FuelCellsWorks

There’s been an immense amount of talk about China’s investment in Greentech so this morning I took time off from the conference hall to visit two Chinese companies that are leading the way in this field.

Riding into the future

Most exciting was the chance to drive a hydrogen-fuel-cell bike made by Sunrise Power, which is China’s leading researcher in fuel-cell technology. They supplied all the hydrogen fuel cell buses and cars for the Olympics last year.

The bike really was something. The fuel cell is contained in that tiny pannier on the back – it’s hard to explain how ’space-age’ it felt, being powered along by this tiny little device, whirring silently away behind you.

It feels incredibly alien not to know what’s driving a machine when you’re on it. Having been brought up in the era of the internal combustion engine, the vibrations, noise and smell of motorised transport is hard-wired into my brain.

I have an instinctive understanding of what’s going on, of chambers filling with aerosolised fuel, of sparks plugs, ignition, explosions and pistons driving shafts…all the stuff of some dimly remembered physics lesson.

No doubt my children, when the time comes, will feel equally at home with the hydrogen cell if it ever takes off.

“Come on dad,” they’ll say, “it’s just simple catalysis, the process of separating electrons and protons from reactant fuel” (OK, so nicked that bit up from Wikipedia and haven’t the foggiest idea what it means).

There is, of course, a big ‘if’ as to whether hydrogen fuel cells will indeed become a form of mass-transport for the 21^st century. General Motors has just driven its ‘millionth mile’ in hydrogen fuel cell cars, running a successful pilot with a fleet of 100 cars driven by ordinary US consumers.

They do work, but there are issues with efficiency (a fuel cell car is only about 40pc efficient from ‘tank to wheel’), range (168 miles a tank on the GM vehicle) and cost – the fuel cell car (not the bike) we looked at today cost USD$1.5m to build, and even in mass production it will still be expensive using current technology.

Sunrise – and many other manufacturers around the world – are promising production line vehicles by 2015 or so, but I can’t help feeling that the electric vehicle seems a considerably more likely proposition.

For a start, electric motors are 90pc efficient – I refer you to the figure in yesterday’s blog that if every car in the UK went electric it would only put 6pc additional load on the grid – and the infrastructure (charging stations/home charging) is to a degree already in place through the national grid.

A Norwegian greentech investor on the same trip was pretty sceptical about hydrogen fuel cells for mass transport. He’s definitely plumping for an electric car future. I’m sure he’s right, but there’s a corner of my romantic heart that feels sad about that.

The other company we checked out was Luming Science and Technology, that makes LED lights that use 90pc less electricity than conventional filament light bulbs and will – it now seems certain – provide the lighting of the future. They were the company behind the lighting in the bubbly-blue WaterCube swimming venue at the Olympics last year.

They are also doing interesting things combing fluorescent light (which consumers don’t really like because its flat and horrible) with LED technology to create a nicer, softer hue.

To be honest, it’s very hard to tell when you visit these companies how strong they really are, how they would compete in a global market place – certainly what we saw today was no Silicon Valley, although a delegation from GE China were also visiting, which suggests something good is going on.

Truth is that, at the moment – as yesterday’s PriceWaterhouseCoopers report observed – China is still technologically a long way behind Europe and the US and it is has a poor track record in innovation. That may be about to change.

One reason to think that it might, is that China is a market place all of its own and – crucially – it has a government with the authority, finance and executive capacity to really make some of these green technologies happen.

China is already the largest user of electric bikes in the world – I have a near-death experience with one almost every day – and if the PRC decides to mandate green tech into real life, then it can – and on a scale and with a cost-competitiveness that really could shake the world.