President Obama’s proposed 2010 budget calls for cutting funding for a program at the Department of Energy that carries out research on hydrogen technology for vehicles by roughly 60%, or $100 million, as part of an effort to shift to technologies “with more immediate promise.”
The administration’s proposal illustrates how much has changed in Washington and the wider world of vehicle research in recent years. Six years ago, President Bush called for new federal funding for research into how to produce and distribute hydrogen and then store it in tanks so it can be used in fuel-cell-powered cars.
”Our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and pollution-free,” Mr. Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address.
Because hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and using it to power cars would be so clean, proponents have often described it as the Holy Grail of alternative fuels.
But lately, enthusiasm among auto makers and politicians has been shifting away from hydrogen toward electric vehicles. One reason: the enormous projected cost of developing an infrastructure of hydrogen filling stations. The National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said last year that the total cost of deploying a national hydrogen network could be as high as $200 billion, including $55 billion in government aid through 2023. And that amount, the council said, would be enough to put only two million hydrogen cars on the road – a small fraction of the total U.S. vehicle population of about 300 million cars and trucks.
A spokesman for the National Hydrogen Association in Washington said his group was still being briefed on Mr. Obama’s proposal and had no immediate comment.
An update: Patrick Serfass, a spokesman for the National Hydrogen Association in Washington, expressed disappointment with the administration’s request and said his group – which represents companies like Chevron Corp., General Motors Corp. and Honda Motor Co. – would appeal to Congress.
“We think it’s a mistake,” said Mr. Serfass. “The National Research Council has been advocating a portfolio approach to vehicle technologies . . . It’s too early to pick technology winners and losers.”