Fill ‘er Up With Hydrogen
A shot was fired here Monday. It was a shot barely heard in the California state capital, let alone around the world. But it will be heard soon enough.
The explosion was over hydrogen -- hydrogen fuel. For decades, scientists have understood that hydrogen is the ultimate fuel. It is abundant; it accounts for 73% of the mass of the universe. And when “burned,” it combusts into nothing more than water. Even oilman George W. Bush has signed on, sort of; in his State of the Union address he requested $1.2 billion for hydrogen-car research.
But, so far, hydrogen has been blocked by a chicken-and-egg conundrum. That is, automakers could convert their fleets to hydrogen fuel if they knew that such fuel was available to buyers. And oil companies -- reasoning that they are, ultimately, in the energy business -- could offer hydrogen fuel if they knew that someone would need it for their “gas” tanks.
Enter Assemblywoman Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), who wants to solve this puzzle by offering incentives for chickens and eggs at the same time. Her bill, formally known as the Clean Air, Clean Water and Coastal Protection Act of 2004, would authorize a statewide vote on $2.9 billion in bonds for various environmental causes, everything from fisheries to watersheds. But the noise emerging from her bill is $500 million to establish the beginnings of a hydrogen-fuel infrastructure for California cars. It was voted “aye” by the Assembly Natural Resources Committee in a bipartisan 9-2 landslide.
A small beginning, perhaps, but a beginning nonetheless. A key ally of Pavley’s is Terry Tamminen, executive director of the Santa Monica-based Environment Now. Tamminen argues that if the bonds could pay for the conversion of just 400 of the Golden State’s 10,000 gas stations, that would be enough to inspire 40,000 or so eco-venturous souls to buy hydrogen cars -- and inspire carmakers to make those cars. Thus the H-seed would be planted. Indeed, Tamminen maintains, tax revenue from hydrogen fuel sales would repay the H-bonds.
Too good to be true? David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington is a skeptic: “If hydrogen is a good idea,” he declares, “the free market will produce it.”
But Tamminen looks at the issue differently. “A quarter-century ago, a few visionaries dreamed of a tobacco-smoke-free America by 2000, and they’re darn close to achieving that vision today.”
Of course, the anti-tobacco forces didn’t use free-market forces; they used regulation and litigation. And yet the same country that elected conservative Republicans to lead the White House and Congress seems content with the results of the “liberal” anti-tobacco crusade.
Tamminen sees significant parallels between the tobacco industry and the oil and auto industry: “They all make products that are dangerous to use, even when used as directed.”
Wielding a raft of studies identifying dangers from ordinary use of autos, he argues, for example, that “tailpipe emissions are a lot like secondhand smoke.” So if the first shot was fired by legislators in Sacramento on Monday, the second shot will probably be fired by litigators in a courtroom.
Maybe this is the H-future: legislation and litigation at the same time.
As for the legislation, it’s no cinch that Pavley’s bill will get the necessary two-thirds vote in the Legislature in this budget-crunched era. If it does, it will go before the voters in March.
As for the litigation, any possible suits against the auto and oil industries would run into stiff opposition as well -- in the courtroom and in the court of trial-lawyer-leery public opinion.
But Tamminen sees hydrogen as the defining issue of the 21st century: “When you consider the danger to our national security from importing oil, thus sending money, directly or indirectly, to terrorists; when you consider the danger to our health from burning oil; when you consider the remarkable opportunity to use forward-looking technology to solve both problems at once, I have to believe that Californians will embrace hydrogen.”
