Hydrogen Highway: Breaking America’s Foreign Oil Addiction

By Paul Strand
Washington Sr. Correspondent

CBN.com – DIAMOND BAR, California - Conservatives and liberals seem more divided than ever these days. But there is one issue that has become so critical, it is bringing some from even the far Right and far Left together -- breaking America's addiction to foreign oil. A broad coalition is forming to take the country in a new way -- the hydrogen highway.

There are some down sides to American drivers' gas-guzzling, do-your-own-thing way of life.

For instance, the jam-packed streets of New York, the clogged roads into Washington D.C., and the maxed-out freeways of Los Angeles, all places where millions of drivers everyday are poisoning themselves, and all those around them. And helping to keep America dangerously dependent on oil from often-hostile states.

The war on terror and 9-11 have rammed home the reality that sheikhs and ayatollahs can now hold the oil-addicted West hostage because most of the world's oil is beneath their sands. And terrorists could attack oil facilities or pipelines over there almost anytime and send prices skyrocketing.

It used to be mostly the environmentalists who were anti-oil. But now that it is a vital national security matter, many more people, even among the oil companies and automakers, are saying that this oil-addiction must be broken.

General Motors spokesman Dave Barthmuss said, "We simply cannot rely on countries that simply don't like us, for our fuel."

And Frank Gaffney, a defense hawk and as neo-con as they come, remarked, "For national security reasons, we've got to get off imported oil."

He added, "We are relying on nations to supply us oil who are unstable at best, and downright dangerous and hostile at worst. Many of them support terror with the proceeds of our oil revenues."

Gaffney and allies of his on both right and left are promoting hi-tech breakthroughs that now make possible fueling systems and homegrown fuels that could give our cars 500 miles to the gallon. Yes, 500.

Gaffney said, "These involve alcohol-based fuels like ethanol, not just from corn, but from other sources; and methanol, which can come from places like trash-dumps and coal."

There would be little foreign oil left in a tank of gas then.

Others, President Bush and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger among them, are pushing for something even more radical: getting rid of the gas tank altogether and replacing it with hydrogen power.

Bush has already committed close to two billion dollars to jumpstart converting the country to hydrogen. And Schwarzenegger is pushing to get 200 hydrogen filling stations built in the next five years, part of an ambitious plan to build a "hydrogen highway" stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia, all the way down to Baja, California.

With Californians buying one-fifth of the country's cars, their going hydrogen in the next few years would be a huge leap forward in turning the whole nation away from oil.

They call this a 'disruptive technology.' Imagine the world of gasoline-powered cars completely thrown out and replaced with a hydrogen economy.

Barthmuss stated, "These hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles will do to today's cars and trucks what today's cars and trucks did to the horse and buggy of 150 years ago.”

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. You can get it many ways -- from water, by pulling the hydrogen (or H2) out of the H2o, using renewable resources like solar, geothermal, wind-power or something called biomass.

Bill Reinert at Toyota explains that biomass is, "...crop waste. It's maybe the husks and hulls from the corn, or the stalks and stuff like that, and really a step toward compost."

Reinert explained the process, “Fuel cells in an H2-powered car work pretty simply. All you're doing is combining hydrogen with oxygen -- you get an electrical reaction – [and] produce electricity."

And that runs the vehicle. When you use gasoline in a car, the result is a lot of pollution. But when you use hydrogen, said Reinert, "...the only byproduct is water vapor."

So you could kiss much of that smog choking our cities goodbye. That is the dream of folks like Cynthia Verdugo-Peralta, who works in the Air Quality Management District that includes Los Angeles, usually the number one city for smog.

And almost all of it comes from vehicles.

Verdugo-Peralta said, "Primarily it's 88 percent mobile sources."

The manager of the lab that tracks L.A.'s smog showed us just how filthy it is. He gave us a sterile filter, and then showed us a map of just what happens to such lily-white filters when they are placed around the L.A. area for just 24 hours.

None come even close to meeting the state standard for clean air. Think of the day when H2-power makes all that go away.

Terri Alpert is just your every-day entrepreneur who sells sophisticated kitchenware from a big warehouse in Connecticut. But she started up the Web site HydrogenHighway.com after getting all excited about how hydrogen could transform our world.

Alpert said, "You can't tell me that even if natural gas is the source of that hydrogen, that while you're sitting in that traffic in L.A. and the only thing you're breathing in is air and water vapor, that the quality of your life hasn't improved tremendously."

And she said, "As I started to think about the ripple effects, I just saw this enormous revolution in the making."

Like the fact you can get H2 from so many sources.

Chris White works at the California Fuel Cell Partnership, where automakers, energy companies and government are all working together to create the hydrogen highway.

White said, "The beauty of hydrogen is that no one country or no one region of the world can own the energy source. It can be manufactured by every country, every region, in the way that makes the best sense for them."

Alpert agreed, saying, "Because you can get it from almost anything, you're not dependent on anyone.”

White says that one reason power is so expensive is the cost of getting it, producing it, transporting it. But hydrogen could be home-made.

White said, "It is entirely possible that one day we could have refueling stations in-home, with a fuel-cell connected, [and] that fuel-cell could power our houses, and then at night while we're asleep, that power could be re-directed into creating hydrogen that we'd be storing [to] put in our vehicles."

But the dream is a ways off. Right now, it takes one or two million dollars to create these prototype hydrogen cars driving around California and a few other select locations.

So, furious experimentation will be going on to cut those costs drastically.

Reinert said, "Unless we got a lot of customers willing to pay a million dollars, and in that case ...well, we're done. Give us a call.”

In California, CBN News had a chance to try out Toyota, Daimler-Chrysler and Honda hydrogen prototypes. Right now, you are probably not going to find one down at your Honda lot, because they cost in the seven figures to make. But the technology is coming along. One we tried drives real smooth, and is very quiet. It gets up to 93 miles per hour.

Another challenge is getting the range way up. Most of the models so far cannot go as far as 200 miles before needing to refuel.

But all the car companies think they can double that, in the months ahead.

Then there is getting rid of the public's nagging perception that hydrogen is not quite safe.

Barthmuss scoffs at such a worry. "Nobody thinks twice about sitting on top of a 30-gallon gasoline tank in a vehicle right now -- much more volatile, much more flammable than hydrogen. Hydrogen is as safe, if not safer than gasoline."

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman predicts that consumers will be happily buying hydrogen-cars in large numbers by 2020 or so.

Bodman commented, "There's every reason to believe that we will be successful. Now there are a lot of technical problems that need to be overcome to get there. But I'm reasonably comfortable, based on what I now know."

President Bush has pushed the Energy Department to work together with inventors, teams of automakers and researchers from the energy companies.

And they are all pushing forward as fast as possible, to make affordable hydrogen vehicles and the infrastructure to support them a reality.

Verdugo-Peralta remarked, "We're all onboard on this, and going in the same direction, which is unique in itself."

Sure, the cars are going to be small at the start, and their range may not be that far. But with all sectors of the economy working together, imagine how quickly this technology can evolve in just the next five, 10, or 15 years.

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