The White House's Hydrogen Hype

To reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil, what would President Bush drive?

No, not an 18-wheeler right across the pristine tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in a personal quest to extract oil from American soil. If we judge him by his own words, Bush would drive a hydrogen-powered fuel-cell wonder car, emitting only water from the tailpipe.

Last week in his State of the Union address, Bush proposed $1.2 billion in funding for a new Freedom Fuel initiative so that "America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles." He asked Americans to join him "in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

Never mind that Japanese automakers have already delivered the futuristic fuel-cell vehicles, which use hydrogen to generate electricity for power. In December 2002, Toyota and Honda became the first automakers to bring hydrogen vehicles to the U.S. market, leasing them to the University of California and the city of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, American automakers are still back in the garage with their prototypes.

So forget about that leading-the-world part. More to the point, in his speech Bush neatly sidestepped the growing green hybrid vs. gas-guzzling SUV debate -- at least rhetorically. Who could nitpick against such forward-looking leadership? The auto industry loves the federal handout, and environmentalists have a hard time naysaying any plan that encourages hydrogen, since they heartily endorse the technology too.

But pledging allegiance to a technology that is, by the most optimistic auto-industry estimates, at least a decade away from being widely available, is more an exercise in masterly misdirection than leadership. The program itself is a continuation of a plan that President Clinton launched 10 years ago, but which still hasn't produced a single ready-for-the-road vehicle from American auto companies. And while $1.2 billion sounds like a lot, doled out over five years it's hardly enough to jump-start a hydrogen revolution. What the initiative does do, however, is provide political cover for an administration that refuses to take action now to improve fuel economy and decrease foreign oil dependence.

President Bush's dream car would emit only water, but that doesn't mean that it would be 100 percent greenhouse-gas and pollution free.

In a hydrogen fuel-cell car, hydrogen and oxygen are used to generate electricity and water. So, a hydrogen-powered car is actually running on the electricity generated in the mini-power plant inside it.

But while hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on earth, it's rarely found alone in nature. And it takes energy to separate it from those other elements. Right now, hydrogen is most often derived from a process that requires the burning of fossil fuels.

Even so, supporters of research into a "hydrogen economy," such as the California Fuel Cell Partnership, maintain that hydrogen will still be "at least 50 percent more efficient" than conventional internal combustion energy.

And part of the Freedom Fuel initiative could include research into greener ways of deriving hydrogen, such as using renewable energy for electrolysis -- the separation of water into hydrogen and oxygen. But at the moment, the mining, oil and gas industries are still necessary for the production of hydrogen, so Bush isn't risking any political capital from his supporters by endorsing the technology.

A Billion Dollars is Just a "Drop in the Bucket"

The Freedom Fuel initiative is a supplement to last year's "FreedomCAR" program, which, in turn, is a successor to Clinton's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, launched in 1993. Between FreedomCAR and Freedom Fuel, Bush has proposed spending $1.7 billion pursuing hydrogen fuel-cell alternatives over the next five years.