Donation details

One detail to add: According to a Dogwood Inititative search of their donation database, Ballard and its executives have given the B.C. Liberal Party over $13,500 since 2001.

This is what we can expect from new Translink

Is this the kind of accountability we can start to expect from the new TransLink board? We need to be looking for the most economical solutions to our transit problems. Plenty already exist. We shouldn't be spending money on pie in the sky ideas until we have a handle on the current, pressing problems. The new TransLink board will only be accountable to Falcon and so I expect they will be taking his lead on any new transit ideas.

(I know this is BCTransit making these decisions, not TransLink, but both of them are now answering only to His Majesty Falcon.)

Ballard has definitely seen better days

And it wasn't even a sale for cash!!!

Ballard sells auto fuel cell business to Daimler, Ford
Last Updated: Thursday, November 8, 2007 | 4:11 PM ET

Ballard Power Systems Inc. shares moved higher on Thursday after the company confirmed it is selling its automotive fuel cell business to Daimler AG and Ford Motor Co.

Ballard shares were up almost six per cent, gaining 29 cents to reach $5.28 on the TSX.

Vancouver-based Ballard is selling the fuel cell to the automakers in exchange for the 34.3 million Ballard shares the two companies had held.

"This transaction will enable Ballard to concentrate on growth in fuel cell applications, which provide clean energy solutions in commercial markets," said John Sheridan, Ballard's president and CEO.

"It also lowers Ballard's risk profile by addressing the realities of the high cost and long timeline for automotive fuel cell commercialization," he said.

Roughly 113 Ballard employees who work primarily in research and technology development will be transfered to a new company that will be managed by Daimler and Ford and will be located at Ballard's facilities. The employees to be transferred represent about 20 per cent of Ballard's workforce.

Daimler and Ford will contribute $60 million to the new private company and Ballard will invest $60 million. Daimler will hold 50.1 per cent of the new firm, while Ford will hold 30 per cent, and Ballard the remainder.

Ballard also said it lost $16 million US in its third quarter on revenue of $17.6 million US. During the same quarter last year, Ballard lost $17.9 million US on revenue of $11.5 million US.

Exactly!

werdnagreb says:

Pressing problems are: more and more people pressing and pushing the envelope beyond limits to growth. There are no complex problems to invent, only adherence to natural laws of physics and math. The only question that we should be asking our politicians and so called leaders is: "When do you foresee the growth period ending." Since simple science says it must end, so then what is our transition plan? We do have one right? Wealth creation is a crime, but very few have the balls to stand up and say end the crimewave now. It would force us to face certain unpleasant realities as a species. Continued growth does not resolve any of these day to day or even long term problems, it compounds them. It's just simple science.

That's a donation????

$13,500 to the Liberals since 2001? CN Rail and the Rocky Mountaineer folks give the Liberals over $50,000 a year!

Seriously, the hydrogen scam is just that. The European's were very serious about hydrogen powered trains until a few years ago, when an audit showed that burning hydrogen, though emission free at point of use, created much more green house gasses during production. so much so that diesel is much cleaner! No more hydrogen trains for them.

Hydrogen is the ONLY solution that will work!

Here is the truth about hydrogen energy.

Hydrogen can be made at home. Anybody who says it can’t is either a shill, an idiot or completely out of touch with reality and technology. You can make it for free, at home, all day long and all night long. The metrics quoted by the anti-hydrogen crowd are just lies to protect their competing business interests. Anybody who says it costs too much or that it has some evil chain reaction of “negative karma” or “sour grid source” or causes cancer because of something back in the energy chain is almost always a shill because the energy chain is constantly improving. Anybody who says the numbers say it is all wrong or bad or evil or inefficient are also usually a shill who are quoting numbers from six months or six years back (which is ancient history in hydrogen timeframes). It now costs less to make hydrogen from water than any known way to make gasoline and it continues to get cheaper every month. The “battery shill” spin has worn thin and has been supplanted by facts. Hydrogen is made from WATER via solar energy, wind energy, microbes, radio waves, sunlight and salt, and other FREE sources of energy. Hydrogen can also be made from any organic garbage, waste, plants or ANYTHING organic via lasers, plasma beams or dozens of other powered exotics which can be run off of EITHER the grid or the free hydrogen made from solar energy, wind energy, microbes, radio waves, sunlight and salt, and other FREE sources of energy OR the grid. There is no oil that needs to be involved anywhere in the production of hydrogen. These systems trickle charge hydrogen into storage containers, either tanks or solid state cassettes, 24/7.

Tens of millions of dollars are being spent by battery companies in order to discredit hydrogen because hydrogen works better than batteries. A large number of “pundits” who act as “writers”, “bloggers”, “authors” and “non-profit evangelist group founders” are actually supported by financial gain from battery companies who are terrified of hydrogen displacing their revenue streams. You will see a list of these people and their backers online soon. The following facts are cut and pasted from tens of thousands of validating scientific sources available online and in libraries, federal studies and university research papers.

PART 2

Here are the hard facts. I bet $50,000.00 cash that all of the facts in these RESPONSES are true. If you can prove that your batteries beat these FACTS then you get my 50K if not then I get yours.

Lets go over the battery and bio-fuel shills lies:

Lie # 1:
“But critics say the process of producing hydrogen requires three to four times more energy than the hydrogen later generates in the fuel cell.”
RESPONSE: This is data from the 60’s. It is now more efficient to make hydrogen than it is to make gasoline, build or use batteries or process bio-fuel. The technology has beat everything else.
Lie # 2: “the cars are too expensive.”
RESPONSE: The production of hydrogen cars is at an early stage while battery cars have been around for almost a hundred years and the battery cars are still expensive for what you get. The Moore’s law on hydrogen cars shows a clear price decline to low cost in market volume.
Lie #3: “ hydrogen molecules can't be contained easily without energy-consuming compressors or maintaining them in liquid form at extremely low temperatures , and it's extremely difficult to store,"
RESPONSE: This data is also from the 60’s. Hydrogen is stored in chemical powders and muds that easily contain vast amounts of hydrogen. Pressure and liquid tanks to store hydrogen are old school archaic technologies. Hydrogen can be easily stored in over 2800 different solid state compounds.

Lie #4: "The infrastructure isn't there”
RESPONSE: Solid state hydrogen can be shipped by UPS, Common Carrier and uses all existing infrastructure. DOPT has already licensed and approved such solid state delivery via common EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE. This method can reavch every person on earth TODAY! This requires almost NO NEW INFRASTRUCTURE.
Lie #5: “the hydrogen is too expensive”
RESPONSE: Hydrogen can be made at home or office in numerous ways powered by solar or wind or microbes or any number of free power sources. It is always being made by such devices and constantly trickle charged into solid state storage systems all day and night FOR FREE without grid power.

Hydrogen processors now make hydrogen with 91% efficiency.

NO INFRASTRUCTURE IS NEEDED!!! This is the biggest lie of all. A large number of start-ups have solid state hydrogen solutions that entirely use existing infrastructure.

Battery Shills, backed by companies who are invested in batteries, are the usual suspects in anti-hydrogen reporting.

Part 3

A “fuel cell car” and an “electric car” ARE THE SAME THING. The shills want you to think otherwise. The only difference is where the electricity is stored. You can pull the batteries out of every Zenn, Tesla, Zap, EV1, Venture Vehicle, etc. and pop a fuel cell/hydrogen pack in the same hole and go further, more efficiently in EVERY SINGLE CASE.

A modern fuel cell and hydrogen system beats batteries on every front including

FIRE- Batteries catch on fire constantly and have been the result of massively more fires and explosions than hydrogen.

Life Span- Hydrogen power systems run massively longer and provide massively greater range per charge than batteries.

Run Time – The run time of batteries constantly shortens while hydrogen does not.

Memory Effect- This effect is not present in hydrogen systems

Recharge Time- modern hydrogen systems are instant recharge.

Charge life- Modern hydrogen systems can recharge massively longer than batteries before end of life.

Nano powder batteries have cancer causing powder that falls into the pores of the Chinese factory workers skin and gives them potentially fatal diseases

Cost- The cost per 300 mile range for a hydrogen car system is massively lower than a battery system

Energy from “sour-grid”- A modern hydrogen system can be charged from a completely clean home energy system.

Can’t make energy at home- Hydrogen can be made at home. Batteries cannot.

Storage Density – Modern hydrogen technology has a massively higher storage density than batteries.

Bulky Size- Hydrogen systems are dramatically less bulky than batteries.

High Weight- The weight of batteries is so great ir reduces the reange of travel of a vehicle which causes the use of wasteful energy just to haul the batteries along with the car. Hydrogen energy systems weigh far less.

Environmental soundness- The disposal of batteries after use presents a deadly environmental issue.

Self Discharge issues- Hydrogen does not self discharge like batteries.

Batteries cause a greater carbon footprint than hydrogen

Battery shills are mostly paid for by military contractors.

Lefties, what do you think?

Try a BC made crown corporation that produces hydrogen through dam generated electricity.

Recently, Site C has been noted as a place to create a large dam or series of dams for the creation of hydro electricity. The big drawback to the plan, are the environmental impacts and its location itself.

Most of the power lost with hydro generation comes from the loss of heat driving turbines in heat driven power plants, and transportation of electicity itself through powerlines. Clearly, this BC government (or the next) could build a smaller scale dam around the site C area to provide the power to make a world class hydrogen manufacturing site.

Hydrogen's greatest hurdle is its reliance on electricity of which most of it is not cleanly produced world wide. BC clearly has an edge over most other regions of the world in its ability to generate clean power.

The idea of a BC crown corporation in the hyrdogen production sector is seriously worth considering, especially to give more remote dam projects a greater ability to be more efficient on the consumption end through the provision of power on site for hydrogen production.

HYDROGEN TRUTH

According to David Friedman, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, the cumulative cost of switching to hydrogen could approach $1 trillion and take 30 years.

Not that that is necessarily a problem!

I'd actually be much more impressed with all the effort your making if you provided some actual 'evidence' that the stuff you're cutting and pasting is legitimate - from legitimate scientists and sources.

How about it?

Because otherwise, sorry but there's no way to soft-pedal this, you come across like what you decry - just with a different prefix.

Born again ?

Makes me wonder, if, these people at the helm of this whole project, were resurrected from the fast Cat projects? What is this specialized Hydrogen fuel tanker truck going to haul, on its return trip to Quebec, sail boat fuel?

I like H2-powered public transit

Though I haven't had much nice to say about this government, and I'd like to see them put in light rail and continue with rail service to Whistler, I think these buses are nice. Now if we can get everyon generating electricity through full-spectrum power-generation cells, wind-power, tidal power and geothermal power, then we could have everyone turning the extra into hydrogen to sell to the Americans.

I think this government should put half the funds it collects through the sale of hydrocarbons to research and development of alternative energy. Just imagine the type of people we could attract to out province - those who wish to develop the technologies to save the world from itself. We would then be able to be proud of ourselves and we could go down in history as one of the saviours of the world. The premier who turned the province into a non-polluting energy producer, while providing food and shelter for the needy would go down in history as the greatest premier that had ever been. This is how one becomes immortal; it is not by getting one's buddies to build Olympic venues and convention centers while crime and poverty are worse than ever.

It would not take that much to really go green. We have the wealth to make it happen - it is just a matter of will. We just have to stop letting the Thompsons, Rogers, Westons, Desmarais, Irvings and Pattisons, etc. continue to increase their net worth at rates faster than inflation and put that money to good use. The money would get spent and it would circulate and it would make the economy grow in directions we chose it to grow.

As many here have said, we need to revise the tax laws.

I was a hydrogen fan up to about 1996

The exhaust is water vapour, the fuel weight is less than that of any other combustible, what's not to like?

Well, the fuel weight plus the tank weight turns out to be much greater than the same sum for other fuels, including other zero-local-emission fuels. And the explosiveness with which that water vapour can form is a problem.

So now I think the motoring public has been sensible in ignoring all the hydrogen vehicle prototypes that have been made over the last 30-plus years. They and actual engineers have a grip on common sense that some of us with a little technical knowledge don't.

--- G.R.L. Cowan
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?

one alternative

Somewhere in Europe (I forget where) they use electric buses that get a recharge at every stop; enough to move it to the next stop.
This happens as fast as it takes for passengers to enter and exit.
We have the trolley buses, so perhaps all we need is a charging unit erected over each stop on the various routes.

Just one problem

The environmental impacts of electrical generation still remains.

The solutions are there. Geothermal. Solar power. Refractive light power. Hydro. And if the private sector is too greedy, shortsighted or so called poor to take the risk, then its time for government to begin the initiatives needed to supply clean power.

Hydrogen Truth

You've got one thing going for you, and that is - the only real solution is to be able to make your own fuel (whatever it may be) for yourself. Get off the grid, and the grid dies - and the politics and petty fiefdoms generated by the concentration of power also dies.......

Zero Emissions....?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,157437,00.html

As for Site C, I posted long enough ago that, if the Lower Mainland wants power, then dam well dam the lower Fraser, and leave the (remaining) good folk in BC's beleaguered interior alone!
http://www.sqwalk.com/blog/000408.html

"Truth" notwithstanding....

Womens' & Children's Hospital built a new LEED Silver building last year and was looking at a new form of emergency power generation involving a 700 kW hydrogen turbine fed from hydrogen catalyst conversion (ruthenium trichloride? I don't recall) and clathrate storage facility to store fuel generated off-hours. There was some excitement generated in Planning about this, until the costs came in. $18 milion.

Then, it was discovered that this was still a prototype, and none had yet been sold anywhere in the world. That really put the project in the dumper as far as a health-care facility was concerned. "Minimize risk," it says on the doors and letterhead and wallpaper in that department. "Minimize risk".

Needless to say, they rolled that project in with the old transformer and diesel replacement on the old buildings and for a little over $3 million they got 6 mW of dirty old diesel-generated power and all the switchgear to go with it.

There are definitely people who are interested in this but there's no actual economy to purchase goods and services in yet. Hydrogen Truth's right about one thing though - some people are still thinking tanks and compressors and that really is old technology. Catalysts and chemical hydrate storage is the new wave - no Hindenburgs with this stuff.

Good points Rick W

However, (there's always that but, right, lol) what I had in mind with site C was a dam a tenth of the size of what was proposed. essentially, hydro comes from flows and pressures in terms of what they can deliver for power. We have a tendacy to think too big, too fast. We do it with most of what we develop now and thats what is wrong with things. We just simply over do it.

With site C, the reason why I see it as a place to start is precisely because it is a remote area and if the power generated there is of of a scale that isn't overblown and the electricty generated is consumed on site to develope hydrogen alone, then I believe it can be a win win.

The truth about power generation created by heat is that its inefficient in terms of lost heat to generate power. We lose 2/3rds of our efficiency in heat loss, and we lose a further 2/3rds of the remaining third we have left from the transportation of electricity through powerlines... and mabye with the case of site C, potentially more. So really, for the sake of effeciency alone, power should be generated closer to where its being consumed to be smart about it.

Which is the primary reason why I agree with what you've said.

Andrew Macleod makes a most excellent point. Its one thing to look at the use of hydrogen in transporation as smog is literally killing people and shortening their lifespans in cities of any size whatsoever. The solution is pollution free transport, but pollution is still created by power generation itself and until we turn the corner by phasing out dirty power with clean power, we won't have progressed environmentally as a whole. And that takes a major shift from old to new in terms of power generation.

We've pretty much maxed out most of the hydro potential in North America. The answer to clean power lies with geothermal of which the pac rim offers abundant sites to work with. The east coast, however, is not so lucky and tide power generation has its own can of worms. What is needed, I think, is to exploit every avenue known. Solar panels and refractive light with glass, wind, dams, geothermal both with geothermal mass scale power generation to geothermal loops in peoples houses, the works.

Cont.

For the most part, iot comes down to heat sources. We have them with the sun (which drawback is that its not 24hrs), and the earth which is 24 hr generation, but location dependent to develope. Essentially, we will need to look at everything under the sun to succeed in creating a shift from dirty energy to clean energy and the political will doesn't exist due to too many elected corporate lobbyists in power bending to oil companies instead of what's best for the people and the environments that sustain them... at the moment.

So while its true that its a top down problem, its also just as true that its also bottom up. There is such a thing as grass roots development and that takes a major paradigm shift created by a major shift in what we are consciously aware of where media is also a major problem in terms of who controls it.

Quite frankly, it comes down to the consumer being made of the choices available. Not everyone in the city can find the means to take themselves off the grid. The same goes with those who are dependent on other systems such as the monetary one. Its a wonderful ideal to pursue, but the bottom line is that there has to be solutions that can work for us all and that means adopting new forms of tech to replace old ones.

The unfortunate thing about this current government, is that we don't have the political will in this country at federal levels or in most provinces outside of Quebec and Ontario for provincial levels to deviate from current forms of natural gas and coal generated power. Governments are looking more into nuclear and that's not the answer either for the same environmental reasons we know now.

So what do we do for now? Expand awareness within ourselves as to what can best be done to consume as efficiently as possible, along with looking for the macro solutions and once found, spam them and that means sending a message to our own media.

True healing begins with awareness. It doesn't begin anywhere else, but this. Change won't occur any other way.

Brain

Of course, it would also be useful if people regarded the power so easily available to them in their homes and houses as less than infinite........

People tend to think that cities are just larger collections of huts in a village, but they are much more than that. Cities would cease to exist in any form with which we are familiar without their incessant demand for specialization, and thus, interdependence -- the very antipathy of the rosy picture presented us of the independent person. It's time (and it's essential) that people give up this fantasy that we can exist in a society as an independent entity, and get on with developing all of the systems you mention (and more). Or -- we disband cities in a "glorious" diaspora.....

Various infrastructures

HYDROGEN TRUTH makes some very cogent observations. It's quite true that the planet simply cannot long continue to support the infrastructures of the 19th and 20th centuries that we continue to use to maintain our so-called economy.

And all the solutions to that problem require either a major die-off of humans, or a complete redesign of our cultural dependence on profit accumulation.

Just suppose that instead of permitting large corporate interests to dominate our energy creation and usage patterns, instead we simply allow the corporations to make the equipment for a completely decentralized infrastructure.

For instance, suppose we demand that all roofing materials be made of solar cells of some kind, so that every roof must produce power. Then suppose somebody has designed home or village sized systems for creating hydrogen: bacterial generators maybe, eating waste and delivering H2. Then suppose that all the existing power poles on earth were equipped with small wind generators, feeding whatever they produced directly into the grid. Then suppose that all the lights everywhere be converted to the most efficient LED type. There must be hundreds of possibilities for such improvements.

Our economy is based on the large owner paradigm, where any improvements proposed must first offer larger profits to some owner. Must in fact further concentrate wealth, increasing it for owners, impoverishing the rest.

That must change, or most of us must die. I see no other possible outcome. We must start redesigning our economy so that smallholders and rural localities can both create and utilize the energy they need close by, and do it sustainably, without burdening the atmosphere further with carbon, and without the need to waste most of their effort supporting the rich without benefit to themselves.

We seem to already have the means to make this happen. Potentially, anyway. All we need to do is start doing it.

If you change patent laws .....

...and as well link personal accountability of individuals to the corporate entity, we just might approach something resembling sanity........

sewage to power

I used to be the one voice baying in the wilderness about the Ballard hydrogen scam, so nice to be in great company now.

Roger Billings had some good ideas, but laughed at Ballard with the bus. He said only the bus was big enough to carry the cell. Well, that was before Hummers.

Remember when Dr Hydrogen at UVIC and Ballard were blithering on about "nuclear farms"? If you don't, they meant nuclear plants in the wilderness with lots of natural gas nearby, so the power could provide the heat to strip the H from the CH4, and then what? Greener than grass it was.

I think the pond scum breakthrough may not really be any more than it was in the 80s.

A truly renewable source of CH4 is sewage, which we tend to squander princely almost nuclear sums trying to pretend we didn't create. Sweden is doing well, so is rural China. Check out Paul Henderson Biogas in Rural China. CityFarmer website.

Henderson used to be with Vancouver engineering department, did this great trip to China, wonderful report, now on VANOC committee, go figure.

Hydrogen not-so-green

Interesting article. Hydrogen as a fuel source has many problems, as the captain of the Hindenberg discovered. There are beign ways to store it, using hydride chemistry, but it is the whole supply chain that counts.

Trucking hydrogen across Canada is a ridiculous idea. Politicians are attracted to high-tech solutions like moths to light.

The energy future of this country cannot be left to wing-nuts to decide. If Vancouver is to use hydrogen powered buses, we should build our own supply here in BC. The trouble is that hydrogen is most easily available form natural gas. That isn't green either.

You prefer the right-wing variety?

Considering the fact that it is the right-wing nuts that are making the decisions in Ottawa and always HAS been, I think we're in much greater danger from that variety.

The idea of trucking hydrogen from Central Canada to BC is absurd...I look for some kind of a joint venture with BC Gas producers - perhaps in conjunction with the proposed Texada LPG port.

The Brain

As long as the land to be flooded is not confiscated with "fair market value" payment, but rather, remains the owners' in perpetuity, with dividends and/or royalties paid them from the generation of power, or the use of water as irrigation, or any other form of income generated by the dam.

hydrogen too costly?

Despite the shortcomings of hydrogen powers use of unfriendly sources of electricity, the emissions from diesel fuel in its hauling it seems that hydrogen is something governments and the public should support.

All newer technologies are more expensive and less efficient to implement intitially. Hydrogen is a clean enough fuel to run on, it is mostly its cost effectiveness that is its barrier.

The only way for it to become cost effective, and in the long term more "green" to put in place incentives and policies which support its use, something that the European's have failed to support through their government's policies.

There are definately a lot worse companies that the government could fall in bed with. No industry stands alone in its success, logging and lumber industries have needed plenty of incentives to make there industries work, as do mining and oil. The lack of success of many green technologies such as solar, wind and hydrogen can be traced to their inability to compete economically. It seems to make sense to take the initial plunge and spend the money on hydrogen with proper policy support to eventually make it a winner.