In a previous article in this column, I wrote about an emperor who was conned by two people into believing that he was wearing the most fabulous clothes. The two con artists told him that he was wearing a fantastic garment which they gave to him to display.In point of fact, he could not see the garment at all but felt embarrassed and did not tell them. He showed off his fabulous ‘non- garment’ to all the people in the empire, but none wanted to point out that, in fact, the ‘non-garment’ was ‘no garment’. The story goes on and you can find out for yourself what happened by reading it.

Now something has happened that is of apparent benefit to us all; we have our very own con artists who are convincing a large group of people that they have something special and valuable, and everybody should take note and think of putting money aside for the purchase of the items concerned. In the latest case, the method of operation is as follows: there is a guy who is very rich, and he has said to a large number of equally very rich people that the latest ‘thing’ is the matter of obtaining income by using ‘green electricity storage’, which is electricity storage and sales on hydrogen-based batteries.

Hydrogen-based batteries are not new at all. At least 100 years ago (if not longer), people discovered that you could store electricity using hydrogen and oxygen or hydrogen and some other substance and subsequently download the electricity when needed. The latest scam offers to do no more than this, but it’s the apparent benefits of storage and recovery that will make lots of people very rich. According to the people who are putting the whole scheme forward, you and I and thousands, if not millions, of others can all benefit by tapping into previously unthought-of and unused electrical storage schemes whereby the electrical storage schemes will generate a whole lot of electricity that can be distributed at low cost throughout the world, to the benefit of all of mankind and, most certainly, the people who are selling the scheme.

A Ponzi scheme of any kind (and of this kind) is always the same sort of thing. It always offers surprising returns for little effort or investment and is often made more popular by the claim that no one has done it before. We are not surprised at Ponzi schemes. What does surprise us (well, surprises me anyway) is that the people who are buying into these schemes are people who one would think are smarter than the general public: to wit manufacturers and distributers of electricity previously thought of as quick-thinking, intelligent and honest.

It so happens that this latest rip-off scheme is easily detected as being fraudulent. Let’s say to store some substance which can generate power electrically using a hydrogen-based system allows you to recover only a fraction of the stored amount. It should be obvious that the more storage conversion there is, (for example, converting hydrogen storage to chemical storage and then using that) the more the reduction of efficiency, but it would seem it’s not obvious to everybody.

Those responsible for these fraudulent schemes involving electricity are presenters at conferences where the claim is that the conference provides alternative means of power generation and cost reduction and green power that will be of benefit to the world in general and to those who attend the presentation in particular. The apparent wealth of the presenters and the emphasis they put on saving electrical costs is what attracts people – it’s the very fact that people think that no one will misrepresent electrical supply that makes the offers and presentations so believable. However, the problem is that electricity is like water in many ways. It’s subject to natural laws, which cannot be beaten. Water doesn’t flow uphill. Water does create more water from water. In the same way, electrical power and distribution are not going to become cheap overnight.