US Fuel Cell Council’s Rose: $30 Billion for R&D, $30 Billion for Market Stimulation

SAN ANTONIO - About half of the $60 billion that the U.S. Fuel Cell Council’s president Robert Rose proposes spending on hydrogen and fuel cell technology, should go to r&d and infrastructure, and the other half to market stimulation.

The Big Picture: U.S. Fuel Cell Council’s Robert Rose addresses the Fuel Cell Seminar’s opening plenary session, calling for much accelerated global hydrogen and fuel cell r&d spending. Rose was honored with the 2004 Seminar Award.

Rose said in his acceptance speech (see Fuel Cell Seminar story, p. 1) while these numbers may look like a lot they really are not: Annual highway spending in the United States is more than $60 billion, tax subsidies for the extraction and sale of petroleum cost the U.S. Treasury between $9.1 and $17.8 billion, and the country spends more than $6 billion every two weeks on importing oil. And not to forget, American tobacco companies have agreed to pay $208 billion over 25 years to cover the health costs of addiction to that product.

To finance this, Rose suggests six possible revenue sources - “just to make sure that I offend every possible interest,” as he put it - as well as regulatory incentives and cooperation with “a broad coalition of advanced energy interests:”

• A 3-cent increase in the gasoline tax; “U.S. prices can go up more (than that) in a week;”
• A 1.6 mil fee on utility generation - one sixth of a cent/ kWh.
• A $0.60/barrel oil fee;
• A $4/ton fee on coal sales;
• A $0.60 cent/ton fee on greenhouse gas emissions;
• A $17 annual federal motor vehicle registration fee. Worldwide, such a fee would generate almost $13 billion/year, says Rose.

“Call it a Freedom Fee,” quipped Rose. Source: the text is available at www.usfcc.com/FuelCellSeminarSpeech.pdf.