Move over, Ben Franklin. Todd Livingstone has a plan to solve the
energy crisis by capturing huge amounts of energy from lightning.
<>The idea itself is not new. But Livingstone, an inventor and
electronics technician from Boston — the town where Benjamin Franklin
was born 300 years ago next month — has added a unique twist. Using
lasers to capture lightning bolts, he wants to channel them through a
large tank of water, producing near-limitless amounts of hydrogen.
The implications, says Livingstone, are "mind-boggling." Put up a
network of lasers in a lightning-prone area like Florida, he says,
convert that energy into hydrogen, "and we could create more energy
than the world needs."
Livingstone has a small-scale prototype of the system and a patent
application on file with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He’s
busy negotiating with potential investors.
There’s only one problem. His system, according to knowledgeable
scientists, probably won’t work any time soon. So far, at least, lasers
can’t capture lightning.
Livingstone isn’t the only person with a scheme to save the world
through hydrogen. The last two years has seen a boom in hydrogen
investment. In 2003, President Bush announced that the federal
government would invest $1.2 billion into hydrogen over the next five
years. General Motors has said it is spending at least a billion
dollars on hydrogen and fuel-cell technologies, and companies like BP,
Chevron and Shell are also making significant investments.
All that money has spawned a gold rush of inventors, all seeking the
mother lode of cheap hydrogen. There’s plenty of fool’s gold in the
dash for the moolah, and marvelous hydrogen inventions are shaping up
as the perpetual-motion machines of a new age.
"Eighty percent or more of the ideas that come directly to us
violate the laws of physics," says Patrick Serfass, a spokesman for the
National Hydrogen Association.
"When you put that kind of money out there, anybody who has even the
most marginal technology related to hydrogen comes out of the
woodwork," says Joseph Romm, an assistant energy secretary during the
Clinton administration and author of the book The Hype About Hydrogen.
By Dan Orzech
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