"Supporters Say Hydrogen Highway Woes Overblown" Green Car Advisor

Supporters Say Hydrogen Highway Woes Overblown

By Scott Doggett, Contributor

Like the erroneous news of American novelist Mark Twain's death in 1897 -- 13 years before he really passed away -- reports of a dimming outlook for California's hydrogen highway plan are an exaggeration, according to representatives of the California's Air Resources Board and the California Fuel Cell Partnership.

A number of print and Internet news outlets picked up a report earlier this week in the San Jose Mercury News that disclosed the cancellation of plans to build several new hydrogen fuel stations, the closure of several others and concerns from automaker Mercedes-Benz that enthusiasm for hydrogen seemed to be waning in California.

Indeed, Mercedes' chief lobbyist in Washington, William Craven, told Green Car Advisor that he was concerned that energy companies were downplaying hydrogen because they don't see a short-term return on the investments needed to build and operate new stations.

California Fuel Cell Partnership spokeswoman Chris White said in a phone interview Saturday that:

One of the stations recently closed was shuttered because it is being replaced by another, larger station;
A meeting of state, automaker and energy company representatives held Thursday wasn't a hastily called session to discuss hydrogen infrastructure woes, as was reported, but in fact was a regularly scheduled quarterly meeting of the group;
A Northern California transit system has recently ordered eight new hydrogen powered fuel-cell electric buses, nearly quadrupling the size of its fuel-cell bus fleet.

Additionally, a spokeswoman for the state's powerful Air Resources Board said Saturday that a deal with Northern California utility Pacific Gas & Electric to use $1.5 million in state funds to build a new hydrogen station wasn't as dead as the reports implied.

"We're actually in negotiations with PG&E on that site. It's not a done deal. It's not something that's off the table," said air board's Gennet Paauwe. "They are going to build it as far as I know, it's just a matter of whether or not they can use the money we have available because they have to meet our criteria to get the money."

White criticized various reports for not mentioning that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2004 call for a "hydrogen highway" of 100 fueling stations by 2010 to make it practical for California motorists to use non-polluting hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles had subsequently been revised downward in an official plan for the fuel station network. That plan, she said, sets the goal at somewhere between 50 and 100 stations.

Presently there are 24 hydrogen stations in operation in California, with 10 more scheduled to open by the end of the year and a number of others on the drawing boards, White said. She said the state is "very much on track" to having at least 50 hydrogen stations in operation by the end of the decade.

White said that while subjects discussed in fuel cell partnership meetings are "confidential," the nonprofit group, made up of a variety of government agencies, automakers, energy companies and fuel cell developers, continues to discuss "their commitment to fuel cell vehicles and to hydrogen stations."

Fuel cells use hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity that powers an electric vehicle's drive motor. The hydrogen stations necessary to provide the fuel are "prototype projects, every single one of them," White said.

She likened hydrogen stations to digital television, an infant industry she was involved with more than 15 years ago.

"At that time we thought by now every household would have digital TV, but 2009 will be the first year," she said. "When you're doing something that's brand new, you've got to have a little flexibility."