IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2018 - 6

technology leaders

meet these challenges has grown. the
negative health impacts of tailpipe
emissions have been, and continue to
be, the primary motivation for the
development and deployment of FceVs
in the United states. these emissions,
in particular, nitrogen oxides, sulfur
oxides, and particulates, are responsible for significant health problems,
resulting in a large number of premature deaths every year. california has
led the way with ambitious clean air
targets that have helped drive the
development of FceVs.
globally, poor air quality in developing countries such as china and
india is a significant and growing
problem. although transportationrelated emissions are not the only
source of these emissions, they are a
significant part of the problem. as
the economies of developing nations
grow, the increased demand for automobiles and freight movement will
only make these problems more difficult to address. Furthermore, the
demand in these countries for zeroemission vehicles is going to increase
as the need to reduce both emissions and vehicle miles traveled
becomes more prominent.

another significant trend over the
past several decades is the growing
commitment of governments around
the world to reduce the emission of
greenhouse gases (ghgs). nearly
every country, apart from the United
states, has signed the Paris climate
accords. each country that has signed
this agreement determines its own
contribution to ghg emissions reductions and how it will meet this contribution. Of these individually
determined contributions, 75% include explicit targets to reduce ghg
emissions from the transportation
sector. as with clean air standards,
developing countries will need to
achieve these ghg emissions reductions while transportation energy
consumption nearly doubles. this can
only be accomplished and sustained
if transportation energy can come
from near-zero-carbon-sources.

Emerging market applications
synergies with other industries that
use Fcs and hydrogen are increasing.
the cost of new technologies is
reduced through a combination of
research breakthroughs and reductions in manufacturing costs due to

Contract Price (US$/kWh)

conclusion

10
8
6
4
US$0.02/kWh

2
0
2008

2010

2012

2014

2015

Year
Solar

Wind

Capacity (Gigawatt)

Figure 3. Renewable electricity prices have fallen while capacity has grown. (Figure adapted
from B. Pivovar, H2@Scale: "Energy System-Wide Benefits of Increased Hydrogen Implementation," presented at the Fuel-Cell Seminar, Long Beach, California, 2017.)

increases in manufacturing volume.
Over the last few decades, there has
been a dramatic increase in other
markets for Fc systems. Forklifts and
material-handling applications have
become a big part of the Fc market,
with more than 15,000 hydrogen Fc
forklifts already deployed or on order
(Office of energy efficiency and Renewable energy 2017).
stationary applications of Fc
systems have also been growing.
Pem fuel cells have been shown to
be robust and reliable sources of
stationary and backup power. the
ability of Fc systems to provide reliable backup power to add resilience
to the electrical grid during extreme
weather events is going to make
these systems increasingly valuable.
a prior analysis of backup power generation in the aftermath of hurricane sandy demonstrated this value
in dramatic fashion (Kurtz et al.
2015). the combination of high reliability and the potential to provide
low-carbon energy has also made
these systems desirable as power
supplies for data centers. Daimler,
hewlett Packard, and Power innovations have developed prototype Fc
systems to power data center
microgrids (Daimler 2017). consequently, this market has the potential to create a dramatic increase in
fuel-cell system sales.

I EEE E l e c t r i f i c a t i on M a gaz ine / march 2018

there are still many barriers to the
widespread adoption of hydrogen
FceVs, and we cannot say with
certainty how soon we will see this
widespread adoption happen. But in
response to those who say that
hydrogen will always be the technology of the future, i would like to suggest that they have not been paying
attention to the successes of the last
decade. a large amount has changed
in the past ten years: the technology
has made significant advances, the
economics of renewable hydrogen
are quickly changing, the recognition
of the need for alternative energy

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Electrification Magazine - March 2018