer to evidence if you gave the addresses.
Also, my figure did not include the forested area, anymore than the pastural farmland in Hamilton’s ‘metro area’.
Well sailor boy. I just measured the developed area using google earth and excluding all the forests and farmland.
Prague came out at 12 x 11km and Hamilton at 10 x 6km. So we are looking at 132 v 60 square km making Prague just over twice the size of Hamilton yet 10 times the population and therefore 5 times the density.
I don’t think we should be aiming to copy any cities. I think NZ should be forging its own destiny. Auckland has very different challenges (an isthmus) and many advantages (no historic centre to preserve) from European cities.
I like Praque, I almost bought an entire building in the centre for $200k back when it was just emerging from its Soviet dark years. It must have been a very nice place to live, however we both know that the historic centre is very different from the rest of the town and not too far away from the Charles bridge there is architecture that would make your eyes bleed its so awful. I suspect that the success of PT in Praque has/had much to do with the bankruptcy of its economy under the Iron Curtain rather than its citizens electing not to own BMW’s. Same in pretty much every former Soviet shit hole. Lets face it, your wife would be the first to tell you that in Ceausescu’s Romania people were too busy stealing body organs from tourists to worry about transport options. In a country who’s currency of choice was Kent cigarettes taking the bus/tram was the only option aside from walking.
I guess we will agree to disagree on our favourite parts of Europe. While I fully understand why no one would want to be stuck in Rouen or Le Havre I have to say most of Northern Germany (and Holland) was bombed to bits in WW2 and what was built to replace it imo is just awful. I mean, Rotterdam vrs Roma? Or Frankfurt over Firenze? each to his own I guess.
Back to cars… Most of Europe, even the cities you like are car dominated. Holland outside of the centre of Amsterdam is a big car park. Anyone that has to travel around the Ghent, A/dam, R/dam area will tell you its a commuters nightmare. Personally I WOULD take the train but you know Europeans, they also love their cars. Scandi countries have pretty small populations (by Euro standards) so its less of an issue but plenty of Finns love driving to work as well. As for my Roman friends (I lived in Rome after Switzerland), their empire may have collapsed (from pollution mostly) but they still travel on the Via Apia, proving that roads out survived a democracy and countless dictators.
Of course Europe would be a much nicer place if everyone could drive zero emission vehicles, it may even make the Swiss happy
“bankruptcy of its economy” – Yes I always hear this about Czechoslovakia – and yet both that country and Romania managed to build quite good Metro systems (though Prague’s is much better) in the 70’s and 80’s and yet NZ cant afford to do it now. Priorities I guess.
So actually Bucharest had a metro even before the collapse of Communism. Of course Ceaucescu Romania was awful and Bucharest is a hole – even my wife and most other Romanians agree on that. There are much nicer cities in Romania.
The use of the metro in Prague now has NOTHING to do with its economic problems 25 years ago. It has fallen since Communist days but it is still the most used metro in the world per capita – because it works very well.
You have now switched to architecture of Prague which is nothing to with car dominance. I never said all of Prague was beautiful (I lived out in a sidliste near Krc and it was horrible – still good PT though) – I said that cars dont dominate it and PT/walking is given a high priority. Two completley different things.
Ues outside of the cities in Northern Europe cars are still used. But we are talking about cities, so I dont see the relevance.
Yes Florence is beautiful, Rome is beautiful. But I think the urban environment is often poor, especially in Roma in the parts where Mussolini turned them into road fests. But for me, the Scandinavians and Dutch cities are human scale machines for living that make you feel free to move around – espoecially the emphasise on cycling.
Of course, I dont like driving (I find it stressful and unpleasant) and I love cycling and travelling by train. So yeah, why did I come back to NZ? I ask myself that all the time. You cant watch decent Rugby in Europe! 🙂
Um, in communism it doesn’t matter how an individual city is going. Money from the entire country can be used to build what the powers at be see fit which is why Moscow has such a grand underground system.
Thats why I said about priorities. It was a priority to build the metros. If NZ made building PT a priority over say, just at random, roads – then we could also have a good PT system.
I love driving, both for commuting and for sport. I also enjoy train travel and riding my bike. I don’t question if a metro system would be good for Auckland, I question if its money we can afford. I don’t see it as something on the agenda for our current population and finances and I certainly don’t want NZ to overspend on public works like Greece, Ireland, or Spain…we all know what that leads too.
For example…does the new Tram pay for itself?
The tram isn’t public transport. It is a toy.
And you’re mightily odd if you enjoy your driving for commuting.
But I think you are right that we shouldn’t overspend on public works like those places in Europe.That is why the RoNS is madness.
REgarding the tram there are no roads in NZ that pay for themselves, why would a tram need to (not that the tram is tranport).
I think we could get brilliant PT from the CFN, all for far cheaper than the 45billion of roaads, and 15 billion of PT in the ITP.
Great to see that these hydrogen and electric cars are being developed but the question is, how many of them will we see in New Zealand? Some people on here don’t seem to appreciate these developments that much but we should. Even when the Congestion Free Network is completed, many people will still need to drive and most Aucklanders will still own a car. So it is great news to see developments that cars are becoming more fuel efficient and less polluting.
The CFN is a done deal? Adopted by government at all levels?
Actually it almost is as most of the projects in it come from the councils current transport plan.
In a way it’s like creating a new plan called the western corridor and just making it out of a list of the current western ring route projects.
In a way, it’s taking the hard work done by others, drawing a few new lines on it, slapping your logo on it, giving it a meaningless name (like RONS) and then patting yourself on the back and saying “well done, look how smart we are”.
It is what the CFN leaves out and the timing that is important. They have also acknowledged AT and NZTA.
@SF, I can make a plan to go to 100 cities in the world, someone else can make a plan to go to three of those cities, it isn’t the same plan.
Well said Chris
Im happy to accept new tech for transport but until you can actually walk into a showroom and sit in and drive it, it is a show car. GM has had test (incl public) fuel cell cars running for the past 10 + years but you can’t yet buy one. A Volt, on the other hand, you can buy. How long have we been told that flying cars are nearly there? I love reading about new tech but I deserve a healthy amount of scepticism for a reason.
‘reserve’
I don’t know if anything has changed since I researched this last year, but basically the hydrogen car is a completely stupid idea which I still don’t understand why it is being pushed. In this context for vehicle fuel, Hydrogen is a form of short term energy storage, NOT a direct source of energy like burning fuel which gives combustion. Yes fossil fuels are long term energy storage, but because of this they are more a source of energy rather than a short term storage form. Any time you transfer one form of energy to another, you always have energy loss. In order for this to be commercially successful, it needs to be adapted to the US conditions. So either you use crap loads of coal-fired electricity to break water down, or you use crap loads of energy to break gas down.
Either way, you are going to cause massive pollution. Then you have to transport the hydrogen, a substance that leaks out of every possible container through a non-existent transportation and distribution infrastructure. Then you put it into your car and burn the hydrogen to generate combustion or in a fuel cell to run an electric motor. Either way, if you are going to burn a lot of coal or gas, you are far better off energy-wise to just skip the whole hydrogen part and run electric cars instead. There is already a massive generation and distribution infrastructure in place.
Even if you have unlimited clean, free energy, you still need to spend trillions to build an entirely redundant hydrogen transportation and distribution system.
Alternatively just keep biofuels such as algae derived ones etc to bring a semi carbon neutral option rather than fossil fuels. Even the Brazilian ethanol fuel system is almost carbon neutral, runs without subsidies and produces several times more energy than is invested. It won’t work for most countries, but it shows that it can be done.
Auckland has an ideal climate for a large fleet of electric vehicles. (EV’s aren’t good for cold countries because you use battery power for the heater, unlike waste energy in a combustion engine) Because we get 60% of our power from hydro and 5% from wind, we have a very distinct advantage over other countries. Water and wind flows through the night even when we don’t use the power, so power companies have power that is wasted at night, hence why prices are cheaper at night. Having a large fleet of electric vehicles means cars can charge up at night at the with the right infrastructure, people could sell a little power back during people times during the day. This would have the effect of saving us having to build extra coal plants to deal with peak demands. Unused wind power can also potentially be used to pump water back up into dams during the night. Anyway this is all theoretical, but definitely feasible.
What ever way you dice it, a hydrogen system with hydrogen powered cars makes no sense. Particularly for NZ.
The issue isn’t whether they are viable or not. It is how people will get around in these when we have a million extra residents all wanting to drive at the same time. Even if you aregue that driving in Auckland now is “fine” it won’t be with that sort of growth.
Transport planning based on the status quo – a personal preference to drive a single occupancy vehicle to and from wherever and whenever you might please – is not a plan for the future. Its not even physically possible given the space constraints in Auckland, unless you plan on laying tarmac on every spare space.
Why is it “the” issue and why would all of the one million extra people want to drive at the same time? You seem to be implying that a switch from ICE to electric vehicles (whether battery or fuel cell) inevitably means greater numbers of private vehicles and building more roads to accommodate those numbers. That is not inevitable at all and I am not seeing any suggestions that such vehicles should be embraced as an alternative to expansion of PT.
The world does not consist of Auckland’s urban and suburban areas. Zero-emission electric cars running on energy derived from renewables appear to address some of problems facing the world as do electric powered PT systems. They are not a 100% solution to all of those problems and, like any technical solution, will involve a number of compromises.
For hydrogen the transport system is your power lines and water pipes, both of which are in above the ground today.
From the Iceland example the made the hydrogen on-site but there is no reason why you couldn’t do it at home like electric cars.
Based on hydrogen fuel cell technology you are pretty much running a fleet of electric cars only your battery is a tank of hydrogen rather than a cocktail of toxic chemicals.
The main problem is that it’s horribly inefficient, at best around 45%, while batteries can be around 90%
*peak* times, not people times.
Ari, Bio Fuel is a dead end toxic technology, especially first generation bio fuel which is what is mostly in use today. Of course Farmers in the US and EU love it because they get paid huge subsidies to grow bio mass but if you think replacing food crops with energy ag is a good idea you clearly have not considered what that does to the cost of food or what a blight would do to the worlds energy resources.
Bio Fuel whilst making farmers in the OECD rich have caused starvation in 3rd world countries and added billions to our tax and food bills. Even 2nd generation bio production like NXBTL cant make money. If it were not for the fact that adding this bio component makes diesel EU qualified and thus subsidizes EU imports then Neste would have bankrupted the Government of Finland with its huge bio investments.
The company referred to in this post (Cella Energy) have invented a way to store Hydrogen without leakage and without the need for pressurised tanks. This means that Hydrogen could be just another option at the service station like diesel or petrol are today. You are absolutely correct that to make alternative energy work the model has to suit the Americans. Pulling into a service station and pouring hydrogen into your car through a hose (just like petrol) is the sort of convenience needed to get the US public on board. The energy needed to make the Hydrogen can be solar, especially in NZ.
Electric, apart from some celebs that drive their EV’s and Prius to private jets whilst talking about saving the planet, are not popular and with good cause. The batteries are heavy (huge carbon footprint to make) and do not hold a charge very long. This is ok for city cars but most people expect more convenience from their fuel source. Israel just ditched a huge investment in EV’s where they had a ‘swap a battery’ network throughout their country. Israel is pretty small without too mnay roads. If they cant get that to work, it will never work anywhere else. Yes, batteries are getting smaller, lighter, and longer life. The Telsa is a good indication of what might be possible but the 787 Dreamliner isn’t. As you mention the US, the problem with EV’s in that country is most of the electricity is generated by burning heavy fuel oil. Hardly carbon neutral.
The real threat to any alternative energy vehicle at the moment is Fracking. The US has so much shale oil reserves the price of petrol is guaranteed to fall. This will bring yanks back by the thousands to pray at the alter of the Humvee and other SUV’s.
Phil I don’t think Fracking will bring the price of oil down substantially as its very expensive in both Energy Return On Energy Invested, the fields, from what I have read, suffer steep, early declines and lastly if Fracking was so FFF Fantastic I think we would have had declines in the global price of oil. But the trend for West Texas oil over the last year has actually been up, so its now almost up with Brent Crude again. And I haven’t mentioned any environmental issues with tracking and the backlash over that. Or the fact that the US will eventually wake up and put in a serious carbon charge.
The reason Fracking will lead to lower petrol prices is that Fracking puts a lot of gasoline into the domestic American market that was previously imported. Oil prices fluctuate on supply and demand and just because the value of WTI has gone up, it does not mean petrol cant go down.
If fracking always cost $80/ barrel the cost of crude will only ever bring the price of crude down to that level. If the cost is higher then the fracking KEEPS it down, if the cost of crude is lower then fracked oil won’t get sold.
@Sailor boy.
1. Who says Fracking costs $80/bbl?
2. Regardless of extraction costs the value of petrol (and all other oil products) will be dictated by the market
3. Whilst there is a relationship between Fracking and Crude production the values vary. Fracking yelds a lot more petrol than crude.
All the additional petrol added to the market from fracking will supress the wholesale value of petrol. This will not be offset by increased demand in Asia because most transport fuels sold in China and India are diesel powered. More petrol = lower price!
No one says $80/barrel, it was an arbritrary number that I selected to demoinstrate the point.
“Regardless of extraction costs the value of petrol (and all other oil products) will be dictated by the market”
Exactly. No matter what the cost of shale oil, or fracked oil the market will dictate a price, as global production has peaked we’re fucked. Its going up.
SF Lauren you said “Companies like Toyota, Nissan and Honda have been working towards electric cars for decades. The entire point of the hybrid program is to get a large scale testing bed for electric drive and battery systems.”
I’m sorry SF Lauren, but it has taken an non fossil fuel producing company like Tesla to show how they just weren’t trying. Have a look at the Tesla model S – seats 5+2, 425km EPA certified range (and Phil Moore you sound like you’d like this 0-100km in 4.2 seconds). Tesla are setting up fast charging stations across the US giving 320km worth of charge in a 30 minute coffee break. Yes I know this isn’t a cheap mass market car – but not a bad effort for a start up business.
There were multiple reasons why the big car companies haven’t been serious until the last few years about pure electric cars, but one is the pressure from fossil fuel companies that want you to keep filling up at their place rather than at home with cheap off peak power (ie when the grid has a surplus). http://www.teslamotors.com/models
I am thinking that hydrogen produced from renewable energy could be blended with natural gas. In the past we used manufactured coal gas or town gas which was fifty percent hydrogen and forty percent methane with some carbon monoxide and ethylene making up the rest. During the war the gas companies used rubber bags filled with gas to power their vehicle fleet. We know we can power cars on natural gas we used to have a fleet of cars and buses which ran on the stuff. So produce a blend of hydrogen and methane pump it round in the existing gas network reconnect the service stations modify our cars and buses and away we go just like the 1990’s except greener.
A lot of comment has been made about hydrogen leaking out of anything it is stored but that didn’t stop our victorian ancestors pumping a 50 percent blend of it around their cities. We know natural gas can be produced biologically we do it already in our sewerage works and landfill sites. And then their is all that dairy effluent that could be processed as well. Perhaps we need to bring back Mr Fixit “Bill Birch” to implement a new era of “think green”.
“am thinking that hydrogen produced from renewable energy could be blended with natural gas”
Yes, it could be, but why would anyone do that? As a transport fuel the hydrogen component would have an electricity-to-wheel efficiency of around 10%.
This post seems to conflate two issues: the merits or otherwise of an energy conversion technology (hydrogen power fuel cells) as applied to automotive applications on the one hand and private car v public transport on the other.
There’s no question PT beats private car in terms of energy efficiency for moving large numbers of people, especially in cities, even Auckland.
Also there’s no question hydrogen powered anything is further away than battery power. But the technology is developing, driven no doubt by the potential offered by some of the fundamental advantages that fuel cells have over batteries, notably energy density. I would suggest it’s premature to call BEVs as the winner over hydrogen fuel cell vehicles any more than say over super efficient ICEs. Check out ACAL Energy’s recent developments. The vehicle system looks promising, and if they’re in vehicles by 2015 (as they have been forecasting for some time now) they will no doubt find that their BEV competitors still have a far from compelling product proposition. http://www.acalenergy.co.uk/automotive-applications
The infrastructure challenge of hydrogen remains of course. Though here again the fact that the fuel cell is powered by a fuel, rather than by electric charging, does at least avoid the need for real-time balancing of supply and demand presented by the electricity supply network. Especially when it comes to charging BEVs en masse from residential power supplies, which is far from a done deal.
My take on both BEVs and fuel cells is that their adoption ultimately makes much more sense in PT (buses) and commercial light vehicle fleets, with their predictable driving patterns and range requirements and more manageable charging / fuelling infrastructure. When and whether this happens depends on the relative cost and scarcity of diesel in the years ahead.
Personally, I have had a guts full (lungs full) of breathing in diesel fumes and would like to think that switching to cleaner modes might also be encouraged if the full health costs of particulate emissions were loaded up where they belong, on the owners of the vehicles that produce them, not on society as a whole. I haven’t done the maths but I doubt that our present fuel and vehicle taxes do that? Besides I don’t like to reduce a health issue (100s of deaths a year in Auckland alone) purely to an economic one.
Hey TBW, I hope I haven’t conflated those two issues… this post is only about the relativity of hydrogen vs electric cars. Comparing either of those with PT is a different issue, and one I’ll have to start addressing from scratch rather than copying and pasting from something I’ve already written…
Hi John.. yes, my first me thence isn’t quite right, it’s really the thread as a whole in which the two issues are debated side by side. I appreciated your balanced assessment of hydrogen cars, and agree that a cautious position is reasonable.. so we shouldn’t plan on them being around any time soon.
Wouldn’t the hydrogen have a greater energy content than the natural gas. It would pep it up a bit. That was always the problem with the natural gas fueled cars they just didn’t have enough go. Its like those crazy gadgets where the generator on a car feeds a cell which generates hydrogen and oxygen which is fed into the air intake. No increase in miles per gallon but maybe the car runs a bit better. Sort of increase the octane rating.
One other idea I had was to rearrange the electrolytic process which produces the hydrogen.
So instead of producing hydrogen and oxygen it would produce hydrogen and caustic soda. This could produce an additional revenue stream which would offset the costs. If the caustic soda produced flooded the worlds market it could be used to sequester carbon dioxide. So caustic soda plus carbon dioxide makes sodium carbonate. The other approach would be to pump the caustic into the ocean. This would increase the alkalinity of the ocean which would allow it to absorb more carbon dioxide. Apparently there is five times more calcium ions in the ocean than carbonates and bicarbonate ions. This means any increase in alkalinity will allow calcium carbonate to precipitate and sink to the ocean floor where it will remain for millions of year.
So the scheme would be to generate carbon credits for the carbon dioxide sequestered.
“Wouldn’t the hydrogen have a greater energy content than the natural gas”
No, quite the opposite. A litre of hydrogen has less then 10% of the energy content of a litre of natural gas.
““Wouldn’t the hydrogen have a greater energy content than the natural gas”
No, quite the opposite. A litre of hydrogen has less then 10% of the energy content of a litre of natural gas.”
Yet that is just because the molecular weight of hydrogen is so low. The energy content of Hydrogen is 50 percent higher per kilogram than for methane. So we are talking tank size.
Still I suppose its how much fuel you can jam into the manifold which will determine how much power the engine can develop. However I am not convinced that an ICE wouldn’t run better on hydrogen than methane. Specially with a correctly tuned turbo.
“The energy content of Hydrogen is 50 percent higher per kilogram than for methane. So we are talking tank size.”
No – if the hydrogen is mixed with NG they will both be at the same temperature and pressure. It doesn’t matter how big the tank size is, the greater the proportion of H2 the less the calorific value of the mixture.
Yes thats true for a blend. Another look at wikipedia shows hydrogen having greater than 100 percent more energy per kilogram than methane. Its a pity we can’t use it but then you can’t get around the laws of physics. Perhaps a separate tank and injection system but it sounds a bit complicated. Still it wouldn’t be as complicated as a fuel cell car. They only cost a couple of million each. Maybe hydrogen is a dead end.
For tank capacity you want energy/litre, not kilo.
I don’t hold out a lot of hope for hydrogen fuel-cell cars or for internal-combustion-engined cars in the long run, Royce. Both have poor efficiency. My money is on BEVs using lithium-based chemistry with perhaps developments in cathode chemistry and mass reduction via composites, smaller vehicles and/or higher strength/mass metal alloys such as titanium/vanadium/aluminium in order to address range limitations. Electric vehicles also have some very appealing torque characteristics that put ICEs to shame. They are also mechanically very simple; no cooling system, no exhaust system, very simple transmission, completely balanced rotating components.
And/Or: http://www.archdaily.com/409556/why-cycle-cities-are-the-future/
Hi John.. Yes, sorry what I meant to say is that the thread as whole includes debate around the two issues side by side. I agree with your cautious position.. so any talk about planning on the basis that hydrogen cars are around the corner is premature, by decades.
Do you have a view on BEVs in terms of their widespread (rather than niche, e.g. Tesla) adoption for commercial vehicles V private cars?
Depends if you’re talking light commercials (vans etc) or trucks and buses… light commercials could be quite doable, these vehicles tend to do high km’s in a mainly urban environment, so the payback would be fairly fast and the major concern would be the range, i.e. how long the battery lasts before it needs recharging. Hopefully long enough to do everything the vehicle needs to do in a day.
To be fair, that range issue is probably a key factor for most types of electric vehicles.
As for trucks and buses, I haven’t really studied this, but my understanding is that it’s a bit trickier. I’ve read about things like inductive charging and so on, but I’m not sure about their cost effectiveness. I should do some research sometime 🙂
hmmm…. I believe all alternative energy cars are as far aware as $5/gal fuel in the US. There needs to be an incentive for the technology investment and once you reach that sort of figure (which is Armageddon to yanks} you will see EV’s, Hydrogen, all sorts of technology breaking cover. Of course, as Ive said above, cheap petrol derived from Fracking is moving the goal posts of fossil free automation further away.
All the US is getting out of their supposed 100 years of cheap shale gas from fracking is a 7 year reprieve before gas production is going to fall, and it’s going to fall hard. The price of natural gas in the US is cheap and currently under the cost of production. Europe and Japan would pay much more for the same gas, but there is not much export infrastructure for the LNG tankers to do so. The energy companies are trying to change that to try to export the gas and to try to bring the US price of gas up to somewhere where their costly wells aren’t losing them money. But fracking wells turn into stripper wells really quickly. It seems the fracking boom is unsustainable financially and a lot of investors are going to lose their shirts. With world wide production falling, and the developing world’s thirst for oil ramping up we’re going to have another big-time oil crisis by decades end … and the RoNS are going to look even more stupid than they do now.
Mathew, Fracking and shale gas is a huge game changer for the US. There are 335 BILLION barrels of technically recoverable shale oil resources that we know of. That’s enough for 91 years of US supply at historical levels of crude imports. Technically recoverable reserves (TRRs) represent the quantities of oil that can be recovered if the price justifies it but its only a small fraction (estimated between 5-25%) of the oil and gas thought to be present. Further improvements in extraction technology could substantially increase the TRRs.
Of course like all fossil fuel, it is a finite resource but for you to say Fracking is only a 7 year reprieve is simply not true.
The RONS are not stupid, without them Auckland will come to a grinding halt and like it or not, NZ depends on Auckland working. The Shale oil has postponed ‘Peak Oil’ by many years, there are other alternative energies available now and being developed for road transport. All this is compelling evidence that investment in roads is essential and prudent. Yes we should also invest in PT but the majority of that spend for an economy like NZ is best spent of road based solutions. That’s not to say Im anti rail but at the moment we cant afford grand rail schemes and we don’t need them.
Phil Moore, It seems you’ve believed the US energy sector’s boosters and PR people. There is not 335 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil. The majors are exiting the gas plays as we speak.
The RoNS are not sensible policy. They are expensive. They don’t have much return on the cost. They are often parallel to existing adequate infrastructures. Alternative, cheaper projects could be done instead of the gold plated ones. They starve other areas of needed funding like rural and regional roads. Globally fuel supply is falling as demand is rising presaging price increases. And in NZ traffic numbers are already falling.
Matthew its important to note as Rod Oram has that the Benefit to Cost Ratios (BCRs) are declining as we speak with less km being driven (benefits going down), yet costs of bitumen and running machinery increasing.
Phil, why do you think that Auckland will come to a grinding halt without the RoNs? Do you realise that most of the yet to be completed RoNs are not even in Auckland? Puhoi to Wellsford (P2W) being the notable exception, but I’m not sure how whether that will help commuters stuck on Auckland’s motorways very much.
If we really wanted to “stop Auckland coming to a grinding halt” then would it not be better to 1) take the $2 billion that is currently earmarked for Puhoi to Wellsford; 2) bank it in a high yielding but liquid investment; and 3) apply the returns on investment (after inflation) of say $60 million per year to fund improvements (both services and infrastructure) on the Southern Rail line?
In my opinion that seems like a far better strategy for relieving congestion on Auckland’s busiest roads. Also worth mentioning that while $60 million per year does not sound like much, it’s approximately 60% of Auckland’s current annual rail operating budget. So that’s a fair few more train services that could be run with that dough compared to what we run now.
Stu, Puhoi to Wellsford is about the future. Now I know a lot of people here are in favour of intensifying central Aucklands population but there are still many Kiwis that want a bit of land for the kids to play cricket on and they prefer to live in the suburbs. I guess 30 years ago it was inconceivable to think that the sleepy little village of Albany would become the biggest urban city in the world for white South Africans 🙁 Back in the days when Albany had a car yard at one end, a pub at the other and a horse saddler’s shop in the middle people probably thought of any extension to the northern Motorway past Forrest Hill as madness. They probably referred to it as the ‘Horse riders Highway’. Is it so inconceivable to think that in the future people will buy ‘cheap’ land in Warkworth and commute? The highway and tunnel will make that possible and to some degree help cool off Aucklands housing market. Surely no one is thinking that an apartment in the city is going to be cheaper (per m3) than a 3 bedroom house north of Puhoi? I say Warkworth because my understanding is the route further north is years away and so its not really a RONS.
Im interested to know what ‘high yielding but liquid investment’ you want my tax dollars diverted to? Jesus, lets avoid the errors of the State of California and not invest in the next Enron.
Ahh, yes a motorway to that proposed city of Warkworth with a projected population in 2030 of……40k.
Don’t forget all the Northland tourists, presumably coming on a motorways of Northland tour. I can’t wait to see all the culverts and bridges myself. It’s going to be most exciting.
There is a huge amount of land around Orewa / Silverdale / Wainui. Why we don’t create a dense city around that area (which will be part of the Northern busway) before spending $1+B on a motorway to Warkworth is beyond me.
” I guess 30 years ago it was inconceivable to think that the sleepy little village of Albany would become the biggest urban city in the world for white South Africans”
Perhaps thats true., But Albany was slated 30+ years ago to become the largest tract of Housing New Zealand land and houses ever built since WWII.
Its only that instead of a haven for the NZ and Pacifica lower-classes its instead become a haven for needy white South Africans….
So you could say its gone from being a proposed ghetto for brown people to a ghetto for foreign white ones.
Anyone who thought Albany would stay as it was in 1982 even in 1982 – was a dreamer.
Especially as it was “12 minutes north of the bridge” (by car) as the Albany Car Yard ads used to say.
Same applies for the Transformative effects of the PuFord RoNS for anyone but a road builder.
Even the Gov’t and NZTA is pulling back on the Wellsford part of PuFord now, and how does that explain their previously maintained position on why PuFord is good for the Northland economy if its doesn’t even get out of the Auckland region to start with?
The difference between 1982 and now as far as Warkworth and the land between future is that 2013 transport costs are now much higher than they were in 1982 and the prospect of them doubling in real terms over the next 20+ years and Warkworth is not “12 minutes north of the Albany” – even on the toll road.
The central line stops at Ealing Broadway because the builders of the London Underground couldn’t imagine in there wildest dreams that London would get any bigger.
You would be nuts to think that when the motorway goes through to Warkworth that more people will not commute from north of Puhoi to Auckland. Even if they didn’t commute all the way to the CBD they would only be 20 mins away from Albany and there are a lot of employers there. According to 2013 Stats the average house price in Albany is $720’000 while in Warkworth its only $507’000. That $213’000 saving goes a long way to motivating an extra 20 mins commute.
As for transport costs, are you really sure real costs are more expensive in 2013 than they were in 1982? I imagine they would be cheaper. In real terms petrol is cheaper than it was back then http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10828976 and so too are cars.
I know this is an emotive subject for many of you but try seeing the bigger picture. Not everyone wants to turn Auckland into a cycle only city
Hey Phil, house prices in Wairoa and Murupara are even cheaper. Why don’t they commute from there?
Not everyone wants to turn Auckland into an inefficient 200km of motorway sprawl.
Try to see the bigger picture.
“The central line stops at Ealing Broadway because the builders of the London Underground couldn’t imagine in there wildest dreams that London would get any bigger”
Not so, the London Underground stopped there for precisely the reason that beyond that point surface railways were able to, and did, do the job of moving people around.
The district line was conceived as a way to link the various railways terminii around London to allow transfer to other stations to be made.
Ealing was a terminus for surface railway lines.
And subsequent to that the UK Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 made green belts around cities like London a requirement, so London stopped growing outward.
So they didn’t need to keep building the Underground forever, which is why it is the end of the District Line today.
And yes petrol prices may have *looked* cheaper now to you and that Herald piece writer than they do now as per that article:
I quote:
“University of Canterbury senior economics lecturer Eric Crampton said petrol was actually more expensive in 1981. Back then petrol prices were less than 60 cents a litre. While that sounds wonderful, when you adjust for inflation, that is $2.46 per litre in today’s dollars, much more than we are paying now.”
But cars then didn’t get the 40+ MPG (I only think in MPG for fuel use) they can get now (they got half that typically, often less) , so the actual “effective” distance that litre of petrol (at 60 cents a litre) would take you then was way less than it would now. So the cost of driving anywhere like Albany was higher for most people, even if the petrol was cheaper.
This change of fuel efficiency is openly stated by Brownlee and Joyce for hiking Fuel taxes so much to counter the improving fuel improvements of the countries cars.
But the days of cheap petrol in NZ are over, and its not being too overly imaginative to expect fuel prices to double in real terms over the next 20 years (after all we don’t have vast reserves of shale oil to prop us up), but vehicle fuel economy won’t,double in that time
– so it won’t as cheap to commute to all those far flung suburbs near Warkworth or whereever than it is now no matter how many lanes of motorways get built of how fast it is.
And that assumes that the journey time of 20 minutes each way to/from Albany you state comes is true – it takes 29 minutes now according to Google Earth to go from Albany to Warkwroth and 10 minutes was the total time saving over the entire PuFord RoNS, not just the Warkworth part. so 20 minutes looks to be another pie in the sky figure you’ve plucked from goodness knows where.
“I know this is an emotive subject for many of you but try seeing the bigger picture. Not everyone wants to turn Auckland into a cycle only city”
Hmm, do I smell a strong whiff of “Northcote Point Phil” who opposes SkyPath and cyclists in general coming to the fore here?
No one in this thread has mentioned making Auckland cycles only – and the only one being emotive that I can see is yourself Phil.
And try seeing the bigger picture here yourself, not everyone wants to drive 40 to 80+ minutes a day in traffic for the rest of their lives.
Some of us have a life outside of our cars.
What are these US Gasoline (petrol) price drops Phil? http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10111 says its risen 45c /gallon since start of the year to $3.75 gallon. This is not an insignificant price rise Phil in contradiction to your stated price drops.
Matthew,I believe the EIA….now maybe you think they are lying, maybe you believe the US Govt is also lying about Roswell as well but frankly, as someone working in oil trading, I tend to put a lot of faith in the data the EIA produces.
I do not understand why you think the majors (Im assuming you mean oil majors) are exiting Shale production. Here is a link to what the CEO of BP has to say “In 2009, I was skeptical of the shale revolution,” said Dudley. “I’m now convinced the U.S. has enormous reserves of natural gas.”
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/07/bp_ceo_talks_of_bringing_inves.html
Here is a link to what the CEO of Shell has to say.. Mr Voser said he was “very excited” about the opportunities for fracking
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/shell-sets-its-sights-on-a-leading-role-in-fracking-8476222.html
If you are not convinced that BP and Shell know what they are doing, how about Exxon-Mobile, the worlds biggest Oil company. http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/16/exxon-shale-gas-fracking/
The RONS are expensive but they need to be done. I can not even guess which existing adequate infrastructure you are thinking is going to be future proof so as to not require investment in alternatives. Perhaps you mean the bridge and you think that will last forever? Can you even dare to imagine the dent in NZ’s economy if we had to shut the harbour bridge with no alternative crossing? Sure RONS take investment away from other projects but can anyone seriously argue that a road from Ngatea to Tahuna (a random rural road) is a higher priority than investing in New Zealands biggest city?
Global fuel supply is a broad term but if you mean global petrol supply (which is what drives most of NZ) then it is NOT falling, it is, as I have clearly shown you (with facts), GROWING.
And whilst you may say traffic numbers in NZ are falling, I can also pull up data to show that Public Transport patronage in Auckland is falling, especially on rail. The good news for PT though is the Northern Bus way is becoming more popular but as that travels on a road (and over the bridge) it supports the theory that more PT spend should be on roads (and the cross harbour tunnel) than on rail.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/129565/fewer-travellers-using-auckland-public-transport
And regardless of you thinking the EIA are lying to us and that the CEO’s of every major oil company are wrong, this thread is actually about a transport fuel that is post oil. Unless you think the world has a fundamental shortage of Hydrogen then on this threads topic, it paints a transport future where we can all continue to drive cars on roads.
I was going on a lot of what’s in this book – http://www.amazon.com/Snake-Oil-Frackings-Promise-Imperils/dp/0976751097/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374687207
As for the RoNS – There’s $12 billion dollars of not really need to be dones in there.
Hi Matthew, I would not believe what you read in that book over and above what the EIA are providing as factual data. I should point out that I don’t like Fracking. I think its an ecological nightmare that is a blight on the landscape and dangerous to local wildlife, and in some rare instances, people. Have a look at a docufilm called Gaslands to get an idea of how bad fracking can be.
That said the global thirst (especially in the US) for transport fuels means Fracking is here to stay. Its the magic bullet (especially for the US) that keeps the economy from falling apart because without it, we would have the problems associated with Peak Oil. Fracking means another 100 years of fossil fuel and buys time. The tragedy is that if the bloody yanks would only put a meaningful tax on transport fuels, the money raised could provide a zero emission transport solution. The money raised would be so big the yanks might even be able to provide a proper health care plan for its own citizens. Of course asking Americans to pay tax on fuel is in the same politicians suicide chest as gun control, its sadly never going to happen.
All the RONS are good, so is the CRL, so would be a super fast electric main trunk line. Trouble is NZ cant afford them all and has to choose the projects our leaders believe to be best for the future. As major projects go, Im in favour of the harbour tunnel, CRL (after some good points made on this blog), and a rail link to the airport. Just because the Western corridor or the Puhoi to Warkworth highway wont greatly affect me does not mean they wont benefit others, maybe we all need to see the wider picture?
‘cheap petrol derived from Fracking’ is an oxymoron.
There is no such thing; Fracking is by definition a high cost means of extraction and anyone asserting otherwise either has absolutely no idea about the economics of the oil industry or is intentionally setting out to mislead. Fracking is only as [borderline] viable as it is because of the recently elevated price of crude, it is not a new technology but is a newly viable one. Most sources say at least >USD80 a barrel is required before Frackers go bust, and even at >USD100/barrel the majors don’t seem to be able to make it work. Let see, what does says the Wall Street Journal say about this?: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323997004578642391718255534.html
Fracking has indeed recently turned around the production profile of the US dramatically almost as much as the drop in consumption has turned around the US demand profile. And together they have currently dramatically lowered the net imports of the world’s biggest consumer. Great news for the US economy. But note, the US is still a net importer, and the drop in US imports have been matched by a greater rise in Chinese net imports, which is why this ‘revolution’ is much more significant for the economics of the US than it is for the global supply/demand balance and therefore the price of crude. China is now the world’s biggest oil importer and it is the state of the Chinese economy that sets the global price. The US is still very important but it is no longer the dominant determinant of demand and therefore price. And while it is currently the big news in supply because it is the only source new supply it hasn’t been the supply side price setter since it peaked in 1970. ‘Saudi America’ is a propaganda fantasy.
If Fracking was really as cheap and as productive as claimed by some then the global price would clearly be much lower. So the arrival of Fracking and even more worrying the prospect of Arctic exploration is in fact the sound of the bottom of barrel being scrapped rather than a sign of endless glorious cheap and pain free supply and the continuation of last century’s conditions.
Anyway, whether there is future global supply via Fracking, or from ultra deep water, Arctic, methane hydrates, or further enhanced oil recovery, none of it will be cheap, and therefore for every net importing nation the most valuable barrel of future oil to your economy is the one you don’t have to buy. It’s simple really; the more a nation can reduce its demand without damaging its economy the more viable and resilient it will be. And the recent news for NZ is here is not too bad, we have maintained a largely positive economy and a flat oil demand for a number of years now. If only we were actually really trying to achieve more here.
So this is one of the reasons we are advocates of less oil dependent urban transport solutions; the performance and resilience of our economy depends on reducing dependence on imported oil and urban transport in particular is one area where there is low hanging fruit on this score.
Especially while we wait to see if Hydrogen, BEVs, or some other kind of less oil using cars prove viable.
Carry on.
On the RoNS, it is important to remember, outside of the VPT and Waterview, these are all duplicative projects, ie they run alongside both existing highways and usually rail lines, so it is very hard to see how they can be transformative economically. At best they will make incremental improvements in time and possibly safety [I say possibly because they will in fact ensure the existing unsafe roads will still be there and remain unimproved- this is certainly the case with Puford], and these incremental improvements are unlikely to ever repay the enormous cost. Of course they may make the individual fortunes of highway construction companies and enable truckers to compete better with rail freight but neither of those outcomes make for net benefits to the nation.
Earlier: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2012/09/03/can-these-rons-make-a-right/
Imagine what else could be done with 12 billion dollars? I would prefer for either truly transformational investments or simply for us to not be borrowing this sum.
The RoNS are in fact both unimaginative and high risk [given all the transport and energy trends of this century]. Quite an achievement really; both dull and reckless.
A nice bit of cut and paste reporting there Patrick. Now for the facts!
‘Cheap petrol derived from fracking’ is a reality.
I am not sure you understand what a game changer Shale oil is, especially for the US. As an example new drilling techniques have located vast reservoirs of shale gas which has made the USA fully gas independent. Up to a few years ago the US imported LNG at quite high prices. Now its actually exporting Nat Gas and the US wholesale price is less than $2.50 per mmbtu. Without shale gas the price of WTI crude would have had to have been $15/bbl to allow gas to be sold at $2.50/mmbtu.
Apart from the fact that you can make gasoline (petrol) from LNG (syngas) the reserves of Shale Oil are even greater. Shale oil makes middle Distillates (kero and Diesel) and with a bit more processing (Hydrocracking) it also makes excellent mogas (petrol).
You are very wrong in announcing that the economy of China is what sets global oil prices. In fact I am quite sure you do not have a clue what sets global oil prices! Whilst you would assume supply and demand dictated crude value the reality is that for the last 10 years hedge funds have been the driving force in crude value. Hedge funds sick and tired of poor returns from money markets (why lend cash at 0.5% interest) and the boom and bust of property markets started to pour cash into commodities. Oil futures (Brent and WTI) are the perfect investment vehicle for a Hedge fund because they are very liquid futures markets with relatively low costs to invest. The Initial margin (or deposit if you like) on crude futures is set way too low and in a market usually going only up, you never have to cover margin calls (invest more). It’s pretty much accepted inside oil trading that the value of crude oil is $30 a barrel over estimated just because of Hedge Fund Mania. However as there are more Hedge fund dollars than oil trading VAR I am not going to bet against them.
You are also not correctly assessing the value of Shale oil vrs Crude. Shale produces lots of high value middle and light end oil products (Petrol, Diesel, Jet fuel) and almost none of the low value heavy end (Fuel oil/bitumen). Crude oil makes 20%-40% Petrol, 10-20% Jet and Diesel and 30-65% crappy fuel oil and resids. You can process a lot of the fuel oil into more petrol and diesel but that’s all added costs. So given that every Oil company wants to maximise its transport fuels production it is no surprise that they love shale oil.
As you are a photographer and not an oil trader it is not surprising you do not know this stuff but there is a disconnect between the value of crude oil and the value of the products that are derived from it. Crude can and often does go up in price while gasoline goes down. Refineries constantly monitor the wholesale value of each individual product and value this against the costs of running feedstock. Refinery feedstock can be crude (different crude origins give different product yields) or Straight Run Fuel oil, or Shale oil. The value of the product less the cost of the feedstock (expressed in $’s per barrel) is called a ‘crack’. At the moment the crack value for gasoline is positive (makes money to produce) because of all the extra Shale oil available on the market. This means every refinery in the USA is running balls out making gasoline. This creates a surplus of product and as refiners are storage limited, they then need to ‘discount’ the petrol to move it.
As only more and more shale oil and shale gas comes onto the market refineries will produce more and more transport fuels. Yes you are correct to say that increases in Asian demand will have a big effect but the reality is likely to be that China and India end up buying more crude oil and the US will refine more domestic Shale. This makes a lot of sense because the transport fuel in Asia is mostly diesel while in the US its petrol. Overall though the price of petrol will be lower. It has to fall simply because they will be making more than demand requires.
How does this affect NZ. There is probably an argument to shut the Marsden point refinery and just import our oil needs. Petrol will be cheaper which is good news for the average family but its bad news for investment in alternative energy technology so NZ will continue to be dependant on imported oil.
As for RONS. Well given the above any investment in road infrastructure is not wasted money or high risk. If they are the right investments or not is subjective. We live in a democracy, we voted for the Government and as a result we should accept the decisions of the leadership we put in place.
“given the above any investment in road infrastructure is not wasted money or high risk”
According to consultants SAHA the benefit-cost ratio for Puhoi-Wellsford is 0.4. That is not an investment. That is a profligate waste of money. The Minister of Transport knows it’s a dog and recently announced increases in fuel tax and RUCs because he knows that for every dollar that he collects on this road he has to find 60c to piss up the wall.
Once again MFD that is short term thinking. Puhoi-Warkworth, because that is what we are really talking about, is based on the continued growth of Auckland and for the desire of New Zealanders to live n houses with a back yard rather than multi story apartment blocks.
Are you really thinking Auckland wont grow in the next 20 years? As Ive said earlier, there was a time when Albany was a rural village. Are you saying they should not have extended the Northern MWay past Forest Hill?
Come on, I know you think everyone should be pistol whipped onto electric trains but get real, people want to travel by cars.
I am not too sure your hypothetically characterised New Zealanders living with backyards wanting to travel by car from 50km from the CBD really exist anymore, but you’d have us pay for everyone of their billion dollar whims.
I live 15 mins away from the CBD, I could swim it in not that much longer 🙂 I just think its a trend that is not going to be bucked. If you look at cities like London people travel much further distances to get to work. Auckland is likely to continue to be the centre of employment and as house prices close to the CBD get more and more expensive then people will accept travelling further. As they are also tax payers they will demand better roads and they will be cheaper to build now than in 10 years time.
Are we watching Back to the Future IV Marty McPhil? Are you a time traveller? I feel you’d have been happier 3 or 4 decades ago.
The world is changing.
The world is changing to what Matthew? If you think the world is changing to be a place with less cars than you are very wrong.
Maybe you would have been happier 6 or 7 decades ago when car ownership was limited to only the select few?
“Come on, I know you think everyone should be pistol whipped onto electric trains but get real, people want to travel by cars”
It’s amazing how much you “know” that just ain’t so, Phil. It really is a very presumptuous of you and just a touch discourtious. Nowhere have I advocated getting everyone onto trains, pistol whipped or otherwise (although I do like trains). Ours is a 4 vehicle family and none of us use public transport. I have no wish to live in an apartment. That being said, I accept that there are those who want to have that choice.
Whether the area grows in population or not, expenditure that returns 40c for every dollar spent makes Hannover Finance look good. Frittering money away like this so that newcomers to Auckland can get to the CBD quicker while indulging their housing preferences is a massive subsidy to them. If they want it let them pay for it rather than making other motorists (like me) pay for it through increased fuel taxes. My wife and i already pay for the state highway system through these taxes despite going for months with setting a wheel on it.
You seem to have a very poor grip on what constitutes a good investment, Phil. A starting point is one for which the returns exceed the expenditure. It’s more complex than that but let’s start with the simple stuff, shall we?
MFD…. you say you are a 4 car family but you go months without setting a wheel on the highways… Id say you have made 4 poor investments 😀
How can we really value the benefits of infrastructure investments. Have you considered if it boosts tourism to the Northland economy? Have you considered the extra disposable income these people will have by buying cheaper homes in Warkworth that will result in extra consumer spending, creating jobs and supporting industry. Have you considered the imported fuel that will be saved by having traffic moving rather than sitting in jams? How can you say with any credibility that these a bad investments?
Sure, you don’t like this money being spent on roads, I can appreciate your opinion…but the RONS are here…get over it.
There’s plenty of time to rein in the RoNS projects before the hugest of their unnecessary costs are incurred with a change of government next year.
“How can you say with any credibility that these a bad investments?”
It’s the consultants charged with calculating the BCR that come up with the figure of 0.4. Not me. Are you having problems understanding what this means? Are you suggesting that the consultants lack credibility? Or is it, perhaps, that your argument is floundering? Your “get over it” statement suggest that to be the case.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/07/16/as-fracking-rises-peak-oil-theory-slowly-dies/
So what? Forbes has published an opinion piece by an energy industry shrill still trying to believe that economic reality isn’t going to catch up with the industry.
Fracking isn’t a panacea, it’s a last hurrah.
Developed fields are going to drop off production significantly. Then the investment in all the high energy cost to extract, high economic cost to extract, and high environmental cost to extract unconventional fields is going to become harder and harder to do, all whilst demand is going up. You know like in this famous graph :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IEA_2010UnknownSources2.jpg
Without bankers doing “financial engineering” it won’t even possible to fund the necessary high levels of investment.
One by one oil in particular developing countries is going to be too expensive and some places are going to have to, at first, abandon their cars for unnecessary journeys, then their cars for necessary journeys and then abandon their tractors and go back to animal power. After it happens in developing countries New Zealand can’t be far behind.
And since all our economies are predicated on cheap energy that is going to get more expensive, quality of life is going to go down, unless we invest in renewables, and unless we rethink how people live in cities and make them less energy profligate. New Zealand has electrons in abundance, but it doesn’t have hydrocarbons. We may as well clean up the carbon dioxide output and the particulate pollution problems as we go about it too.
One last thought – What does all that cheap oil burnt in 1960 do for our world today?
We do need to move faster towards more smart and sustainable solutions. I agree smaller vehicles have there place especially in this country to get off the beat and track.. But what about bigger vehicles that can move 30% or more of the population that choose not to own/operate/maintain and top up their own car. Smarter use of space and fuels. A bus just on size vs 2 people in a car is 9 times better use of tarmac. Im actually a roading engineer and can see better way forwards myself where all modes are happy so don’t think I’m too biased in any way.
I agree with you Steve. If we could fill every bus that travels down Onewa Rd to the city in peak times the bridge would probably be half empty.
I am not at all against public transport but I think for the finances available to NZ and the geography of our city that road based PT investment is much wiser and affordable than pie in the sky rail ideas.
If we discover a huge oil field off shore that becomes the new North Sea, or the international price of lamb and wool becomes a roofer than by all means spend some of our new found wealth on TGV type super fast intercity trains and a metro system as diverse as Londons. But until we become Pacific Arabs lets just spend wisely 🙂
“But until we become Pacific Arabs lets just spend wisely :)” except on the RoNS.
Phil have you been on those buses? They are full in the peak. You are right that buses have a huge ability to moo up additional demand ( they have been doing this) hence there is little requirement for a second harbour crossing.
Matthew, Im all for investing in alternative energy. Id like the NZ Govt to add more tax to fuel (which will be affordable with the impending drop of petrol prices) and invest that in Hydrogen research along the lines of Cella Energy (which this thread is about).
The trouble with getting money for alternative energy investment is that it only becomes interesting to investors when they see expensive oil. Oil is not expensive now and transport fuel is set to get cheaper.
On your last thought…. some of that cheap fossil fuel got man to the moon in the 60’s… not such a bad thing for our world today.
Phil, you are right about the finances and the great things fossil fuels has done for mankind. But do we really want to take the risk with any imbalance to the sensitive makeup of the planet? This is the question. It is a big risk, how do we mitigate that….find another one?
Steve, I hate Fracking… I’ve already said that above.
If only the yanks would put a meaningful tax on transport fuels they could spend on better PT and investments in Alternative energy (zero carbon) but they wont.
I hear you loud and clear about risking the planet. I’m no scientist, but I do have faith that we could find solutions if there was a will to do so. I am excited about the Cella Energy technology because for any alternative to work it has to be simple and as convenient as existing transport fuels. With the Cella plan you will be able to fill up at existing petrol stations….so simple even the Yanks should manage it.
However, Id invest in finding another planet as well….. we seem pretty hell bent on wrecking the one we have 🙁
Phil, I think it’s time you stepped back from the keyboard. Your work here is done …