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Life after gasoline: Harnessing hydrogen to power cars, and more

To consumers unconcerned about gas prices, Jeremy Rifkin would like to issue a wake-up call.

Recent data suggest that within a decade or two mankind will have expended more than half of Earth’s oil, including known and estimated undiscovered reserves, says Mr. Rifkin, who heads the Foundation of Economic Trends, a public-policy research group in Washington.

By Noel C. Paul -Christian Science Monitor

"There are three major crises facing the human family, and they’re all connected to oil," Rifkin said during a recent Monitor interview. Rifkin cites global warming, the mounting debt of poorer nations that control no reserves, and the Middle East conflict. "All three of these crises will worsen," he says, "when the global oil supply peaks."

The clear alternative to oil is hydrogen, argues Rifkin in his book "Hydrogen Economy."

The idea has seen flurries of political support. The federal government recently announced an agreement with major automakers to speed the development of fuel-cell vehicles. These cells would turn hydrogen into electricity.

Rifkin concedes that hydrogen may not replace fossil fuels as America’s primary energy source for perhaps 50 years. But the element’s assets, he says, make the transition inevitable. "The good thing about hydrogen is that it’s everywhere. It’s … the basic element of the universe," he says. "When you burn it, you only get pure water and heat."

Carmakers have taken notice, and are now spending $2 billion engineering hydrogen-run cars. The technology, Rifkin believes, is best suited to meet California’s requirement that cars sold in the state have near-zero emissions by 2009.

"Consumers probably won’t see many hydrogen-powered cars on the market until 2009," he says. "Exactly how soon … depends on the price of oil on world markets and the availability of hydrogen refueling stations, among other factors."

Another obstacle: Most commercial hydrogen is currently extracted from natural gas. Rifkin believes that in the future, renewable resources such as wind, hydro, and geothermal energy will be used to separate hydrogen from water.

If Rifkin’s vision is realized, the automobile could become a mini-power station of its own.

"You could plug it into the home or office to provide electricity back to the grid," he says. "If 25 percent of cars are plugged in at any one time, the country wouldn’t need power plants."

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Copyright 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

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Prodi Hopes to Vault EU
To Front of Hydrogen Race

By SCOTT MILLER, BHUSHAN BAHREE and JEFFREY BALL
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

BRUSSELS — The global race to a hydrogen future just got more competitive.

As the U.S. did earlier this year, Europe is launching a high-profile push toward a massive increase in hydrogen research and development. European Commission President Romano Prodi says the scientific program will be as important for Europe as the space program was for the U.S. in the 1960s. If successful, hydrogen power also would relieve Europe from a potentially dangerous and growing reliance on imported oil and gas, and address the concerns of the region’s politically powerful green lobbies.

Mr. Prodi said that hydrogen power, although still years from widespread use, has reached a point where it presents a realistic alternative to fossil fuels. Government financial support and legislation, he said, could now push the technology toward practical use, thrusting Europe into the global lead in hydrogen and triggering a wave of scientific achievement.
[hedcut: prodi]

"It’s like going to the moon in a series of steps," he said of the European Union’s hydrogen ambitions. "We expect an [even] better technological fallout."

Last week, Europe announced ambitious plans to promote hydrogen, which, when converted into electricity with fuel cells, can power everything from cars to factories. The EU plans to spend €2.12 billion ($2.09 billion) from 2003 to 2006 on renewable energy development, mostly technologies related to hydrogen. That’s up from €127 million spent between 1999 and 2002.

The European initiative comes as the U.S. begins its own hydrogen push. The Bush administration earlier this year launched a fuel-cell research program it dubs Freedom Car, for which it is asking Congress for $150 million in funding next year. The effort replaces a Clinton-era program that focused on developing experimental hybrid diesel-and-electric cars in cooperation with the Big Three U.S. auto makers.

In addition, the U.S. Senate is considering a proposal that would require utilities to supply as much as 10% of their power from renewable energy sources. The EU has already committed itself to seeing 22% of gross electricity consumption coming from renewable energy by 2010 and 12% of all energy coming from renewable sources by the same date.

But the renewable-energy push is controversial in the U.S. At a recent United Nations environmental summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Bush administration led a successful push to kill an EU call for a global renewable-energy target, saying the issue should be left up to individual nations. In Washington, the administration opposes the pending 10% U.S. proposal, saying the issue should be left up to individual states.

POWER PLAY
How the EU intends to promote hydrogen power:

— Massive increase in research and development spending, to over $2 billion in 2003-2006 from roughly $125 million in the past three years

— Advice from private corporations on shaping hydrogen power-related policy

— Possible new body to oversee renewable energy

— Tax breaks and regulations to promote investment

Meanwhile, for all the hope surrounding hydrogen, it is still years, if not decades, away from making significant inroads into the power and transport markets, which currently account for most of the world’s oil and gas use. Hydrogen is still substantially more expensive than traditional power sources, and massive investments in infrastructure are needed to make it attractive to consumers. Hydrogen-powered autos, buses and electricity-generating plants, which are for all practical purposes still in the development stage, also still need to prove their reliability.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency, whose members are the world’s industrialized countries, reckons that fuel cells will start making a contribution to the world energy supply after 2020, mostly in stationary use. The IEA also believes fuel-cell-powered autos will account for only a small fraction of the vehicle fleet by 2030. "Whether fuel-cell bus prices will ever be competitive with conventional diesel buses or even CNG [compressed natural-gas] buses is still an open question," the IEA said in a study of future bus systems.

Of course, scientific breakthroughs coupled with funding help from governments could change all that. But even proponents of hydrogen agree that for the moment the power source is only one of the possibilities for the future. What’s more, the rollout of fuel cells is expected to be a tense time. A major setback in reliability or safety at the outset of commercialization could doom fuel cells to failure.

Mr. Prodi, who compared the importance of his hydrogen initiatives with the introduction of the euro and EU enlargement, said that the technology carried a higher priority in Europe than in the U.S., where fuel is cheaper.

"For us, it’s even more urgent than it is for the U.S.," Mr. Prodi said.

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