Oil industry to get hydrogen funding Industry is sole major maker of the fuel

Someday, we may all drive pollution-free cars powered by fuel produced from pond scum.

But it won’t happen anytime soon. A child born today may take his driver’s test in a hydrogen-powered car, as President Bush suggested Tuesday night when he urged $1.2 billion in research on hydrogen cars.

By Mike Soraghan
Denver Post Washington Bureau

But the hydrogen would most likely come from the petroleum industry, currently the only major producer of the fuel.

Some might expect the notion of a nonpolluting car powered by a gizmo that produces water instead of exhaust to alarm automakers or the oil industry.

But Bush’s "Freedom Fuel" proposal actually pours more than $1 billion into an endeavor those industries already support to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

"Virtually all the American Petroleum Institute member companies have substantial research and development budgets to make that fuel commercial," said Edward Murphy, an API executive.

Environmentalists criticized the program as a giveaway to an industry that distracts from Republican reluctance to demand that automakers immediately build vehicles that guzzle less gas.

"The president seems to be comfortable with the auto industry’s approach: ‘Don’t make us do anything today. Twenty years from now, we may develop fuel cells. America can wait,"’ said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s Global Warming and Energy Program.

Others say Bush’s interest in alternative energy sources is helpful, if belated.

Bush’s proposal, if approved by Congress, would expand an existing program called FreedomCAR that Bush created to replace a Clinton-era program aimed at developing a car that would get 80 mpg.

Most commercially used hydrogen is now produced in petroleum plants to reduce the sulfur content of gasoline.

Getting the hydrogen from pond-scum algae is the job of scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. Scientists there are looking at ways to produce hydrogen without using petroleum.

One way to do that, said NREL spokesman George Douglas, is to "starve" or withhold a certain nutrient from a certain form of algae, which then produces hydrogen.

A more common method is using electricity to extract hydrogen from water, which is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Using electricity from coal or natural-gas power plants isn’t cost effective. But NREL scientists are looking at ways to do it with solar power.

But NREL’s estimate for these renewable means of producing hydrogen is 30 years, not the 16 years that Bush mentioned in his State of the Union speech, Douglas said.

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E33%257E1145354%257E,00.html