Hydricity [1] refers to the dual and complementary use of hydrogen and electricity as energy conversion currencies that link energy sources with energy-consuming services. Sources include solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro. Services include lighting, water desalination and distribution, machinery for manufacturing, information technology infrastructure, and transport.

Hydrogen and electricity are "dual currencies" because they provide for energy conversion in both directions: Electricity can be used to produce hydrogen on demand. Hydrogen can be used to generate electricity on demand. But like foreign monetary currency exchanges, there are marginal losses associated with each conversion. As a result, converting back and forth is not cost effective unless there is an intermediate change in currency value during the period between exchanges.

Benefits of this duality include the following simple example in an Australian context.       During periods when the currency of electricity is very cheap, available energy can be stored as hydrogen in lieu of wasting production on loss-leading electricity supply. Conversely, hydrogen energy could be released during occasional periods of extremely high energy demand. This would provide insurance against extremely high electricity supply price spikes during extreme weather events such as South Australia's March 2008 heatwave. It would also dramatically reduce the capital cost of electricity generation systems, which is a function of the peak demand, and not the average.

Compare this to (a) hydrocarbons which store ancient solar energy, and (b) biofuels (most often produced using land that is otherwise arable for food production) which store recent solar energy. Both hydrocarbons and alcohols can be used to generate electricity on demand. But electricity will never be used to directly generate either hydrocarbons or alcohols. (An apparent exception to this "rule" occurs in special situations in which hydrogen is used indirectly: as an intermediary between electricity and hydrocarbon production via chemical reactions with carbon dioxide). In short, hydrocarbons and alcohols are energy carriers, but are not energy currencies.

Also consider the notions of carbon emissions trading (buying permission to pollute at a price that may or may not accurately reflect the true environmental cost of the pollution) and/or carbon taxes (which might eventually result in polluters paying the true cost of the fuel, including both production and environmental costs). Such schemes will finally put a price on the CO2 byproduct resulting from burning hydrocarbons. And carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) might finally formalize the cost of having to formally dump this unwanted byproduct underground. (This is what most humans did with the majority of their garbage until recently. South Australia is now a world leader in recycling, with about 75% of what used to be dumped into landfills, now being recycled in one form or another.) CCS might eventually play a role in reducing atmospheric dumping of byproducts from generating electricity sourced from hydrocarbons. But its important to emphasize that CCS will never be usable for capturing and sequestering the emissions from the tailpipes of hydrocarbon-powered planes, trains, and automobiles. This leaves carbon offsets to justify our ongoing indulgence in hydrocarbon-powered transport. But all the atmospheric carbon sequestration projects currently underway or proposed for the near term, can and arguably should be allocated to repairing the damage that humans have already done to the atmospheric gas balance, and even that is not currently enough.       In contrast, hydricity offers the potential for supplying energy for all energy-consuming services -- including transport, with no carbon emissions dumped to the atmosphere and no dumping of unwanted byproducts in underground waste disposal systems.       Each of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro, involve zero CO2 byproduct emission costs. Each can in turn be used to generate hydrogen. Zero-carbon sourced hydrogen also includes photocatalytic hydrogen production, which will be scalable to very high production rates if current research in this area becomes commercially viable. Clearly zero-carbon transport applications powered by hydrogen have huge potential in the long term -- wherever connection to the power grid is not practical and whenever batteries cannot store enough energy to travel the required distance.       In summary, hydricity offers the ultimate clean transport-energy recycling system: split water into hydrogen and oxygen, venting the oxygen into the atmosphere; then recreate water when consuming the energy stored as hydrogen, consuming atmospheric oxygen in the process.

[1] David Sanborn Scott, "Smelling Land: The hydrogen defense against climate catastrophe", British Columbia Crown Publications, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-9809674-0-1; smellingland.com

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