Early Politics of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Development

What can happen if you combine two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen? For one thing, you might change the world. If the following oxidation-reduction reaction is unfamiliar, take a good hard look at it anyway, because this simple chemical formula may permanently change environmental and political landscapes during the next 10 years:

Two molecules of hydrogen gas plus one molecule of oxygen gas yields two molecules of liquid water plus electrical energy

Although it's true that the energy released from this reaction will be used to power everything from cell phones to SUVs, the real significance of this small piece of combustion chemistry is that the only product, aside from energy itself, is water. This is one hundred percent clean energy.

The device that will deliver this pollution-free energy is called a fuel cell, and its implementation was more or less assured with a federal program established by President Bush called Freedom Cooperative Automotive Research, or Freedom Car for short. The program was designed to provide research and development subsidies to accelerate the process of replacing today's internal combustion engines and hybrid combustion/electric power systems with fuel cells. If successful, this will be one of the single most important technological achievements of our lifetime.

Automobiles powered by fuel cells would no longer emit the wide array of pollutants that have been fouling our atmosphere - hydrocarbons and oxides of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. Catalytic converters would be obsolete. The only substance leaving the exhaust system of the vehicle would be water, plain and simple.

The oxygen required for the reaction will be drawn from the air itself, where there is an essentially infinite reservoir of this diatomic gas. Unfortunately, the atmosphere does not contain hydrogen gas. In fact, what has kept fuel cells in the research laboratory has been the problem of obtaining and delivering hydrogen gas to the fuel cell in a safe and cost-effective manner. It's not that fuel cell vehicles couldn't be available now, but their cost would be prohibitively expensive. The trick, then, is to continue research and development until they can compete effectively in the consumer marketplace. That is precisely the goal of the Freedom Car initiative.

There have been some exciting developments in the laboratory that may help lead to affordable fuel-cell-powered vehicles. A company by the name of Millennium Cell, Inc. has developed a technique that uses sodium borohydride mixed with water, producing hydrogen in a harmless solution. The hydrogen is then released to the fuel cell by passing the solution over platinum metal.

The motivation for the Freedom Car program cannot be credited to the Bush Administration's desire for a pristine environment. In fact, one can only wonder why President Bush, with his severely tarnished environmental record, made fuel cell implementation a priority. There are two reasons, one of them obvious and one not so obvious. The first obvious reason had to do with terrorism, and so we can thank the terrorists up front. The events of September 11th and its aftermath made clear, even to the most entrenched Washington politicians, something that the average American citizen has known for decades: It would be wise to wean ourselves from foreign oil and become energy independent.

The second reason Bush initiated the fuel cell program was so sneaky you might call it sinister, and it explains why environmentalists were not happy with Freedom Car: The program introduced long-term delays on their agenda for increased tightening of fuel efficiency standards. It appears, therefore, that Bush's motives for the Freedom Car program were to cut slack to U.S. auto makers. The Freedom Car initiative overrode President Clinton's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, a program that was squeezing auto makers to develop 80-mile-per-gallon "supercars." Detroit has been complaining that no one knows how to build an affordable, 80-mile-per-gallon automobile using standard combustion/electric technologies. Auto-industry officials were happy with Freedom Car because they were hoping that their support of the program would help them win the political battle against environmentalists who have been continuously pressuring Washington to legislate stricter Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules.

Despite the circuitous and less-than-noble motivation, the Bush Administration has stumbled onto a path that leads to solving air pollution problems for all time. Better to have Freedom Car arrive late, than never.