Does the future of driving start with flushing your toilet?
When Mutsuro Yuji, chief of the central sewage plant in southern Japanese city, first heard about the idea of making hydrogen from biogas — the combination of methane and carbon dioxide produced by the breakdown of stinky matter — he was skeptical. “I thought it was a joke,” he says.
But after a $12-million investment from Japan’s government, plus research, engineering, design and building work by Mitsubishi, Toyota and Kyushu University, Yuji is no longer laughing. Starting late last year, drivers of vehicles like the Toyota Mirai and Honda Clarity have been able to roll up to the sewage plant and power up their hydrogen fuel cell cars at what you might call the world’s first toilet-to-tank filling station.
The station is working only 12 hours per day but already is making enough hydrogen to fill 65 cars daily — and that could grow to 600 if all the biogas at the plant was harnessed.
After years of fits and starts, Japan is in the midst of a major push to move hydrogen-powered cars off the drawing board and into driveways. The government this year has doubled its funding for fuel cell vehicle subsidies, construction of filling stations and hydrogen energy farms to about $280 million, up from $120 million last year. Meanwhile, carmakers including Toyota are ramping up production plans for the zero-emission vehicles.
The effort could have profound ripple effects in California, which along with Japan and Germany is one of the first three places in the world where interest in hydrogen fuel cells and investment in infrastructure look to be approaching a level where the technology could be commercially viable.
After years of chicken-and-egg debate about which should come first, the cars or the stations to support them, the numbers of both are mushrooming. Japan now has about 80 stations operating, and Germany has 50. In California, 20 retail hydrogen stations are now open, making it possible to drive from the Mexican border to far Northern California, and another 16 are slated to come online this year.
In the U.S., most hydrogen is produced from natural gas. But a 2014 study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that biogas from waste water treatment plants, landfills, animal manure and industrial facilities could be used as a major source of hydrogen — enough to support 11 million fuel cell vehicles per year.
“Sewage sludge is completely untapped today as a fuel source,” said Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of the Toyota Mirai. “We believe it’s very promising and would bring ultimate self-sustainability to communities.”
Poo-powered hydrogen however is not cheap. “We’re not making any money off this yet,” says Sumito Tachibana, chief of the energy and environment section of Fukuoka’s startup and investment department.
Customers are charged about $11 for a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of hydrogen, and a fill-up requires about five kilograms, making the cost comparable to driving a gasoline car. But producing a kilogram of hydrogen at the sewage plant costs about $100, Tachibana said.
Takeo Kikkawa, a professor at Tokyo University of Science’s Graduate School of Innovation Studies, said even with government subsidies worth thousands of dollars to each buyer, hydrogen fuel cell cars like Toyota’s Mirai and Honda’s Clarity remain out of reach of middle-class consumers. In the U.S., the suggested retail price of the Mirai is $57,000, but buyers are eligible for about $20,000 worth of incentives, rebates and tax credits.
Japan is the most advanced country in terms of developing fuel-cell technology, Kikkawa said, but “we are lagging on infrastructure because we don’t yet have a mass market.” California, he said, has done a better job of promoting other fuel-cell powered vehicles, including buses and forklifts used in warehouses, ports and airports.
But Japan, he said, has an opportunity to catch up by using the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo as a focusing event. On July 1, the city announced it would open a Hydrogen Museum to educate residents and visitors alike about the technology.
In addition, the city and national governments have pledged to have 100 hydrogen-powered buses on the city’s streets in time for the Summer Games. Those will require four high-capacity hydrogen stations, according to Kikkawa. “This is a major development,” he says.
Tanaka, the Toyota engineer, admits that if the price of crude oil stays low, interest in hydrogen fuel cells and all kinds of alternative energy may wane. “We’ve already seen the sale of hybrids come down with crude oil prices plummeting,” he concedes. “We cannot predict the future. Oil is a commodity, and the price fluctuates.”
Yet Tanaka says he’s determined to push ahead.
“It took 20 years for us to establish Prius as a standard choice,” he says of the gasoline hybrid cars. “But regardless of what happens with oil, we should be preparing to transform our society into a more eco-friendly and sustainable place.”
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