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Wind and solar to power fuel cells By David
Freeman In 1980, when I was
chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, I arranged for an electric-car
race between Robert Redford and Paul Newman from Gatlinburg to Nashville.
Both were committed to doing it, and I expected we would get a lot of
nationwide publicity. But what would be the result of it? There were no
electric cars for sale, so we didn't do the race. Instead, I went to the
automobile industry and lobbied for their commitment to produce electric
cars. I got a letter from the president of General Motors guaranteeing me
there would be an electric car at every GM showroom in 1984. That never
happened. We dare not be
deluded by the press clippings of the progress with fuel cells. They
haven’t really achieved commercial viability yet, and neither the American
people nor those who deal with sizable quantities of electricity think of
it when they're talking about their next power plant. Of course, the
fuel-cell car is getting tremendous press, publicity and discussion, and I
hope and pray it will not go the way of the electric car. But it's not a
reality yet, and the United States is in serious trouble over the fuel we
need for the fuel cell—that is, oil. California had the
most visible electricity energy crisis in the history of the industry. It
was a perfect opportunity for fuel cells to come in and occupy the space.
The central-station power grid was visibly failing. There were blackouts.
Decentralized power, with the fuel cell being the leading contender, had
an opportunity that it never had before. It just wasn’t quite ready for
commercialization. Frankly, I don't see the kind of organization and
political action on behalf of the decentralized generating companies that
renewable energy has put together, and the two are of the same class. They
are the engines of the future. They are the sources of power that we must
look to. I think the
fuel-cell collaborative, the fuel-cell people, should pay more attention
to the fuel. I'm talking not about hydrogen from fossil fuels, which just
puts you in a vicious circle on the environmental side, but hydrogen from
the electrolysis of water using more and more renewable energy—wind,
solar—to make that electricity. We are on the verge, and I am joined by
executives from the oil companies—Shell, BP and others—in saying this:
We're moving out of the shadow of the fossil fuels into the bright era of
a renewable hydrogen economy, and the fuel cell is the engine that will
take intermittent energy and use it at a time when it's
needed. For many years we
have been trying to reflect the environmental ethic. The fuel cell is
cleaner and will help us with the environment. But after September 11th, a
new public interest even overshadows the environment, and that is this
nation's and the world's security, which primarily revolves around oil. If
it weren't for the money we pay Saddam Hussein for his oil, he wouldn't
have the money to build weapons of mass destruction. If it weren't for the
oil money that went to Saudi Arabia, the Bin Laden family wouldn't have
had the money that helped to build Al-Qaeda. Oil money has been at the
foundation of terror in this world, and there are a lot of serious people
who think we are going to war in Iraq, in part, to get their
oil. What would happen
if we woke up tomorrow morning and found—as happened in Iran—that the
people in Saudi Arabia had thrown out their government and that it was in
the hands of an extreme Muslim government? Worldwide calamity would ensue.
If we go to war, we will alienate billions of people forever. If we don’t
go to war, we might not be able to get to work. We are in a serious pickle
over oil, and we need a “Hydrogen Now!!” program to at least get started
toward the era of using hydrogen instead of oil. I applaud the Bush
administration for recognizing that fuel cells and hydrogen need to be
part of our future, but I beg them to make it part of our present. That it
may take twenty years to make a transition is all the more reason we
should begin today. What if two or three years from now we have hundreds
of thousands of hydrogen-powered cars being built and more and more on the
way. Fuel-cell development would come faster because they would be needed
to make the bigger cars with less efficiency commercially viable. This is
a program, however, that really is a wartime necessity, not a peacetime
luxury. The people in the
fuel-cell business must connect themselves with the issues. We have power
shortages in many parts of this country, and distributed generation is an
answer to these shortages. We need a vision that will capture the
imagination of the country. When President John F. Kennedy said we were
going to go to the moon in nine years, people didn't ask detailed
questions about how and what the obstacles were. It was something the
country decided to do. What we need are enough voices out there pointing
out what is possible and a million American people walking into the
showrooms of the automobile industry and saying, “We want a hydrogen car.”
Today, it may be an internal-combustion engine; tomorrow it will be a fuel
cell. David Freeman is chairman of the California Power Authority. Adapted from his keynote speech to the Fuel Cell Seminar in Palm Springs, California, in November. |
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