The road to global security,” writes Jeremy Rifkin, “lies in lessening our dependence on Middle East oil and making sure that all people on Earth have access to the energy they need to sustain life. Weaning the world off oil and turning it toward hydrogen is a promissory note for a safer world.” Rifkin’s international bestseller The Hydrogen Economy presents the clearest, most comprehensive case for moving ourselves away from the destructive and waning years of the oil era toward a new kind of energy regime. Hydrogen-one of the most abundant substances in the universe-holds the key, Rifkin argues, to a cleaner, safer, and more sustainable world.
Customer Reviews
A must read-why we must move to a hydrogen economy:
This book details exactly why we must move away from our dependence on fossil fuels, from the geopolitical struggles to the environmental issues, and sets forth the absolute benefits for hydrogen based energy-it is 100% renewable, and the technology to harness it would equalize all members of the human race.
Does it give technical details as to how hydrogen energy could be harnessed? No. Those are details best left to the research scientists and the engineers. But it gives the general public all the reasons why we should be demanding our scientists and engineers develop this technology and then make it available to the general public.
Read this book because you want to equalize society. Read this book because you want to equalize the human race.
A rather rushed leap to hydrogen determinism:
Jeremy Rifkin is known for being a radical visionary and much was expected of him when he embraced hydrogen as our energy panacea. However, this book recycles a lot of old ideas and basically presents more historical material on peak oil than it does on hydrogen. Rifkin also succumbs to fearmongering tactics in the post-9/11 world by having a full chpater on “The Islamist Wild Card.” He could have just as well considered the “Venezuelan” wild card. This book fails to deliver any plausible scenarios on how a hydrogen economy is viable when fuel cells require tremendous material usage. As Rifkin admits himself, fuel cells are not a new invention and predate the internal combustion engine. However, they have not been economically viable because hydrogen production is still the big problem. If we use methane to produce hydrogen we are stuck with the nonrenewability issue and if we use electrolysis, the only sensible way would be to use renewables such as wind, solar, geothermal and small-hydro to carry out the electrolysis. How such a transition will be made is missed in the analysis. The most promising feature of fuel cells is that they can be used to feed back into the grid if the infrastructure exists. Only one chapter is devoted to brushing through these intractable issues. Amory Lovins is far more astute in his writings on this matter.
Unfortunantly this is a view I share:
World oil is declining and this book explains all the facts related to the coming end of the oil age. If you don’t believe its true you will after reading this book and the book “the Coming economic collapse”. Not sure hydrogen is viable the way this author states but if we can develop “just in time” hydrogen generation we may have a chance. I wish someone could explain how Stanley Mayer was generating hydrogen by fracturing water as he described but unfortunately he was killed.
“A snare and a delusion…”:
…as noted in other reviews here, hydrogen is simply an energy carrier (not a source) — like a battery.
Here is an interesting quote:
” …hydrogen offers little to no potential to produce oil security and reduce climate change risk in the next 20 years. (Changing the infrastructure for using hydrogen fuel cells for transportation) …is a many decades undertaking.
Hydrogen fuel cells for transportation, are in my judgment, a snare and a delusion…”
— James Woolsey, former CIA Director.
Simply Awful - How Does this Guy Get to Keep Writing Books?:
I put this book down probably quicker than any other book I can think of in recent memory. It’s simply awful.
I can’t agree with even the paltry 2 or 3 star reviews who say that the first half of the book was good, but that it misses the point (as well as basic physics, thermodynamics, economics, . . . etc.)
Even the first half of this book is awful. The first chapter was the first sign that you’re in trouble. It basically just lists a bunch of “stuff” that’s going on: Globalization, Protesters in the streets against it, Telecommunications, Biotech, and . . . err . . . oh yeah, let’s not forget 9/11 . . . and . . . Barbara Streisand isn’t as good as she used to be, blah, blah, blah. I guess this is supposed to count for serious analysis because after just listing a bunch of trends he decries how there’s been no serious analysis about Globalization. (Does this guy live under a rock!?!? Maybe an ivy covered one at Wharton where he apparently teaches . . . note to self: Don’t get accepted to Wharton.) The rest of the first chapter describes the oil industry in terms starker than Orwell described Big Brother. But don’t despair! The Hydrogen Energy Web will save us all! It will be like what the internet was for communications but for like energy or something like that, and it will destroy the evil oil companies, and it’ll make everyone rich, we’ll all be able to move back to countryside (I’m serious, he’s basically claiming that), it will lay golden eggs, make your first born smarter and prettier, make your hair grow back, etc. Where will get the hydrogen? Oh it comes from stars or something, it’s the most abundant element in the universe! OK, who will set up this web? (I’m not kidding here, again) Well, big corporations stole the internet before VOLUNTEER GROUPS could set it up, so we’ll have VOLUNTEER GROUPS create the hydrogen energy web this time around. Oh, err, big companies will still be needed to, like, make all the hardware, and all the software (he actually concedes this point in a dismissive sentence), will be needed to send people out to fix any problems, to coordinate it, to, well, actually build it, but somehow it will be made by volunteer groups anyway and big companies won’t really be a part of it. Even though they will be. But they won’t. LOOK OVER THERE! A giant ball of oil company induced global warming is heading straight for u 
The second chapter is even better. He complains about how many classifications of oil reserves there are. With completely non-sensical names like “identified reserves”, “non-identified reserves”, and whatnot (boo-hoo, boo-hoo, there’s just soooo many of them) he concludes that they can only have been created to confuse people so that the big oil executives and politicians can manipulate, confuse, and deceive the stupid masses into believing something or another about oil. (I was never quite certain what that was supposed to be. Oh well.) But not Mr. Rifkin! He’s beaten them. He’s defined “conventional oil” all himself, which excludes all oil that has been found but is currently uneconomical to extract and sell, all oil in polar regions, and all oil underneath the oceans. He does this to prove that we’re running out of oil, and that the big oil companies are cooking the books. Tonight I’m going eat “conventional food” which will exclude all food in two thirds of the Kitchen, and all food in, say, the Living Room, to prove to my family that we’re all going to starve to death. Don’t tell me I’m wrong son! You’re cooking the books!! Don’t you see we’re all going to DIE!
This book is not only awful, it’s duplicitous. One of the few mentions of nuclear power is to say in two sentences basically: Utilities put a lot money into nuclear in the ’60’s and ’70’s. In the ’80’s the utilities made the consumer bear the brunt of a lot cost overruns and power plant shutdowns. The idea is to imply that nuclear power was a giant failure with a bunch of cost overruns and power plants that couldn’t keep running. Both sentences might be technically true (because there’s no mention of nuclear power in the second), but they’re crafted to make you imply a conclusion without any specific evidence or argument.
Let’s be clear: This book is a political diatribe. Big oil bad, Hydrogen good because it will do all these wonderful things. How will it do all these wonderful things? Some unconvincing arguments, red herrings, and incomplete and inconclusive examples and complete hypotheticals.
One of the biggest flaws is how it handles (or, more accurately, fails to) where hydrogen will come from, since it is not a primary energy source the way oil, coal, or nuclear is. It will take more energy to extract hydrogen from either natural gas or water than we will ever be able to get from the extracted hydrogen, thanks to the second law of thermodynamics. This is the critical question of what will replace oil, period, and only four pages are dedicated to it. The author’s answer is solar. His argument for solar? Well, basically, solars’s getting cheaper. That’s not a complete argument! Is it FEASIBLE to power the world off solar? To power the United States off solar today would require a solar array the size of a small state! And you’d have to make another state size solar array to handle the growth in energy demand. God forbid the sun not shine one day. (Or maybe we’ll have to invade the Middle East still because they have like 364 sunny days a year over there, leaving us at the mercy of the islamist anyway. Norway will probably invade Southern California too.) Solar by itself is getting cheaper, great, what about it’s cost RELATIVE to other sources? There’s zero discussion about using coal, or nuclear to power electrolysis of hydrogen.
This book is mostly a political posture. He puts forward a fantasy political vision, and tries to scare you into thinking it’s the only thing that will save us from impending doom with some false techno-babble in lieu of any actual coherent plan or argument.
There are only two possible ways this book could help solve energy problems. One, you could burn it instead of heating oil this winter. Or two, if some magical invention could tap into all the hot air this author blows out his pipe we could use it to turn a turbine. Probably forever. I’m hoping for this latter option, but planning on the first.
