January 25th, 2010
Electricity usage after Hydrogen Convergence
Many of the people we talk to about hydrogen convergence ask us about what will happen to electricity after hydrogen convergence. The answer is that electricity will become the Internet equivalent of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. It will be used inside buildings and cars but it will no longer be used for long-haul energy distribution.
As readers of the ebTDesign Forum and twitter followers know, the electricity supply industry is a highly regulated industry. At the Federal level, there is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and each individual state has its own electricity oversight bureaucracy. This means that any new innovation must first clear political hurdles before it can be sold to consumers.
Hydrogen Convergence on the other hand is an unregulated market which means that buyers and sellers are allowed to exchange value without government intervention. New hydrogen applications and production enhancements will flow to where they are most wanted without the need to hire a lobbyist or wait for a decade while the decision works its way through the courts.
Enterprising entrepreneurs will no doubt find ways of extricating themselves from the regulated electricity supply industry and stake their hydrogen convergence claims on the post-Globalization frontier. Once the direct and indirect subsidies for big coal are reduced, then the profitability of the electricity supply industry will evaporate so will its dominance.
Zachary Alexander
Concepts: hydrogen, post-Globalization, unregulated market