New 21st Century Gas Station
The New "Gas Station"
of the 21st Century
By Toby Kinkaid
Will there be a new 21st century gas station? How many fossil fuel gas stations are there in the world? In the order of hundreds of thousands, possible millions in total. Why? Well, it’s obvious – everyone needs fuel. From a market perspective this is quite a business. The world market for fossil fuels tops six trillion dollars annually. Will the new 21st century green hydrogen gas station take this prize? Can Green Hydrogen fueling be used to fuel all types of vehicles?
Everyone’s fossil fueled electricity and direct fuel bill amounts to somewhere around $684 Million – per Hour – worldwide. One could say, our modern civilization is powered by ancient sunlight turned to biomass turned to fossil fuels after eons of temperature and pressure – and being sold for over half a Billion dollars an hour worldwide – to power our global industry doing it the fossil fuel way.
Can Green Hydrogen fueling station systems provide a real energy solution? Green Hydrogen fueling stations of the 21st century will provide a new model: self-sufficiency and local supply. Will green hydrogen fueling stations replace fossil fuel stations?
There are, of course, major problems with how we power our civilization. It’s not the civilization which is the problem – it’s the nature of our fuels.
For over 300 years humans have been digging up every fossil fuel type we can find – and promptly burning it and/or selling it to someone else to burn.
It’s all about the business of energy and the enormous profit industrial control can offer. An opportunity exists today for a new 21st century gas station. A gas station designed for the modern world.
Since John D. Rockefeller set the stage in the 1870s, the world has been fossil fueled ever since.
One hundred and fifty years ago the world could have gone a different way for energy. Solar thermal technology advanced greatly in the 1870s with Augustine Mouchot with his high temperature solar concentrators powering impressive water pumps.
The solar powered steam-engine both low and high temperature were becoming practical engineering. By the 1870s, solar powering the world producing power onsite for farmers and industry was a real option gaining impressive demonstrations of the industrial sun.
The new gas station green hydrogen economy was not just a fantasy but a real option when it comes to powering the new world of the late 1800s. Jules Verne often wrote about the hydrogen economy. In 1874 he famously predicted “Water, will be the coal of the future.”
We live in the 21st century. Is it reasonable to think we can power a world with 19th century technology? Let alone 19th century thinking? There is an old saying “you can’t find solutions with the same thinking which brought you the problem.”
As we consider the future of our world, all the species therein, and our own children’s reality in the near and long term – we need to start at the beginning – and get this right.
Will the New 21st Century Gas Station follow the past?
John D. Rockefeller was a business man. In his era, as perhaps today, that could mean anything which made profit. We like to fancy ourselves advanced, but really has man changed much at all? Can our world transition to a Green Hydrogen fueling station?
In 1859 the world changed when Col. Drake first pumped crude oil out of the ground. Seeing water drillers use hollowed timbers for pipes to shore up the walls of the drill path Drake thought – this could work for rock oil.
It’s one of those flukes of nature that fateful day Drake finally reached oil. For weeks he and his crew toiled to get those “pipes” into the ground first 20 feet then 50 and on.
Nothing came out to the dismay and disappointment of everyone. Bets were placed by the local inhabitants as to the fate of this crazy Col. Drake – the ridicule of everyone. Drakes backers were anxious and he wasn’t getting any results. The decision was made to shut it down.
A cable was dispatched to Drake to call a halt to operations, pay any last bills and shut it all down – clearly it’s not working. The telegraph reached the nearest town but delivery of the message to Drake in the field was delayed. About a day. It was that day Drake struck oil. It was that day the world tapped into the enormous energy stores of ancient sunlight stored through fixed carbon as biomass.
Drake, who later died penny less, took that fateful step which set the world on a course which produced one of the most violent centuries of human existence: the 20th century. As the fight for control over holes in the ground for fossil fuel resources heated up – it set the course. The course of concentrated energy resources for mechanized war military doctrine was keen to control.
Everyone wanted to be a part of the future. The solar energy tapped as fossil fuels, and the business models to follow unleashed a worldwide quest for the ultimate prize: oil.
Did Indoor Lighting launch the Modern World?
Drake unleashed the wildcatters. Where the discovery of oil could send land values from 50 cents per acre to tens of thousands of dollars. In the 1800s enormous sums.
Although, where there were fortunes to be made there was also great risk – and rarely, if ever, can they be separated.
Rockefeller, a very successful grocer who made his first fortune selling produce to the Union Army during the Civil War, took a look at this new fangled rock oil – and what could be produced – Kerosine.
Today, we flip a switch for light, but for over 99.99% of human history there was no such option. Lighting interior spaces has always been difficult when your only option is burning things. Back in the day it was lamp oil from some natural oil source both plant and animal. In the 1800s it was whale oil for it’s bright light and low smoke.
Kerosine was a game changer. Rockefeller, however, recognized something very clever. He saw the wildcatters go boom and bust and thought that game’s not for him. Too much risk for a business man who intended to win – always. Rockefeller realized that the key was not on the speculative front-end oil recovery – but, rather, the processing itself – the refining: and all the market downstream distribution to boot.
Always looking for the choke point, and ambition to control it, Rockefeller took on the mantle of developing the one part of the business which presented the least risk – do the one thing everyone needs once the oil is found – refining.
Competition between Industrial Energy Suppliers, will the new 21st century gas station follow?
Rockefeller’s evil genius was he saw the choke point and reasoned that if he controlled refining – he would control the downstream market.
Rockefeller took it to another level however. Instead of building new refineries he thought of a better way to “kill two birds with one stone.” His approach to growth was to acquire the competition. In this way he acquired new capacity, and took out the competition as well in one stroke.
Rockefeller took no prisoners. He’d often target a competing refinery. Approach the owner with an offer of 50 cents on the dollar – often being promptly dismissed.
If the refinery owner didn’t sell, then a great hurt would descend on the owner’s facility. Thugs would be hired to break up the place, intimidate workers, destroy infrastructure and cause great disruption.
The result? Again, an offer was put on the table, but this time for 10 cents on the dollar. Facing ruin – more often than not the owners would eventually relent.
Rockefeller established the rules of the road. If you want to compete in the oil business then you’re going to come up against Rockefeller. Long involved with this method Rockefeller would only narrow his eyes at anyone who would not bend to his will. If you didn’t in the beginning, you certainly will after his “negotiations.”
Controlling Holes in the Ground the 19th Century Way
The oil infrastructure offered and developed by Rockefeller was all about control. It was all about market share and being the only real choice available to the consumer. Sound familiar?
The next evil genius move by Rockefeller was the recognition of “too many cooks in the kitchen.” By the mid 1870s everyone’s brother was in the oil business. With so many producers of Kerosine from rock oil the consumer faced a lot of choices.
All too often the choices were all over the place in terms of quality. Refining was still being honed in on. The chemists realize that crude oil could be “fractioned” into other products through controlled vaporization and condensation.
The birth of the Fraction Tower allowed crude oil to be heated up, of course by burning more crude oil, to then vaporize crude oil in a column. Controlling the temperature and importantly the pressure up along the tower individual products could be separated.
Products like Kerosine, Gasoline, and a myriad other products could be produced (separated) depending on their specific point of condensation.
In these early days, gasoline was an unwanted byproduct. Much too explosive for a lighting fluid – it was often dumped at night into a nearby river for disposal. Sound familiar too?
Rockefeller’s ambition to control the lighting fuel business – Kerosine – by controlling refining led him to his next evil genius move: Standard Oil.
Rockefeller realized to be the world’s supplier of Kerosine by controlling the refineries he would make a reliable – standardized product – hence, Standard Oil.
From Hong Kong to New York to London every Standard Oil can of Kerosine was the same size, the same color and best of all for Rockefeller a standard product. One that always burned with the same quality across the world. Standard Oil was born.
The Rise of Electricity and the new 21st Century Gas Station
By the time of the mid 1880s Rockefeller was riding high. His global empire spread rapidly to other countries as everyone wanted to use Kerosine over any other option for lighting.
Rockefeller made deals. Countries with oil reserves being tapped were easy targets for Rockefeller’s “negotiations.” Across the globe by the late 1880s everything had fallen into place. Then, in 1893 at the Chicago’s World Fair and Exposition something came into the public mind which was truly spectacular: electric lighting.
How I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the board meeting at Standard Oil in 1893. Rockefeller, in perhaps the most incredible pivot in industrial history, changed the whole game: by changing the game.
In the 1890s what kind of car you drove was a wide choice. About a third of the market share were Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs). Another third were “steamers” which used any fuel you could burn to power a small steam engine.
The Stanley Steamers are popularly known. This was the original flex fuel because you could burn almost anything from coal to bees wax as long as you could produce some heat.
The third option, the internal combustion engine, popularized by Karl Benz in the 1880s presented an incredible opportunity. And, Rockefeller knew exactly where to go – and what to do. By “changing horses” at full gallop Rockefeller pulled off, perhaps, the greatest pivot in industrial history: the move from Kerosine to Gasoline.
Will the new 21st century gas station simply be a move from fossil fuels to water based fuels?
The move from lighting fuels, to mechanized fuels capable of powering all the transportation sectors. Rockefeller, in a brilliant move, in the face of disaster in the collapse of the Kerosine market makes an even bigger one: fuel for mechanized power.
Jumping forward to today will the new gas station of the 21st century just be more the same?
It can’t. Fossil fuels are toxic, and we use so much fossil fuel it makes life on earth untenable. There really is no choice anymore. Green Hydrogen fueling stations will transform the energy market.
Either we move to green hydrogen fueling systems or we collapse. One thing is for sure. If we continue the way we are, and we are, then we’ll risk squandering the one moment we have left to set this ship right. To power our industrial systems with renewable energy, Electrolyzers, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells. It’s just that simple. Yes, there are details, but they’re known and straightforward.
The New Green Hydrogen Gas Station of the 21st century will be able to provide DC Fast Charge (energized by the fuel cell stacks), H35 and H70 clean hydrogen fueling for Fuel Cell EVs from onsite storage, and provide electricity and fuel for any purpose both mobile and stationary.
The Green Hydrogen Economy is more than just a technological revolution, and industrial revolution – it’s an economic revolution. Energy being mostly a “commodity” which the normal consumer can only buy to access, will transition to consumers having their own hardware – at least as a choice.
Having your own hardware which produces the electricity and fuels you need – effectively obsoletes fuel costs. The Green Hydrogen Fueling Station of the 21st Century is this transition.
Since solar and wind, as two examples, have no “fuel cost” as such, they only have fixed hardware costs. Known, predictable and non-changing. Much more preferable to Toxic, Expensive, and unknowable pricing which the world of Fossil Fuels inflicts on world economies.
The world is facing a paradigm shift. A Shift from toxicity, high vulnerability, volatile costs, and geographic limitations to green hydrogen which is potent, safe, available to all economies and is 100% non-toxic. Let’s make it happen – together.
