COLUMNS
Hydrogen cars as snake
oil
By Sen. John Sununu
Special to The Hill
June 20, 2005
There’s a particularly sharp episode of
“The Simpsons” in which the town of Springfield is conned
into buying a very expensive - and ultimately useless - elevated
rail system. The salesman’s pitch is simple and persuasive:
he appeals to his victims’ vanity. By the time he has finished,
the assembled townspeople are chanting: “Monorail! Monorail!
Monorail!” If you stop rustling this newspaper for just a
moment and strain your ear toward the Capitol, you might hear the
echo beneath the Rotunda: “Hydrogen Car! Hydrogen Car! Hydrogen
Car!”
Having spent a few years studying to be an engineer,
I appreciate the power and value of technology as much as anyone.
The federal government plays a vital role in funding research in
basic areas of science and medicine, principally through the National
Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Thus, it is all the more appalling that while NSF suffers another
year of marginal support, we’re about to gamble billions of
dollars subsidizing the development of a new car.
This is a lesson Congress has failed to learn over and over again:
asking government bureaucrats to pick winners and losers in our
markets does not work. Attempting to do so wastes precious capital
resources, creates unachievable expectations, and distorts the marketplace
of ideas.
It’s a road we’ve been down before.
Many will remember the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles
(PNGV), the Clinton Administration initiative that partnered with
the Big Three domestic automakers to make automobiles more fuel-efficient.
We were told we would see tremendous results: a family supercar
that would travel 80 miles on a gallon of gas. The flood of federal
money into “efficient” diesel technology encouraged
private sector resources to flow toward similar projects (the better
to qualify for federal subsidies). After eight years and $ 1.5 billion,
not a single PNGV vehicle ever reached a showroom. Taxpayer funds
were wasted and private sector capital misallocated.
Others may recall the Synfuels Corporation, promoted
under President Carter. Thankfully, Congress and President Reagan
ended this program in 1985, but not before the taxpayers paid through
the nose. In fact, one project alone - the Great Plains Coal Gasification
Plant - cost over $1.5 billion. Synfuels pushed private capital
toward areas such as oil-from-coal and shale oil extraction, methods
that remain prohibitively expensive even after twenty-five years.
Today, the sources of energy promised by Synfuels represent a miniscule
portion of our country’s daily needs.
Incredibly, the Energy Visionaries are at it
again. PNGV has been replaced by a new “better” and
“bigger” initiative: FreedomCAR. Where PNGV sought to
increase fuel efficiency, FreedomCAR’s mandate is to create
an affordable automobile that runs on hydrogen. In conjunction with
FreedomCAR, the federal government is also pursuing a Hydrogen Fuels
Initiative. Together, President Bush expects these programs to cost
$1.7 billion through 2008. Like any other futuristic promise (remember
nuclear power too cheap to meter), if hydrogen sounds too good to
be true, it is.
A hydrogen fuel cell, the heart of the hydrogen
car, converts hydrogen into electricity to drive a vehicle’s
engine as in today’s increasingly popular hybrid electric
cars. But pure hydrogen does not grow on trees. It must be created
using energy – electricity to remove hydrogen from water,
or high temperature steam to remove it from natural gas. In either
case, the fuel cell acts to store energy, delivering it to the engine
when you put the pedal to the metal.
Granted, electric vehicles can reduce emissions
on the highway; but if fossil fuels remain the main source of energy
to create hydrogen, no significant overall reduction in pollutants
is achieved.
In May 2004, both the National Academy of Sciences
and the American Physical Society stated that a commercially viable
hydrogen car would take 20-30 years to produce. And yet, the Senate
Bill sets a goal of 100,000 hydrogen-powered cars on the road by
2010, and 2.5 million vehicles by 2020. These arbitrary numbers
represent “cheerleading” at best. More likely, they
will mislead the public into believing this dream is far closer
to reality than any reputable source would claim.
And what about infrastructure? According to the
National Petroleum News, there are nearly 169,000 service stations
in the United States today. With recent estimates of conversion
costs nearing $1 million per pump, infrastructure costs could reach
hundreds of billions of dollars.
It may be that a dramatic breakthrough five years
from now could alter these economic obstacles. Or not. But that
is precisely why we encourage, and should have confidence in, competitive
markets. They will do a far better job of financing and rewarding
technological innovation than the most wisened of federal bureaucrats.
Federal subsidies and potential infrastructure costs represent tremendous
amounts of economic resources placed at risk in a highly speculative
venture. This is not the role of government.
Today, General Motors is working on a hydrogen
car. So are Ford and DaimlerChrysler. Overseas, no less than Toyota,
Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW are each working on their own hydrogen
vehicles as well. Let them work. Let them compete. How many Monorails
do we have to buy before we learn our lesson?
Sununu is a member of the Commerce, Science and
Transportation Committee.
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