While mostly a call to arms, the state of the union address Jan. 28 by US President George W. Bush contained an energy clinker.
After promising "spending discipline," Bush proposed a list of expenditures including $1.2 billion for research of hydrogen-powered vehicles. New funding would total $720 million over 5 years.
The spending would support a transition that most energy analysts see as inevitable: from energy based on hydrocarbons to energy based on hydrogen. So why burden taxpayers with the cost of an evolution rooted in nature and economics?
The official answer, from Bush's speech: … To make our air significantly cleaner and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy."
Seizing the patriotic theme, the Department of Energy hyped Bush's announcement as the FreedomFUEL Initiative (the spelling and capitalization are DOE's), which joins an existing program called FreedomCAR. That's CAR for Cooperative Automotive Research.
Hydrogen shouldn't need the rah-rah—or taxpayers' money. As a combustion fuel or fuel-cell feed, it's clean. And fuel cells convert energy more efficiently than engines burning gasoline or diesel. But hydrogen-based transport systems are, at present, orders of magnitude more expensive than their conventional counterparts.
Acknowledging the problem, Bush said an objective of the newly funded research would be to bring costs down.
Great. But how would that lower US dependence on foreign energy?
Hydrogen comes from either electrolysis of water or reforming of hydrocarbons. Electrolysis requires electricity, the generation of which requires energy. Reforming, the far more likely route to hydrogen for transportation, requires hydrocarbons, usually of the fluid variety. These options don't translate into meaningful reductions in US imports of oil and natural gas.
Hydrogen's greater promise is environmental. But clear advantages of hydrogen at the vehicular level must be weighed against not just economic costs but also system-wide effects, which can be environmentally discouraging. Someday, hydrogen will be an important fuel. But it should evolve naturally into the role.
Government spending aimed at accelerating the process can only distort crucial choices best left to markets and poison energy policy-making with false hope.
(Online Jan. 31, 2003; author's e-mail: [email protected])