Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-342)
MR DARRAN
MESSEM AND
MS TANYA
MORRISON
3 MAY 2006
Q340 Mr Drew: Is that because the
scientific knowledge about how you would break down the molecules
of water are really deficient, or is the nuclear route something
again that you are interested in? We have to take one of these
routes, surely.
Mr Messem: It is a good point.
Nuclear hydrogen would be a third potential pathway. Shell is
not a nuclear energy company; we do keep a close watch on the
nuclear industry and our strategic options in that area, but to
date it has been an area of energy that we have determined not
to invest ourselves in. It poses a number of issues, obviously,
in terms of the perception and the perceived safety of the process,
together with the capital cost and the economics of the nuclear
industry. Coming back to your question, though, about why is this,
in many ways it comes down to thermodynamics and chemistry. It
is a simple scientific fact that separating the hydrogen from
the oxygen in water requires an immense amount of energy to do
it, and separating the hydrogen from a hydrocarbon chain or any
other molecule that it is attached to requires an awful lot of
energy, and processes requiring immense amounts of energy and
conversion tend to be expensive.
Q341 Mr Drew: So coming to this idea
of 2025, we are still very heavily dependent on fossil fuels,
is that your prediction, then? Or could we go more quickly towards
biofuels and hydrogen fuel cell delivery?
Mr Messem: I am in the privileged
position of being able to talk to many car companies around the
world, if not all, and my understanding, having spoken to many
car companies, is that the commercial scale roll-out of hydrogen
fuel cell vehicles is in the order of 15-20 years away, and the
reason for that is that the technology development process in
order to produce a viable hydrogen power drive train requires
that kind of development lead time. The only other constraint
on that as an economic constraint is inevitably that the automotive
industry has billions of dollars in invested capacity producing
internal combustion engines, and internal combustion engines therefore
are being produced very economically, very cost competitively,
and new technology will somehow have to compete when the motor
vehicle is a consumer purchase and a consumer investment, and
I think that the car industry struggles with the fact that if
you want to produce a vehicle that can propel 4-6 people from
0-60 in 10 seconds and have a range of 300 miles and do all of
that carrying a CD player and all of the mod cons that cars now
have, and to produce that at a list price including tax and duty
of around £10-£15,000, that is an immense technical
and manufacturing challenge, and to do that then with a whole
new drive train technology and to do it competitively is a huge
challenge. So practically it seems that the hydrogen fuel cell
vehicle as a large scale mass production transportation system
is a number of years away. Therefore, practically, the most practical
route to renewable fuels in transportation is to look at biofuel
and, as I have said, because vehicles on the road can run at blends
of 5% biofuel the most practical thing to do is to blend biofuel
in low concentration blends with conventional hydrocarbon. That
is the most practical way of addressing the challenge today, given
that there are 25 million vehicles on the road that require a
hydrocarbon fuel and cannot accommodate a biofuel blend much above
5%.
Q342 Mr Vara: Very briefly, is it
not in your company's interests not to have hydrogen fuel, and
you give the argument that if you had actually put the investment
in there then you might be able to get that car for about £10-£15,000
rather than the million pounds it costs at a moment, which we
found when our Committee went to Sacramento.
Mr Messem: In the long term, no.
Shell is an energy company and has been for the last 100 years,
and in that time we have been the leader in fuel development over
the course of 100 years and we intend to be around for the next
100 years, and therefore it is in our interests to develop energy
technologies that are cost effective and commercially viable,
and that is why we focus on the advance technologies that we do.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
That was fascinating and interesting and I look forward to your
further observations about CSR sustainability and biodiversity.
Thank you very much not only for your evidence this afternoon
but also your written submissions. Thank you.
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