March 2004

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RHINECLIFF, NY/WASHINGTON, DC - It's happened before:

A prestigious national organization - The National Academies/The National Research Council - undertakes a long-gestating, detailed study of a highly charged subject - the Hydrogen Economy - and comes up with a massive document that, in its effort to be evenhanded and encyclopedically inclusive, leaves many dissatisfied, either with the product itself or with the reaction to it.

The 500-odd-page document released Feb. 4, said, per its press release's headline, "Hydrogen Economy Offers Major Opportunities But Faces Considerable Hurdles." It faulted the Energy Department's near-term milestones for fuel cell vehicles for being "unrealistically aggressive" but also was "impressed" how well the program had advanced (H&FCL Feb. 04).

For starters, hydrogen supporters were distressed by considerable negative response in the media, especially in the two agenda-shaping powerhouses "Wall Street Journal" and "New York Times." The six-paragraph "Journal" story, published the day after the report's release, zeroed in on the "unrealistically aggressive" phrase and on the statement that a full changeover could take until 2050.

Hyped Hydrogen Highways?
A longer Feb. 6 "Times" story - "Report Questions Bush Plan For Hydrogen-Fueled Cars" - was also largely skeptical in tone. It quoted one of the authors, Antonia Herzog of the Natural Resources Defense Council as commenting after the release, "real revolutions have to occur before this is going to become a large-scale reality......It very possibly could happen, but it's not a sure thing." It also quoted Joseph J. Romm, the Clinton administration's chief DoE official for conservation and alternative energy, as saying, "people who want to build `hydrogen highways' and drive a hydrogen car in 10 or 15 years on a mass scale, are just kidding themselves." Romm will be publishing a book this spring, "The Hype About Hydrogen," the story said.

An account in the San Francisco Chronicle, on the other hand, was seen as more balanced. It quoted Dan Sperling, a panel member and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California Davis as saying, "this is a tremendously important, transforming opportunity we are talking about, but it's not going happen with current technology and current knowledge." Sperling told H&FCL the media portrayed the report more pessimistically than warranted. "The media looked at one bookend of the debate, and they calibrated themselves more on the conservative side," as he put it.

Overall, Sperling thought it was "a good, solid, balanced assessment, and I thought it came up with solid recommendations - nothing radical one way or the other," he added. It offered the "state-of-the-art conventional wisdom."

Robert Rose, executive director of the U.S. Fuel Cell Council, felt there wasn't "a whole lot that was new. It was a classic case of not just illuminate, but also throw some pretty dark shadows."

Dismaying Reactions
Rose is dismayed by the reaction of some environmentalists and supporters of alternative energy who criticized the report - in part perhaps, some suspect, because of continued reasonably good funding for hydrogen in the new 2005 DoE budget request but cutbacks in other renewables areas (H&FCL Feb.04).

Rose takes issue with the view that implementing hydrogen energy technology would take too long to wean us off oil and that other technologies would get us there faster: "Literally every other option will take decades" as well, he says. Toughening CAFÉ standards, for instance, might take 8-10 years to phase in, and "even if we start today, you're talking 20 to 25 years before achieving full impact. No matter what technologies, it will take decades to achieve its social ends.

"It's a little disingenuous to suggest that solutions are at hand if we were to turn to solar or energy efficiency," said Rose. If, for example, solar and wind are tried and proven technologies, "why do they need subsidies?" he asked.

"The fact is all these alternatives represent entrenched energy interests. We have a common stake, and it's disappointing that opposition to hydrogen comes from people who should be allies.

"You are talking about a fundamental change in the national economy," he added. "It's not going to be easy. It will take time, money, persistence - that's what the academy said."

Joan Ogden: "False Conflict" in Media Reports
Joan Ogden, associate professor of environmental science & policy and co-director of the hydrogen infrastructure program at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California Davis and one of the world's most respected analysts of hydrogen energy technology, also sees a big split between the report itself and the media's portrayal. The report contains "a lot of diligent and thoughtful work," she said in an e-mail to H&FCL. The committee "took on many complex issues and did a very good job," with "reasonable conclusions."

"However, I am concerned about how some of the press coverage to date has interpreted the conclusions of the report," she said in her e-mail. "Most of the articles missed a major point: changing the energy system takes a long time, and solving energy problems requires a long view. Although it will probably take a few decades for hydrogen to make a global impact on energy problems, we do need to do significant RD&D now, so that hydrogen will be ready, when we need it.

"A false `conflict' is painted in some articles between 1) putting much-needed policies in place to encourage energy efficiency in the near term, and 2) doing RD&D on hydrogen now, so it will be ready for a major role in the longer term. To my mind, it's not either `efficiency' or `hydrogen'. Clearly, it should be both.

"To address energy-related environmental and security problems, we need a comprehensive approach that starts now with improved conventional technologies, but builds toward a long term zero emission energy future," she said.

CARB's Alan Lloyd: No Major Surprises
Alan Lloyd, chairman of the California Air Resources Board who reviewed the report for the academy before publication, "didn't see any major surprises. It confirmed the need for energy diversity and security" - not put all our eggs in one basket such as hydrogen. But as the importance of natural gas and coal continues to increase, "it just confirms the need for looking at longer term solutions," he told H&FCL. Among the constructive comments, in his view, were those recommending more efforts on distributed generation, and "onboard storage needs significant development."

As to hydrogen, "no matter when you start, it would take a decade or two to have a major impact, therefore, the sooner we start the better," said Lloyd.

Seth Dunn, a former staffer at the Worldwatch Institute who has written on hydrogen, is now a graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and also reviewed the report before publication. He told H&FCL he did not see the report as "pessimistic" as some of the news reports suggested. He says there was some "unclear language" about a diverse energy system being preferable to a total hydrogen economy. But overall, the report was "quite balanced," and "good" to criticize the DoE program's shortcomings such as a "near-term emphasis on onboard reformers, no mention of wind in the DoE Hydrogen Plan, underinvestment in solar photovoltaics."

Sandy Thomas: No Realistic Transition Scenarios Sandy Thomas, president of H2Gen Innovations, Inc. Alexandria, VA thought the report was "reasonably well-balanced and exhaustive," but lacked the "long-term vision and creativity to weave together realistic transition scenarios that could overcome the stated obstacles."

While it presented detailed cost assessments of both central and distributed hydrogen production in a "fully mature" hydrogen economy, it failed to say how we would get there. Central hydrogen production via extensive pipelines would be less costly than that produced at local fueling stations, but "each central hydrogen plant would require 2.1 million fuel cell vehicles on the road while each on-site generator would require only 850 vehicles," wrote Thomas in a 3-page memo to H&FCL. "Never mind that no energy company would spend the $1.9 billion estimated by the report for the central production and pipeline system until two million FCVs were on the road.."

On the vehicle side, the report is "inextricably" tied to fuel cell vehicles, but, says Thomas, "there is another exciting alternative vehicle for the transition period: hydrogen powered hybrid electric vehicles. Think of the Prius running on hydrogen," (See p.1, H&FCL Dec. 03), an i.c. engine technology that could achieve "95% to 99% of the environmental benefits" of fuel cell cars and "100% of the oil import reduction benefits much sooner and at much lower costs.

"The NCR report has neglected what could be the key enabling technology to a viable hydrogen transition scenario," criticizes Thomas.

Thomas also took issue with the "oft-heard mantra" that onboard hydrogen storage systems must approach the size of gasoline tanks and that a breakthrough is needed. Eight years ago, Ford Motor Co. designed, but did not build, a direct hydrogen fuel cell vehicle with conventional high pressure carbon fiber tanks three times the size of a normal gas tank, but integrated beneath the body, using a Ford Contour as template that would have achieved 280 mile range. With better aerodynamics and less rolling resistance, it would have achieved 380 miles.

"No hydrogen storage `breakthrough' is needed," said Thomas.

Curiously, an auto industry executive with a huge stake in future hydrogen transportation was pretty upbeat about the report. Larry Burns, General Motors' vice president for research & development and planning and the key man steering the company's fuel cell plans, told H&FCL he didn't see anything in the executive summary that "I took exception to. I thought it was very well done, very insightful, and it hit all the right issues."

Burns, who was one of the 30-plus experts who briefed the NRC committee, thought that the report's timetable was "pretty proactive....When you think about what they said, commercialization in 2015. We're trying to have a commercially viable vehicle in 2010 which by itself is not necessarily commercialization; you need infrastructure.

"And then they said, 25% of the market by 2027, 100% by 2050. That's pretty optimistic," says Burns.

That's probably the best refutation of whatever negatives are in the study and in the news reports, believes the U.S. Fuel Cell Council's Rose: "The National Research Council doesn't build cars," he quipped.