Energy companies bow to the inevitable?

The senior management at Mercedes-Benz is promoting a hydrogen future for society, but the man who leads vehicle development for the company sees a role in that for the key players in the oil industry — if they're willing to take part.

Speaking with motoring.com.au during the Frankfurt motor show last week, Thomas Weber put his view that the automotive industry has done much to repatriate its image after years of bad press for vehicle emissions and the squandering of a finite resource.

"I think, going back some years, we had the situation that the automotive industry [was] the bad guy..." said Weber, head of Group Research and Mercedes-Benz Cars Development.

But times change and with companies such as Benz at the forefront of cleaning up the industry's image, environmental groups have begun to recognise the efforts being made, Weber claims.

"Even Greenpeace and these kinds of critical guys are now saying: 'wow, what these guys in the automotive industry are doing is much more than the other industry sectors' — and that's what helps us, as an industry, to have a much better image now."

However, the industry can't rest on its laurels, not when governments across Europe are proposing increasingly draconian measures, starting with a corporate average standard of 150g/km by 2015 at the latest, Weber explains, and the US government is also clamping down on emissions and fuel consumption. The repercussions of not meeting these upcoming standards will result in car companies paying a "huge amount of money" in fines.

This is one reason why Benz is chasing down the hydrogen dream. There are other reasons of long standing, among them energy security. Germany already relies on renewable energy sources for up to 30 per cent of its electrical energy generation, so the European country is making good progress already, finding the means to produce hydrogen without contributing to greenhouse gas emissions — unlike Korea, which will source its hydrogen as a by-product of refining petroleum.

Following incidents such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the Exxon Valdez disaster, oil companies have begun to recognise that they too must improve their public image, just as the automotive industry is doing. Some oil companies are already describing themselves as 'energy suppliers' and they are at least paying lip service to migrating from their current core business to renewable energy production. According to Weber, it's a slow process, although there are signs in Germany at least that things are improving — and sometimes it's the actions and initiatives of one company that can motivate the others.

"We started our fuel cell activity last year, with a huge initiative for the infrastructure..." Weber explained.

"The key message [from the oil industry]: 'of course we are interested', but in reality no real action. That was of course more image driven and that's still the case a little bit, but after our World Tour, with proof positive results — after these clear messages, especially [from] our company — I now have signed papers from the CEOs of some energy companies on the table.

"They are now positive they will join us to establish such a hydrogen infrastructure in Germany; maybe to learn, maybe to improve their image, maybe to be part of this journey..."

So while some hold hopes a future hydrogen society would spell the end of the oil industry of yore — an industry that many consider rapacious — it may not be that simple. With massive infrastructure already in place around the world, the oil industry just might be best placed to deliver hydrogen in industrial quantities to future consumers, provided both the industry and consumers get on board.

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