SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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22–549PS
2006
FUELING THE FUTURE: ON THE ROAD
TO THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JULY 20, 2005
Serial No. 109–23
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Science
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/science
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HON. SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York, Chairman
RALPH M. HALL, Texas
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
KEN CALVERT, California
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
JO BONNER, Alabama
TOM FEENEY, Florida
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
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DAVE G. REICHERT, Washington
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana
JOHN J.H. ''JOE'' SCHWARZ, Michigan
MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas
VACANCY
VACANCY
BART GORDON, Tennessee
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California
DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
MARK UDALL, Colorado
DAVID WU, Oregon
MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
BRAD SHERMAN, California
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
JIM MATHESON, Utah
JIM COSTA, California
AL GREEN, Texas
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CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana
DENNIS MOORE, Kansas
Subcommittee on Energy
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois, Chair
RALPH M. HALL, Texas
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
JO BONNER, Alabama
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
DAVE G. REICHERT, Washington
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana
JOHN J.H. ''JOE'' SCHWARZ, Michigan
VACANCY
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York
MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
JIM MATHESON, Utah
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SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
BRAD SHERMAN, California
AL GREEN, Texas
BART GORDON, Tennessee
KEVIN CARROLL Subcommittee Staff Director
ELI HOPSON Republican Professional Staff Member
DAHLIA SOKOLOV Republican Professional Staff Member
CHARLES COOKE Democratic Professional Staff Member
COLIN HUBBELL Staff Assistant
Subcommittee on Research
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina, Chairman
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
DAVE G. REICHERT, Washington
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana
MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas
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VACANCY
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York
DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina
VACANCY
VACANCY
VACANCY
BART GORDON, Tennessee
DAN BYERS Subcommittee Staff Director
JIM WILSON Democratic Professional Staff Member
MELÉ WILLIAMS Professional Staff Member/Chairman's Designee
ELIZABETH GROSSMAN, KARA HAAS Professional Staff Members
RACHEL JAGODA BRUNETTE Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
July 20, 2005
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Witness List
Hearing Charter
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Judy Biggert, Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Written Statement
Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Chairman, Subcommittee on Research, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Written Statement
Statement by Representative Michael M. Honda, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Written Statement
Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Prepared Statement by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
Prepared Statement by Representative Russ Carnahan, Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives
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Witnesses:
Mr. Douglas L. Faulkner, Acting Assistant Secretary, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy
Oral Statement
Written Statement
Biography
Dr. David L. Bodde, Director, Innovation and Public Policy, International Center for Automotive Research, Clemson University
Oral Statement
Written Statement
Biography
Mr. Mark Chernoby, Vice President, Advanced Vehicle Engineering, DaimlerChrysler Corporation
Oral Statement
Written Statement
Biography
Dr. George W. Crabtree, Director, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Oral Statement
Written Statement
Biography
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Dr. John B. Heywood, Director, Sloan Automotive Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Oral Statement
Written Statement
Biography
Discussion
Appendix 1: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Mr. Douglas L. Faulkner, Acting Assistant Secretary, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy
Dr. David L. Bodde, Director, Innovation and Public Policy, International Center for Automotive Research, Clemson University
Mr. Mark Chernoby, Vice President, Advanced Vehicle Engineering, DaimlerChrysler Corporation
Dr. George W. Crabtree, Director, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Dr. John B. Heywood, Director, Sloan Automotive Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Director, National Science Foundation
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Appendix 2: Additional Material for the Record
Statement by Michelin North America
Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy, Report of the Basic Energy Sciences Workshop on Hydrogen Production, Storage, and Use, May 13–15, 2003
Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply, April 2005, U.S. Department of Energy, and U.S. Department of Agriculture
FUELING THE FUTURE: ON THE ROAD TO THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2005
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy, joint with
the Subcommittee on Research,
Committee on Science,
Washington, DC.
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The Subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Judy Biggert [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Energy] and Hon. Bob Inglis [Chairman of the Subcommittee on Research] presiding.
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HEARING CHARTER
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY, JOINTLY WITH
THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Fueling the Future: On the Road
to the Hydrogen Economy
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2005
10:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M.
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2318 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
1. Purpose
On Wednesday, July 20, 2005, at 10:00 a.m., the Energy and Research Subcommittees of the House Science Committee will hold a joint hearing to examine the progress that has been made in hydrogen research since the launch of the President's Hydrogen Initiative and the next steps the Federal Government should take to best advance a hydrogen economy.
2. Witnesses
Mr. Douglas Faulkner is the Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy (DOE).
Dr. David Bodde is the Director of Innovation and Public Policy at Clemson University's International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR).
Mr. Mark Chernoby is Vice President for Advanced Vehicle Engineering at the DaimlerChrysler Corporation.
Dr. George Crabtree is the Director of the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory.
Dr. John Heywood is the Director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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3. Overarching Questions
The hearing will focus on the following overarching questions:
1. What progress has been made toward addressing the principal technical barriers to a successful transition to the use of hydrogen as a primary transportation fuel since the Administration announced its hydrogen initiatives, FreedomCAR and the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative? What are the remaining potential technical ''showstoppers?''
2. What are the research areas where breakthroughs are needed to advance a hydrogen economy? How has DOE responded to the report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) calling for an increased emphasis on basic research? How is DOE incorporating the results of the Basic Energy Sciences workshop on basic research needs for a hydrogen economy into the research agenda for the hydrogen initiative?
3. The NAS report suggested that the research agenda should be developed with future policy decisions in mind. How has DOE increased its policy analysis capabilities as recommended by the NAS? How will the results of that analysis be applied to the research agenda?
4. Overview
In his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush announced the creation of a new Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, which built on the FreedomCAR initiative announced in 2002. Together, the initiatives aim to provide the technology for a hydrogen-based transportation economy, including production of hydrogen, transportation and distribution of hydrogen, and the vehicles that will use the hydrogen. Fuel cell cars running on hydrogen would emit only water vapor and, if domestic energy sources were used, would not be dependent on foreign fuels.
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Industry is participating in the hydrogen initiatives, and has invested heavily in hydrogen technology, particularly the automobile manufacturers and oil companies. The FreedomCAR program is a partnership between Ford, GM, DaimlerChrysler, and the Federal Government, and the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative expanded that partnership to include major oil companies such as Shell and BP, and merchant producers of hydrogen like Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Although exact amounts of industry investment are proprietary, GM alone is estimated to have spent over $1.5 billion, and other automakers have invested similar amounts.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommended changes to the hydrogen initiatives in its 2004 report, The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs. The report particularly stressed the need for a greater emphasis on basic, exploratory research because of the significant technical barriers that must be overcome. DOE has responded by expanding the hydrogen program into the Office of Science, and has requested $33 million for fiscal year 2006 (FY06) to fund basic research efforts in DOE's Office of Science.
In addition, the NAS report noted that DOE needs to think about policy questions as it develops its research and development (R&D) agenda: ''Significant industry investments in advance of market forces will not be made unless government creates a business environment that reflects societal priorities with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and oil imports.. . .The DOE should estimate what levels of investment over time are required—and in which program and project areas—in order to achieve a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from passenger vehicles by mid-century.'' DOE has expanded its hydrogen policy and analysis efforts to be able to answer questions like those posed by the NAS, but the analytical work is still in progress, and available results are still preliminary.
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Even with the most optimistic of assumptions, it will take some time for hydrogen vehicles to compose a significant part of the automobile fleet. The NAS estimates that sales of hydrogen vehicles will not be significant enough for the full benefits of a hydrogen economy to be realized at least until 2025.
During the transition to a hydrogen economy, many of the technologies being developed for hydrogen vehicles, such as hybrid systems technology and advanced lightweight materials could be deployed in conventional automobiles to provide reduced oil dependence and emissions. Without the proper incentives, vehicle improvements are likely to continue to be used to increase performance, rather than improving fuel economy, as they have been for the past twenty years. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that if today's vehicles had the same weight and acceleration as cars did in 1987, they would get 20 percent better gas mileage due to technology improvements.
5. Background
What are the technical challenges?
Major advances are needed across a wide range of technologies for hydrogen to be affordable, safe, cleanly produced, and readily distributed. The production, storage and use of hydrogen all present significant technical challenges. While the research effort at DOE has produced promising results, the program is still a long way from meeting its goals in any of these areas.
Hydrogen does not exist in a usable form in nature, and has to be produced from something else, such as coal or natural gas. But one goal of using hydrogen is to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. If hydrogen is to be produced without emissions of carbon dioxide, then the technology to capture and store carbon dioxide while making hydrogen must improve significantly. The other main goal of using hydrogen is to reduce the use of imported energy. Today most hydrogen is produced from natural gas, but in order to supply the entire transportation sector significant imports of natural gas would be required. Other possible means of producing hydrogen, including nuclear energy and renewable energy sources, are inherently cleaner than coal, but are far from affordable with existing technology.
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Another major hurdle is finding ways to store hydrogen, particularly on board a vehicle. Hydrogen is a small molecule with properties that make it difficult to store in small volumes and in lightweight materials. The American Physical Society argued in its 2004 report on hydrogen, The Hydrogen Initiative, that a new material would have to be discovered in order to meet the FreedomCAR goals.
The NAS estimated that fuel cells themselves would need a ten- to twenty-fold improvement before fuel cell vehicles become competitive with conventional technology. Large improvements have been made since the report has been released, but additional improvements are still needed. DOE estimates that roughly a five-fold decrease in cost will be required, while at the same time increasing performance and durability. Current fuel cells wear out quickly, and lifetimes are far short of those required to compete with a gasoline engine. Small-scale distributed hydrogen production also needs improvement, and the NAS report recommended increased focus in that area because it may be among the first hydrogen-related technologies to be deployed.
What are the non-technical challenges, in the policy and regulatory areas?
Since many of the benefits of a hydrogen economy, such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions, are not currently accounted for in the marketplace, it will be difficult for hydrogen vehicles to compete with conventional technology. Even if all the technical challenges are met, and industry has the capability to produce hydrogen vehicles that are competitive with conventional vehicles, a successful hydrogen economy is not guaranteed. First, the transition to a hydrogen economy will require an enormous investment to create a new infrastructure. Changes in regulation, training and public habits and attitudes will also be necessary. Estimates of the cost of creating a fueling infrastructure (replacing or altering gas stations and distribution systems) alone are in the hundreds of billions of dollars. DOE is initiating an effort to better understand the economics and influences of policy incentives on a possible transition to hydrogen.
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How are the Hydrogen Initiatives funded?
The FreedomCAR and the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative are expected to cost $1.7 billion over five years from FY03 to FY08. The President called for $358 million across DOE for these programs in the FY06 request, an increase of $48 million, 16 percent over levels appropriated for the initiatives in FY05. However, this increase comes at a time when R&D programs in the other energy efficiency and renewable energy programs are seeing decreasing requests overall, by $74 million, 10 percent to $692 million. Unless additional funding is provided to renewable energy and energy efficiency programs at DOE in general, the projected further increases in the FreedomCAR and Hydrogen Fuel Initiative will likely result in more cuts to other efficiency and renewable programs.
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Technology Background
What is a Fuel Cell?
Central to the operation of the hydrogen-based economy is a device known as a fuel cell that would convert hydrogen fuels to electricity. In cars, these devices would be connected to electric motors that would provide the power now supplied by gasoline engines. A fuel cell produces electricity by means of an electrochemical reaction much like a battery. There is an important difference, however. Rather than using up the chemicals inside the cells, a fuel cell uses hydrogen fuel, and oxygen extracted from the air, to produce electricity. As long as hydrogen fuel and oxygen are fed into the fuel cell, it will continue to generate electric power.
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Different types of fuel cells work with different electrochemical reactions. Currently most automakers are considering Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells for their vehicles.
Benefits of a Hydrogen-based Economy
A hydrogen-based economy could have two important benefits. First, hydrogen can be manufactured from a variety of sources, including natural gas, biofuels, petroleum, coal, and even by passing electricity through water (electrolysis). Depending on the choice of source, hydrogen could substantially reduce our dependence on foreign oil and natural gas.
Second, the consumption of hydrogen through fuel cells yields water as its only emission. Other considerations, such as the by-products of the hydrogen production process, will also be important in choosing the source of the hydrogen. For example, natural gas is the current feedstock for industrial hydrogen, but its production releases carbon dioxide; production from coal releases more carbon dioxide and other emissions; and production from water means that pollution may be created by the generation of electricity used in electrolysis. Production from solar electricity would mean no pollution in the generation process or in consumption, but is currently more expensive and less efficient than other methods.
6. Witnesses Questions
The witnesses have been asked to address the following questions in their testimony:
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Mr. Douglas Faulkner:
What progress has been made toward addressing the principal technical barriers to a successful transition to the use of hydrogen as a primary transportation fuel since the Administration announced its hydrogen initiatives, FreedomCAR and the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative? What are the remaining potential technical ''showstoppers?''
What are the research areas where breakthroughs are needed to advance a hydrogen economy? How has DOE responded to the report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) calling for an increased emphasis on basic research? How is DOE incorporating the results of the Basic Energy Sciences workshop on basic research needs for a hydrogen economy into the research agenda for the hydrogen initiative?
The NAS report suggested that the research agenda should be developed with future policy decisions in mind. How has DOE increased its policy analysis capabilities as recommended by the NAS? How will the results of that analysis be applied to the research agenda?
How is DOE conducting planning for, and analysis of, the policy changes (such as incentives or regulation) that might be required to accelerate a transition to hydrogen? What other agencies are involved in planning for, or facilitating, such a transition?
Mr. Mark Chrenoby:
What criteria does DaimlerChrysler consider when making investment decisions regarding its portfolio of advanced vehicle research and development programs? What factors would induce DaimlerChrysler to invest more in the development of hydrogen-fueled vehicles? What do you see as a probable timeline for the commercialization of hydrogen-fueled vehicles? What about the other advanced vehicle technologies DaimlerChrysler is currently developing, such as hybrid vehicles and advanced diesel engines?
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What do you see as the potential technology showstoppers for a hydrogen economy? To what extent is Daimler relying on government programs to help solve those technical challenges?
How are automakers using, or how do they plan to use, the advanced vehicle technology developed for hydrogen-fueled vehicles to improve the performance of conventional vehicles?
Dr. David Bodde:
What progress has been made toward addressing the principal technical barriers to a successful transition to the use of hydrogen as a primary transportation fuel since the Administration announced its hydrogen initiatives, FreedomCAR and the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative? What are the remaining potential technical ''showstoppers?''
What are the research areas where breakthroughs are needed to advance a hydrogen economy? How has DOE responded to the report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) calling for an increased emphasis on basic research? How is DOE incorporating the results of the Basic Energy Sciences workshop on basic research needs for a hydrogen economy into the research agenda for the hydrogen initiative?
Is the current balance between funding of hydrogen-related research and research on advanced vehicle technologies that might be deployed in the interim before a possible transition to hydrogen appropriate? What advanced vehicle choices should the Federal Government be funding between now and when the transition to a hydrogen economy occurs? How are automakers using, or how do they plan to use, the advanced vehicle technology developed for hydrogen-fueled vehicles to improve the performance of conventional vehicles? Are automakers likely to improve fuel economy and introduce advanced vehicles without government support? How will ICAR encourage automakers to introduce technologies to improve fuel economy?
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What role do entrepreneurs, start-up companies, and venture capital investors have to play in accelerating the commercial introduction of advanced hydrogen-fueled vehicles?
Dr. George Crabtree:
What progress has been made toward addressing the principal technical barriers to a successful transition to the use of hydrogen as a primary transportation fuel since the Administration announced its hydrogen initiatives, FreedomCAR and the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative? What are the remaining potential technical ''showstoppers?''
What are the research areas where breakthroughs are needed to advance a hydrogen economy? How has DOE responded to the report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) calling for an increased emphasis on basic research? How is DOE incorporating the results of the Basic Energy Sciences workshop on basic research needs for a hydrogen economy into the research agenda for the hydrogen initiative?
The NAS report suggested that the research agenda should be developed with future policy decisions in mind. How has DOE increased its policy analysis capabilities as recommended by the NAS? How will the results of that analysis be applied to the research agenda?
How is DOE conducting planning for, and analysis of, the policy changes (such as incentives or regulation) that might be required to accelerate a transition to hydrogen? What other agencies are involved in planning for, or facilitating, such a transition?
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Dr. John Heywood:
How might the future regulatory environment, including possible incentives for advances vehicles and regulations of safety and emissions, affect a transition to hydrogen-fueled motor vehicles? How could the Federal Government most efficiently accelerate such a transition?
Is the current balance between funding of hydrogen-related research and research on advanced vehicle technologies that might be deployed in the interim before a possible transition to hydrogen appropriate? What advanced vehicle choices should the Federal Government be funding between now and when the transition to a hydrogen economy occurs? How are automakers using, or how do they plan to use, the advanced vehicle technology developed for hydrogen-fueled vehicles to improve the performance of conventional vehicles? Are automakers likely to improve fuel economy and introduce advanced vehicles without government support?
What role should the Federal Government play in the standardization of local and international codes and standards that affect hydrogen-fueled vehicles, such as building, safety, interconnection, and fire codes?
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Good morning. I want—the hearing will come to order.
I want to welcome everyone to this joint hearing of the Energy and Research Subcommittees of the House Science Committee. Today, we are going to get a status report on the progress of federal research efforts driving the development of fuel cells and the hydrogen to power them.
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This hearing has become something of an annual tradition for the Science Committee. We have had a Full—we have had Full Committee hearings, field hearings, and Energy Subcommittee hearings on this topic. This year, I am pleased that our colleagues in the Research Subcommittee are joining us to examine the contributions of individual researchers and university research activities to the hydrogen and FreedomCAR initiatives.
At this time, it is a privilege for me to recognize my colleague from South Carolina, the Chairman of the Research Subcommittee, Mr. Inglis, for his opening statement.
Chairman INGLIS. Thank you, Madame Chairman.
Good morning. And I am excited about convening this hearing. It is the first on the hydrogen economy this Congress, I believe. And this topic has the potential for being the next ''giant leap for mankind.'' That is certainly our hope.
The way I see it, there are three keys necessary to unlock the door to a full hydrogen economy. The first is commitment. The second is collaboration. And the third is discovery.
We need a commitment from the United States similar to the one that President Kennedy made when he challenged Congress in 1961 to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. The President's hydrogen fuel initiative and FreedomCAR are steps in the right direction, and I welcome the testimony on the progress that has been made on these initiatives to date.
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Strong public and private collaboration is the second imperative if we are to see real and hopeful ahead-of-schedule success. And in my District, Clemson University is building the International Center for Automotive Research, ICAR, funded in significant part by BMW and Michelin. At ICAR, researchers will do what they do best, industry will do what it does best, and markets will establish the winners and losers. You will hear more about this collaborative effort today from Dr. David Bodde, Director of Innovation and Public Policy at ICAR.
The third key, discovery, is where our greatest challenges lie. That is why it is critically important that we fund basic research supporting the production, storage, and distribution of hydrogen. The development of a hydrogen economy depends on breakthroughs in these areas. At the same time, we should also be pursuing other advanced technologies, such as better batteries, photovoltaic cells that may take us to a new plateau of energy independence.
One of these technologies may turn out to be the ''8-track'' of the hydrogen economy. Another may be the ''cassette player,'' yet another unknown technology may prove to be the ''CD'' of automobiles, which, in turn, may be followed by the MP3.
Transition to a hydrogen economy holds great promise on many levels. All along the way, the air will be getting cleaner, the oil pressure could come off the Middle East, entrepreneurs will be making money and employing people, and we will be winning our energy independence.
Admittedly, there are technology and cost challenges ahead of us, but I do not believe them to be insurmountable. In fact, I think we are definitely up to the challenge.
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I look forward to hearing from the witnesses on all of these issues, and I thank you, Madame Chairman, for convening your hearing.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Inglis follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN BOB INGLIS
Good morning, and thank you Madam Chairman for bringing us together for our first hearing on the hydrogen economy this Congress. I am pleased that we have convened this joint hearing on an issue that I believe has the potential to be the next ''giant leap for mankind.''
The way I see it, there are three keys necessary to unlock the door to a full hydrogen economy: (1) commitment, (2) collaboration and (3) discovery.
We need a commitment in the U.S. similar to the one we made when President Kennedy challenged Congress in 1961 to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. The President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative and FreedomCAR are steps in the right direction, and I welcome the testimony on the progress that has been made on these initiatives to date.
Strong public and private collaboration is imperative if we are to see real and, hopefully, ahead-of-schedule success. In my district, Clemson University is building the International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR), funded in significant part by BMW and Michelin. At ICAR, researchers will do what they do best; industry will do what it does best; and the markets will establish winners and losers. You will hear more about this collaborative effort today from Dr. David Bodde, Director of Innovation and Public Policy at ICAR.
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The third key, discovery, is where our greatest challenges lie. That is why it is critically important that we fund basic research supporting the production, storage and distribution of hydrogen. The development of a hydrogen economy depends on breakthroughs in these areas. At the same time, we should also be pursuing other advanced technologies such as better batteries and photovoltaic cells that may take us to a new plateau of energy dependence. One of these technologies may turn out to be the eight-track of the hydrogen economy. Another may be the cassette player. Yet another yet-unknown technology may prove to be the CD of automobiles, which, in turn, may be followed by the MP3.
The transition to a hydrogen economy holds great promise on many levels. All along the way, the air will be getting cleaner, the oil pressure will be coming off the Middle East, entrepreneurs will be making money and employing people, and we will be winning our energy independence. Admittedly, there are technology and cost challenges ahead of us, but I do not believe them to be insurmountable. In fact, I think we're definitely up to the challenge.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses on all of these issues.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Well, thank you, Chairman Inglis.
At last year's hearing on this topic, we closely examined two reports, one prepared by the National Academy of Sciences, the other by the American Physical Society, both of which emphasized the importance of basic research to the long-term success of the President's hydrogen and FreedomCAR initiatives.
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I am pleased that President Bush took these recommendations to heart and increased funding in his fiscal year 2006 budget request for the Department of Energy's Office of Science to address some of the fundamental obstacles to greater use of hydrogen and fuel cells. I am anxious to hear how the results of this basic research are being incorporated into the fuel cell and hydrogen technologies under development and how they are shaping the research agenda going forward.
I think that research designed to benefit the Nation significantly in the long-term could benefit us marginally in the near-term, ultimately giving us the greater return on our investments in hydrogen and fuel cell research. We couldn't ask for more in this era of tight budgets. We have a diverse panel of witnesses today representing some exceptional institutions engaged in all kinds of hydrogen and fuel research.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Biggert follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JUDY BIGGERT
This hearing will give this committee another opportunity to get an update on the work underway at the Department of Energy as part of the President's Hydrogen Fuel and FreedomCAR initiatives. I also want to thank the witnesses for being so generous with their time, and for agreeing to share with us their insight and expertise on the topics of fuel cells and hydrogen.
I have a keen interest in both the fuel cell and hydrogen initiatives that the President announced in 2002 and 2003 respectively. My district is, of course, home to Argonne National Laboratory, which has a strong fuel cell R&D program. My district also is home to small businesses like H2Fuels and various auto parts suppliers, corporations like BP, and research organizations like the Gas Technology Institute. In short, I have the privilege to represent a region that has much to contribute to the continued development of fuel cells and the hydrogen needed to fuel them.
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As I've said many times before, I do not believe that affordable energy and a clean and safe environment are mutually exclusive. America has the ingenuity and the expertise to meet our future energy demands and promote energy conservation, and we can do so in environmentally responsible ways that set a standard for the world. Most importantly, America now has the motivation perhaps like no other time since the oil crisis of the '70's - to find newer and better ways to meet our energy needs.
There clearly are many compelling reasons to work towards our shared vision of a hydrogen economy. Today, we will hear testimony not only about the progress DOE has made already in hydrogen research but also about those research questions—both basic and applied—that remain as questions yet to be solved. While we want to know about any potential scientific or technical ''showstoppers,'' we also want to know whether there are any new problems that have been identified as a result of on-going research. We will hear testimony about how DOE is incorporating the results of basic research needs for a hydrogen economy into the research agenda for the hydrogen initiative. Finally, we will hear how the Department's hydrogen research agenda has been modified to account for anticipated future policy decisions, as suggested by the National Academy of Sciences.
It is clear that the vision of a hydrogen economy is a tremendously challenging endeavor. But, it is also clear that it will take us many years to reach our goal. Once they become available, hydrogen vehicles will require a number of years until they compose a significant part of the automobile fleet. The NAS estimates that sales of hydrogen vehicles will not be significant enough for the full benefits of a hydrogen economy to be realized at least until 2025. In light of that, we need to next ask, ''Are we working to meet our goals in the best way that we can?''
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I would also observe that during the transition to a hydrogen economy, many technologies developed for hydrogen vehicles—such as hybrid systems technology and advanced lightweight materials—could be deployed in conventional automobiles to provide reduced oil dependence and emissions. Congress and the Administration need to understand whether we can design proper incentives so that those technologies are deployed for improving the fuel economy of conventional automobiles, rather than continuing an exclusive focus on ever increasing performance, as has been the norm for the past twenty years. We need to next ask, ''Are we getting all the benefits we can from our investment in hydrogen research?''
Our job at this hearing is to look at what we've learned in our initial research efforts, and to gain insight into whether we have an appropriately balanced research effort. I look forward to hearing more about how the DOE is moving the Nation ever-closer to realizing the promise and potential of fuel cells and hydrogen.
Thank you.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. But before we hear from them, I want to recognize the Ranking Member of the Energy Subcommittee, Mr. Honda from California, for his opening statement.
Mr. HONDA. Thank you, Madame Chair, and I do appreciate the Chair's work in putting this hearing together.
At a Full Committee hearing held earlier this year, we heard about two reports, which suggested that resources should be directed away from demonstration projects and towards more basic R&D because there are significant technical barriers to overcome.
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I agree that there are many technical barriers to be overcome, but I also note that demonstration programs have served to help us identify some of those technical barriers.
I hope that the witnesses can comment on the role that the—that investments made in demonstration projects by other agencies can play in helping the Department of Energy's work to make hydrogen feasible. For example, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority's Zero-Emission Bus program is funded by a transit sales tax, the Federal Transit Administration, the California Energy Commission, and the Bay Air Quality Management District.
It will be useful to know whether DOE is able to work with programs like this to gain knowledge about the infrastructure needs and identify potential technical obstacles that we will need to overcome.
Finally, we must remember that hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy carrier. We cannot afford to look at only the hydrogen piece of the puzzle. We must figure out where we are going to get that hydrogen.
I hope that the witnesses will discuss whether we are doing the necessary work to develop the electricity-generating infrastructure that will clearly be necessary to provide the fuel for hydrogen vehicles.
I look forward to this hearing and hope that the witnesses can address some of these concerns. And I yield back the balance of my time.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Honda follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE MICHAEL M. HONDA
Chairman Inglis, Chairwoman Biggert, Ranking Member Hooley, thank you all for holding this hearing today to receive updates on the progress that is being made in addressing technical barriers to the use of hydrogen in vehicles.
At a Full Committee hearing held earlier this year, we heard testimony about two reports which suggested that resources should be directed away from demonstration projects and towards more basic R&D because there are significant technical barriers to overcome.
I agree with the conclusion that there are many technical barriers to be overcome, and I look forward to hearing from the witnesses their thoughts on the breakthroughs they believe will need to be made in order to overcome these barriers.
But I also note that prior demonstration programs have served to help to identify some of the very technical barriers that an increased emphasis on research would aim to overcome. I fear that we might miss more obstacles until after we have made significant investments of time and resources if we stop working on demonstration projects.
I hope that the witnesses can comment on the role that investments made in demonstration projects by other agencies can play in helping the Department of Energy's work to make hydrogen feasible. For example, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority's Zero Emission Bus program is funded by a transit sales tax, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the California Energy Commission (CEC), and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
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It will be useful to know whether DOE is able to work with programs like this to gain knowledge about infrastructure needs and identify potential technical obstacles that we will need to overcome.
Finally, we must remember that hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy carrier. We cannot just look at the hydrogen piece of the equation, assuming that an infinite supply of fuel will be available for vehicles if only we can make those vehicles.
Where is the energy going to come from to produce hydrogen? Converting natural gas is one option, but supplies of that fuel are already limited.
Barring that, a switch to hydrogen vehicles looks like it will also require a commensurate increase electricity generating capacity to supply the fuel. I hope the witnesses will discuss whether we are undertaking the necessary efforts to address this critical piece of the puzzle.
I look forward to this hearing, and hope the witnesses can address some of these concerns. I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Honda.
Any additional opening statement submitted by the Members may be added to the record.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE JERRY F. COSTELLO
Good morning. I want to thank the witnesses for appearing before our committee to examine the progress that has been made in hydrogen research since the launch of the President's Hydrogen Initiative. A greater reliance on hydrogen requires modification of our existing energy infrastructure to ensure greater availability of this new fuel source. Making the transition to a hydrogen economy will require an enormous investment to create a new infrastructure. It is my understanding that the Department of Energy is initiating an effort to better understand the economics and influences of policy incentives on a possible transition to hydrogen. Since the President's Initiative has left many questions unanswered, I am hopeful our witnesses here today will provide more insight into the funding and technology challenges facing the Hydrogen Initiative.
I agree that a hydrogen-based economy could have important benefits that could help relieve our dependence on foreign oil. First, hydrogen can be manufactured from a variety of sources, such as coal. I strongly support the President's Integrated Sequestration and Hydrogen Research Initiative, entitled FutureGen, which is a coal-fired electric and hydrogen production plant. The prototype plant will serve as a large-scale engineering laboratory for testing and will expand the options for producing hydrogen from coal.
As the Administration begins to consider locations for the new plant, I would hope they would consider Southern Illinois. I have led the effort to locate FutureGen in Illinois, including leading a bipartisan effort in the House to secure funding for the project. The region is rich in high-sulfur coal reserves and the Coal Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIU–C) has been doing extensive work with hydrogen and coal. The geology of the region is well suited to the carbon-trapping technology to be developed and Illinois is home to oil and gas reserves and deep saline aquifers that can permanently sequester carbon dioxide.
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I have been tracking this issue closely since its inception and I am anxious to see the Department's program plan. This Administration has touted FutureGen as one of the most important climate change technologies at our disposal and heightened its international visibility to extraordinary levels and I am committed to working with my colleagues and the Administration to move forward on a path that is technically, financially, and politically viable.
I again thank the witnesses for being with us today and providing testimony to our committee.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jackson Lee follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE SHEILA JACKSON LEE
Let me thank Chairwoman Biggert and Ranking Member Honda of the Energy Subcommittee as well as Chairman Inglis and Ranking Member Holley of the Research Subcommittee for holding this joint hearing on the future of hydrogen energy. Clearly, hydrogen technologies hold great potential; however we do not know how long it will be before hydrogen can represent a significant portion of our fuel consumption. I hope this hearing will shed some light on the path that we must take to make the potential of hydrogen into a reality.
In his 2003 State of the Union speech, President Bush announced the creation of a new Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, which built on the FreedomCAR initiative announced in 2002. Together, the initiatives aim to provide the technology for a hydrogen-based transportation economy, including production of hydrogen, transportation and distribution of hydrogen, and the vehicles that will use the hydrogen. Fuel cell cars running on hydrogen would emit only water vapor and provide environmental benefits in addition to being an alternative source of energy.
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However, as I stated we must make this potential in to a reality and we are not yet at that point. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommended changes to the hydrogen initiatives in its 2004 report, The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs. The report particularly stressed the need for a greater emphasis on basic, exploratory research because of the significant technical barriers that must be overcome. The Department of Energy (DOE) has responded by expanding the hydrogen program into the Office of Science, and has requested $33 million for fiscal year 2006 (FY06) to fund basic research efforts in DOE's Office of Science.
The fact is that even with the most optimistic of assumptions, it will take some time for hydrogen vehicles to compose a significant part of the automobile fleet. The NAS estimates that sales of hydrogen vehicles will not be significant enough for the full benefits of a hydrogen economy to be realized at least until 2025. But, this should not be a deterrent to developing hydrogen technology, instead it should serve as incentive for the scientific community to move towards this technology that holds so much promise.
While in this transition to a hydrogen economy, many of the technologies being developed for hydrogen vehicles, such as hybrid systems technology and advanced lightweight materials could be deployed in conventional automobiles to provide reduced oil dependence and emissions. Without the proper incentives, vehicle improvements are likely to continue to be used to increase performance, rather than improving fuel economy, as they have been for the past twenty years. In fact the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that if today's vehicles had the same weight and acceleration as cars did in 1987, they would get 20 percent better gas mileage due to technology improvements. I sincerely hope that we use our resources to improve gas mileage and make hydrogen technology a reality for the American public.
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Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carnahan follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE RUSS CARNAHAN
I am pleased that we are holding this very important hearing this morning.
The U.S. Federal Government often serves the role of jump-starting research in fields that cannot be immediately lucrative, yet provide American citizens the promise of improved health, efficiency, or lifestyle. We again find ourselves in this role, and we must do our best to advance a hydrogen economy in this country.
I am particularly interested in the FreedomCAR program that partners with DaimlerChrysler. As we recognize the potential of FreedomCAR and the hydrogen initiative, I am excited about the promise that developments in this field may provide for many of my constituents who are employees of Chrysler.
Furthermore, I would like to recognize the good research being conducted at the University of Missouri on the Plug-In Hybrid Power System Partnership for Innovation, a research project that will examine how regenerative fuel cell systems, which produce high hydrogen and oxygen pressures, will be designed, fabricated and then demonstrated in the laboratory.
Thank you for your willingness to join us, Mr. Faulkner, Dr. Bodde, Mr. Chernoby, Dr. Crabtree and Dr. Heywood. I am eager to hear your testimony.
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Chairwoman BIGGERT. And at this time, I would like to introduce all of the witnesses and thank you for coming before us this morning.
First off, we have Mr. Douglas Faulkner. He is the Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy. There is a lot of energy in there. Dr. David Bodde, Director of Innovation and Public Policy at Clemson University's International Center for Automotive Research. And thank you. Mr. Mark Chernoby, Vice President for Advance Vehicle Engineering at the DaimlerChrysler Corporation. Thank you. And Dr. George Crabtree, Director of the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, a familiar place. And Dr. John Heywood, Director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Welcome.
As the witnesses probably know, spoken testimony will be limited to five minutes each, after which the Members will have five minutes each to ask questions. This is Wednesday and one of, probably, our busiest days, so we are going to be pretty strict on the time, if you can keep it to five minutes.
We will begin with Mr. Faulkner. And the fact that there are two Committees here, we expect a lot of questions.
So we will begin with Mr. Faulkner.
STATEMENT OF MR. DOUGLAS L. FAULKNER, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY, ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
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Mr. FAULKNER. Thank you.
Madame Chairman, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittees, I appreciate the opportunity today to testify on the Department's hydrogen program.
Since President Bush launched the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative over two years ago, we have made tremendous progress. We have implemented valuable feedback from the National Academy of Sciences and the Department's Basic Energy Sciences Workshop and are already seeing results. In fact, as we speak, the Academy is completing its biannual review of the program and will publish its findings in coming weeks.
The Academy called for us to improve integration and balance of activities within the relevant offices of the Department of Energy's Renewables, Nuclear, Fossil, Science, prioritizing the efforts within and across program areas, establishing milestones, and go/no-go directions. We have done this. In the Hydrogen Posture Plan, we have identified strategies and milestones to enable a 2015 industry commercialization decision on the viability of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Each office has, in turn, developed a detailed research plan, which outlines how the high-level milestones will be supported. We are now implementing these research plans, and we are making tangible progress.
The Department competitively selected over $510 million in total federal funding for projects to address critical challenges. Of these projects, the Office of Science announced 70 new competitively selected projects, $64 million over three years. Topics include new materials for hydrogen storage and development of catalysts at the nanoscale, all recommended by the Basic Energy Sciences Workshop. Sixty-five projects were initiated on hydrogen production and delivery, funded at $170 million over four years. And the results here are already promising.
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We believe we can meet our goal of $2 to $3 gallon of gasoline equivalent, which is independent of the production pathway. The basic research component of the program is especially valuable to long-term concepts, such as photoelectrochemical hydrogen production. I would also like to underscore that our ultimate hydrogen production strategy is carbon-neutral and emphasizes resource diversity.
We launched a Grand Challenge focusing on materials discovery and development of hydrogen storage, one of the critical technologies for the hydrogen economy. We established a National Hydrogen Storage project at over $150 million over five years, including three Centers of Excellence with multi-disciplinary teams of university, industry, and federal laboratories.
Closely coordinated with the new Office of Science Research, our activities address the Academy's recommendation to shift toward more exploratory work as well as to partner with a broader range of academic and industrial organizations. We are already seeing results from this work, too.
Recent progress in materials discovery allows hydrogen to be stored at low temperature—low pressures and modest temperatures. We need both fundamental understanding and engineering solutions to address key issues, like charging and discharging hydrogen at practical temperatures and pressures.
To address fuel cell cost and durability, a new $75 million solicitation will soon be released, complementing the current $17.5 million solicitation on new membrane materials as well as existing efforts. Results are already being achieved.
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As highlighted by Secretary Bodman in earlier Congressional testimony, this high-volume cost of automotive fuel cells was reduced from $275 per kilowatt to $200 per kilowatt. And the Office of Science has initiated new basic research projects on nanoscale catalysts and membrane materials for fuel cell design and applications.
Through better techniques for fabricating electrodes and new strategies for improved durability, we believe the targets we have set are achievable. We must keep sight of our ultimate goal to transfer research to the real world, and we have complemented our research efforts with a learning demonstration activity. We conduct research on safety codes and standards working with the Department of Transportation, standards development organizations, and other organizations. We are also creating a road map now with the Department of Commerce and other federal agencies for developing manufacturing technologies to bridge the continuum from basic research to commercialization. That effort will help attract new business investment, create new high-technology jobs, and build a competitive U.S. supply base.
The Academy also recommended a systems analysis and integration activity. We are developing that capability. Analysis of various scenarios for hydrogen production delivery are underway. These efforts will be valuable in providing rigorous data and potential guidance for policy decisions in future years.
Madame Chairman, Mr. Chairman, the DOE hydrogen program is committed to a balanced portfolio. We do not do stand-alone test tube research, but rather we have an integrated effort of basic, applied, and engineering sciences. This Committee, in particular, has been instrumental in providing valuable guidance to us.
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This completes my prepared statement. I would be happy to answer any questions you have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Faulkner follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS L. FAULKNER
Madam Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify on the Department of Energy's (DOE or Department) Hydrogen Program activities which support the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. Today I will provide an overview and status update of the Hydrogen Program's accomplishments and plans.
Over two years ago, in his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush announced a $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative over FY 2004—2008 to reverse America's growing dependence on foreign oil by developing the hydrogen technologies needed for commercially viable fuel cells—a way to power cars, trucks, homes, and businesses that could also significantly reduce criteria pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Since the launch of the Initiative, we have had many accomplishments on the path to taking hydrogen and fuel cell technologies from the laboratory to the showroom in 2020, following an industry commercialization decision in 2015. The Department's Program encompasses the research and development (R&D) activities necessary to achieve the President's vision, including basic research, applied research and technology development, and learning demonstrations that are an extension of our research. These activities benefit from detailed planning efforts conducted by the Department, and the National Academies study and the Office of Science Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy workshop, in which two other speakers today, Dr. Bodde and Dr. Crabtree, have made major contributions. I will talk about progress in these areas as we continue on the road to solving the technical barriers that stand between us and this vision of a new energy future.
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Hydrogen Vision and Overview
As a nation, we must work to ensure that we have access to energy that does not require us to compromise our security or our environment. Hydrogen offers the opportunity to end petroleum dependence and to virtually eliminate transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions by addressing the root causes of these issues. Petroleum imports already supply more than 55 percent of U.S. domestic petroleum requirements, and those imports are projected to account for 68 percent by 2025 under a business-as-usual scenario. Transportation accounts for more than two-thirds of the oil use in the United States, and vehicles contribute to the Nation's air quality problems and greenhouse gas emissions because they release criteria pollutants and carbon dioxide.
At the G8 Summit earlier this month, President Bush reiterated his policy of promoting technological innovation, like the development of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, to address climate change, reduce air pollution, and improve energy security in the United States and throughout the world. The Department's R&D in advanced vehicle technologies, such as gasoline hybrid electric vehicles, will help improve energy efficiency and offset growth in the transportation fleet in the near- to mid-term. But, for the long-term, we ultimately need a substitute to replace petroleum. Hydrogen and fuel cells, when combined, have the potential to provide carbon-free, pollution-free power for transportation.
Hydrogen will be produced from diverse domestic energy resources, which include biomass, fossil fuels, nuclear energy, solar, wind, and other renewables. We have planned and are executing a balanced research portfolio for developing hydrogen production and delivery technologies. The Department's hydrogen production strategy recognizes that most hydrogen will likely be produced by technologies that do not require a new hydrogen delivery infrastructure in the transition to a hydrogen economy, such as distributed reforming of natural gas and of renewable liquid fuels like ethanol and methanol. As research, development, and demonstration efforts progress along renewable, nuclear, and clean coal pathways, a suite of technologies will become available to produce hydrogen from a diverse array of domestic resources. These technologies will be commercialized as market penetration grows and demand for hydrogen increases.
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The economic viability of these different production pathways will be strongly affected by regional factors, such as feedstock or energy source availability and cost, delivery approaches, and the regulatory environment so that each region will tailor its hydrogen infrastructure to take advantage of its particular resources. Our ultimate hydrogen production strategy is carbon-neutral and emphasizes diversity. During the transition, net carbon emissions on a well-to-wheels basis, from vehicles running on hydrogen produced from natural gas would be 25 percent less than gasoline hybrid vehicles and 50 percent less than conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. Natural gas is not a long-term strategy because of import concerns and the demands of other economic sectors for natural gas. In the long-term, in a hydrogen economy using renewables, nuclear, and coal with sequestration, near-zero carbon light duty vehicles are our goal. I want to emphasize that hydrogen from coal will be produced directly from gasification, not coal-based electricity. This is consistent with technology currently under development for carbon capture and sequestration.
My testimony today will specifically address the Subcommittees' questions:
1. What progress has been made toward addressing the principal technical barriers to a successful transition to the use of hydrogen as a primary transportation fuel since the Administration announced its hydrogen initiatives, FreedomCAR and the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative? What are the remaining potential technical ''showstoppers?''
Progress and Accomplishments
Since the President launched the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, we have made tremendous progress. The Department has developed a comprehensive technology development plan, the Hydrogen Posture Plan, fully integrating the hydrogen research of the Offices of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Science; Fossil Energy; and Nuclear Energy, Science, and Technology. This plan identifies technologies, strategies, and interim milestones to enable a 2015 industry commercialization decision on the viability of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. Each Office has, in turn, developed a detailed research plan which outlines how the high-level milestones will be supported.
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We are now implementing these research, development, and demonstration plans:
— Using FY 2004 and FY 2005 appropriations and contingent upon future appropriations over the next three years, the Department competitively selected over $510 million in projects ($755 million with cost-share) to address critical challenges such as fuel cell cost, hydrogen storage, hydrogen production and delivery cost, diverse ways of producing hydrogen, as well as research for hydrogen safety, codes and standards.
— Of this total, 65 projects are for hydrogen production and delivery, funded at $107 million over four years. These include hydrogen production from renewables, distributed natural gas, coal, and nuclear sources.
— We initiated three Centers of Excellence and 15 independent projects in Hydrogen Storage at $150 million over five years. The Centers include 20 universities, nine federal laboratories and eight industry partners, representing a concerted, multi-disciplinary effort to address on-board vehicular hydrogen storage—one of the critical enabling technologies for a hydrogen economy. These activities are closely coordinated with the Office of Science research in hydrogen storage.
— To address fuel cell cost and durability, five new projects were initiated at $13 million over three years. A new $75 million solicitation will be released this fall to address cost and durability of fuel cell systems. This is in conjunction with a $17.5 million solicitation currently open focusing on R&D addressing new membrane materials.
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— We established a national vehicle and infrastructure ''learning demonstration'' project at $170 million over six years, with an additional 50 percent cost share by industry. This effort takes some of the research from the laboratory to the real world, and is critical to measuring progress and to providing feedback to our R&D efforts.
— Most recently, to address basic science for the hydrogen economy, 70 new projects were selected by the Office of Science at $64 million over three years to address the fundamental science underpinning hydrogen production, delivery, storage, and use. Topics of this basic research include novel materials for hydrogen storage, membranes for hydrogen separation and purification, designs of catalysts at the nanoscale, solar hydrogen production, and bio-inspired materials and processes. Such research is important for exploring fundamental science that may be applicable in the long-term and is responsive to the National Academies' report recommending a shift to more exploratory research.
With these new competitively selected awards, the best scientists and engineers from around the Nation are actively engaged. The stage is now set for results.
Technical Progress
Ongoing research has already led to important technical progress.
— As highlighted by Secretary Bodman in earlier Congressional testimony, I am pleased to report that our fuel cell activities recently achieved an important technology cost goal—the high-volume cost of automotive fuel cells was reduced from $275 per kilowatt to $200 per kilowatt. This was accomplished by using innovative processes developed by national labs and fuel cell developers for depositing platinum catalyst. This accomplishment is a major step toward the Program's goal of reducing the cost of transportation fuel cell power systems to $45 per kilowatt by 2010.
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— In hydrogen production, we have demonstrated our ability to produce hydrogen at a cost of $3.60 per gallon of gasoline equivalent at an integrated fueling station that generates both electricity and hydrogen. This is down from about $5.00 per gallon of gasoline equivalent prior to the Initiative.
— To ensure a balanced portfolio, we must keep sight of our ultimate goal to transfer research to the real world and we have complemented our research efforts with a 'learning demonstration' activity. Most importantly, with the 'learning demonstration' activity we have the key industries that will ultimately have to invest in the hydrogen economy, the auto and energy companies, working together to ensure seamless integration of customer acceptable technology. This activity will evaluate vehicle and refueling infrastructure technologies under real-world conditions and is key to measuring progress toward technical targets and to help focus R&D.
2. What are the research areas where breakthroughs are needed to advance a hydrogen economy? How has the Department of Energy (DOE) responded to the report by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) calling for an increased emphasis on basic research? How is DOE incorporating the results of the Basic Energy Sciences workshop on basic research needs for a hydrogen economy into the research agenda for the hydrogen initiative?
Starting in FY 2005, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science has been included in the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative in order to focus basic research on overcoming key technology hurdles in hydrogen production, storage, and conversion. The Office of Science-funded research seeks fundamental understanding in areas such as non-precious-metal catalysts, membranes for fuel cells and hydrogen separation, multi-functional nanoscale structures, biological and photoelectrochemical hydrogen production, and modeling and analytical tools.
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For example, basic research can help address the critical challenge of hydrogen storage: How do you safely store hydrogen on board a vehicle to enable customer expectations of greater than 300 mile driving range, without compromising passenger or cargo space? The National Academy of Sciences recommended ''a shift. . .away from some development areas towards more exploratory work'' to address issues like storage, stating that ''the probability of success is greatly increased by partnering with a broader range of academic and industrial organizations. . .'' Through the Department's ''Grand Challenge'' solicitation, a ''National Hydrogen Storage Project'' was established to broaden our scope. The new awards in basic research, with an additional $20 million for 17 projects over three years supported by the Office of Science, are integrated into this national project and provide value in developing a fundamental understanding of hydrogen interactions with materials. These multi-disciplinary efforts focused on materials-based technology for hydrogen storage, directly address the recommendations from the Basic Energy Sciences workshop on basic research needs for a hydrogen economy. By implementing the NAS recommendations, recent progress in materials discovery and technology allows hydrogen to be stored at low pressures and modest temperatures. Further basic and applied research will lead to better fundamental understanding and engineering solutions to address some of the key storage issues such as charging and discharging hydrogen at practical temperatures and pressures. Rather than 'stand alone' test tube research, we have an integrated effort to address basic, applied, and engineering sciences to develop materials and systems for storing hydrogen.
We face another set of challenges in hydrogen production. In this area, our research efforts are focused on reducing cost, improving energy efficiencies, and ensuring a diversity of pathways based on domestic resources for energy security that do not result in greenhouse gas emissions. Some pathways are further along in development and will be commercially viable sooner than others. For the transition, we envision producing hydrogen from natural gas or renewable liquids such as ethanol, at the fueling point, thus eliminating the need for a dedicated hydrogen distribution network. Centralized hydrogen production from coal with sequestration, biomass, nuclear, and distribution networks can follow later once market penetration justifies the capital investment required. Basic science is critical to understanding materials performance, failure mechanisms, and theoretical technology limits. The basic research component of the program contributes to longer-term concepts such as photocatalytic including biological hydrogen production and direct photoelectrochemical conversion to produce hydrogen. In fact, we have nearly $20 million of federal funding in new projects selected by the Office of Science on solar hydrogen production, membranes for separation and purification, and for bio-inspired materials and processes.
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As for fuel cells, key issues are cost and durability. Significant progress has been made by national laboratories as well as industry to reduce the amount of platinum, and hence cost, within the fuel cell electrode. In addition to the targeted activities in fuel cells previously mentioned, the Office of Science has initiated new basic research projects on the design of catalysts at the nanoscale and membrane materials related to fuel cell applications. More effective catalysts, combined with better techniques for fabricating these membrane electrode assemblies and new strategies for improved durability of fuel cells, will enable us to meet the aggressive cost and performance targets we have set for fuel cells. We are also expanding our activities to include manufacturing issues that will help take these new technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace.
3. The NAS report suggested that the research agenda should be developed with future policy decisions in mind. How has DOE increased its policy analysis capabilities as recommended by the NAS? How will the results of that analysis be applied to the research agenda?
I would like to emphasize that this Program is a research effort. However, as stated earlier, in response to the National Academies' recommendation, the Program has established the Systems Analysis and Integration effort to provide a disciplined approach to the research, design, development, and validation of complex systems. A fact-based analytical approach will be used to develop a balanced portfolio of R&D projects to support the development of production, delivery, storage, fuel cell, and safety technologies. Through analysis, the impact of individual components on the hydrogen energy system as a whole will be evaluated and the interaction of the components and their effects on the system will be assessed. Systems Analysis and Integration efforts will be available to examine and understand the cost implications of policy and regulations on technology R&D direction. Analysis of various scenarios for hydrogen production and delivery is critical to the transition plan for developing the infrastructure and carbon-neutral hydrogen resources for a hydrogen economy. The planned analysis efforts will be valuable in providing rigorous data and potential guidance for policy decisions in future years.
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4. How is DOE conducting planning for, and analysis of, the policy changes (such as incentives or regulation) that might be required to encourage a transition to hydrogen? What other agencies are involved in planning for, or facilitating, such a transition?
Currently, the focus of the DOE Hydrogen Program is research and development to address key technical challenges. Research and development on the codes and standards necessary to implementing hydrogen and fuel cell technologies will form a scientific and technical basis for future regulations. We are actively working with the Department of Transportation and interface with Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) and Codes Development Organizations (CDOs) on safety, codes and standards.
As part of the Systems Analysis efforts, we have started to model and explore options and pathways to achieve a successful transition to hydrogen. This effort is in collaboration with the Vehicle Technology Office and the overall Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy modeling efforts. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is also providing guidance. This work includes the incorporation of rigorous hydrogen production, delivery, and vehicle technology components into the National Energy Management System (NEMS) model architecture, as well development of a more detailed transportation sector model that includes conventional, hybrid, and alternative fuel options. These modeling efforts will also allow us to examine the potential impacts of policy and regulations on the introduction and long-term use of hydrogen.
Now I will talk about our partners and our future plans.
We are working with partners on all fronts to address the challenges to a hydrogen economy. Under the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, DOE is collaborating with the U.S. Council for Automotive Research (USCAR) and five major energy companies to help identify and evaluate technologies that will meet customer requirements and establish the business case. Technical teams of research managers from the automotive and energy industries and DOE are meeting regularly to establish and update technology roadmaps in each technology area.
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An Interagency Hydrogen R&D Task Force has been established by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to leverage resources and coordinate interrelated and complementary research across the entire Federal Government. In 2005, the Task Force has initiated a plan to coordinate a number of key research activities among the eight major agencies that fund hydrogen and fuel cell research. Coordination topics include novel materials for fuel cells and hydrogen storage, inexpensive and durable catalysts, hydrogen production from alternative sources, stationary fuel cells, and fuel-cell vehicle demonstrations. The Task Force has also launched a website, Hydrogen.gov. In the coming year, the OSTP Task Force plans to sponsor an expert panel on the contributions that nanoscale research can make to realizing a Hydrogen Economy.
Last year, we announced the establishment of the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy, or the IPHE. IPHE, which now includes 16 nations and the European Commission, establishes world-wide collaboration on hydrogen technology. The nations have agreed to work cooperatively toward a unifying goal: practical, affordable, competitively-priced hydrogen vehicles and refueling by 2020; and projects involving collaboration between different countries are being proposed and reviewed for selection.
Toward the Hydrogen Future
The Department is looking to the future as well. Just as we have made tremendous progress, we plan to have significant advances to report next year on the R&D projects we have launched through the solicitations I mentioned. The progress will be tracked using performance-based technical and cost milestones that provide clear and quantifiable measures. We will report this progress next year to this Subcommittee, and annually to Congress and to the Office of Management and Budget. In fact, as we speak, the NAS is completing its biennial review of the program. We anticipate more valuable feedback and will have more details to report in the coming months.
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For the critical targets, it is important that we verify our progress in a way that is independent and transparent. In Fiscal Year 2006, the major technical milestones will be assessed using a rigorous methodology established by the Hydrogen Program.
— First, in Hydrogen Storage, we will determine the maximum storage potential of cryogenic-compressed hydrogen tanks and the feasibility of this technology towards meeting DOE's 2010 targets.
— Second, in Fuel Cells, we will evaluate fuel cell cost per kilowatt using current materials to determine if $110/kilowatt is feasible towards meeting the 2010 target of $45/kilowatt (assuming high volume manufacturing).
— And third, in Hydrogen Production, we will determine if the laboratory research will lead to $3 per gasoline gallon energy equivalent (gge) using a distributed natural gas reformer system.
In addition to measuring progress, we continue to develop and improve processes to facilitate innovation and to accelerate R&D. For instance, we plan an annual solicitation, starting in 2006, in the critical area of hydrogen storage to complement the Centers of Excellence. This will improve our flexibility to continuously evaluate new ideas and rapidly fund competitively selected projects.
Validation of fuel cell vehicle and hydrogen infrastructure technologies under 'real world' operating conditions is essential to track progress and to help guide research priorities. Technology and infrastructure validation will provide essential statistical data on the status of fuel cell vehicle and infrastructure technologies relative to targets in the areas of efficiency, durability, storage system range, and fuel cost. This activity will also provide information to support the development of codes and standards for the commercial use of hydrogen, and feedback on vehicle and infrastructure safety. Through cost-shared partnerships with the energy industry, Fiscal Year 2006 activities include opening eight hydrogen fueling stations, and validating performance, safety, and cost of hydrogen production and delivery technologies. By 2009, the program is expected to validate fuel cell vehicle durability of 2,000 hours, a 250-mile vehicle range, and full-scale hydrogen production cost of less than $3.00 gge.
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In addition, a critical need for lowering the costs of hydrogen and fuel cells is high volume manufacturing processes and techniques. Manufacturing R&D challenges for a hydrogen economy include developing innovative, low-cost fabrication processes for new materials and applications and adapting laboratory fabrication techniques to enable high volume manufacturing. The Hydrogen Program is working with Department of Commerce and other federal agencies to create a roadmap for developing manufacturing technologies for hydrogen and fuel cell systems as part of the President's Manufacturing Initiative. The roadmap will help to guide budget requests in Fiscal Year 2007 and beyond. This work is part of the Interagency Working Group on Manufacturing R&D, which is chaired by OSTP and includes 14 federal agencies. The working group has identified nanomanufacturing, manufacturing R&D for the hydrogen economy, and intelligent and integrated manufacturing systems as three focus areas for the future. Manufacturing R&D for the hydrogen economy will be critical in formulating a strategy to transfer technology successes in the laboratory to new jobs, new investments, and a competitive U.S. supplier base in a global economy.
Successful commercialization of hydrogen technologies requires a comprehensive database on component reliability and safety, published performance-based domestic standards, and international standards or regulations that will allow the technologies to compete in a global market. Initial codes and standards for the commercial use of hydrogen are only now starting to be published. Research will be conducted in Fiscal Year 2006 to determine flammability limits and the reactive and depressive properties of hydrogen under various conditions, and also to quantify risk. Through such efforts, critical data will be generated to help write and adopt standards and to develop improved safety systems and criteria.
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Conclusion
Madam Chairman, all the panelists here today will agree that achieving the vision of the hydrogen energy future is a great challenge. The DOE Hydrogen Program is committed to a balanced portfolio, conducting the basic and applied research necessary to achieve this vision. It will require careful planning and coordination, public education, technology development, and substantial public and private investments. It will require a broad political consensus and a bipartisan approach to achieving the President's vision. We appreciate the leadership taken by the Senate, and most recently the House, in establishing Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Caucuses. By being bold and innovative, we can change the way we do business here in America; we can change our dependence upon foreign sources of energy; we can address the root cause of greenhouse gas emissions; we can help with the quality of the air; and we can make a fundamental difference for the future of our children. This committee in particular has been instrumental in providing that kind of leadership over the years, and we look forward to continuing this dialogue in the months and years ahead.
We at the Department of Energy welcome the challenge and opportunity to play a vital role in this nation's energy future and to help address our energy security challenges in such a fundamental way. This completes my prepared statement. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
BIOGRAPHY FOR DOUGLAS L. FAULKNER
Douglas Faulkner was appointed by President George W. Bush on June 29, 2001, to serve as the political deputy in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). This $1.2 billion research and development organization has over five hundred federal employees in Washington, D.C. and six regional offices, supported by thousands of contractors at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and elsewhere.
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Mr. Faulkner oversees all aspects of EERE's operations in a close partnership with the Office's two career Deputy Assistant Secretaries. He has worked closely with Assistant Secretary David K. Garman to reorganize EERE, replacing an outdated and fragmented organization with what arguably is the most innovative business model ever used in the Federal Government. This has resulted in fewer management layers, fewer but more productive staff, streamlined procedures, stronger project management in the field and lower operating costs overall. These reforms have been recognized as a success by the White House and the National Association of Public Administration.
Mr. Faulkner organized and led an internal management board which completely revamped EERE's biomass programs. Many projects were ended and those funds pooled for an unprecedented solicitation to refocus R&D for new bio-refineries.
Interviews of Mr. Faulkner about renewable energy and energy efficiency have appeared on television and radio and in the print media.
Before assuming his leadership post in EERE, Mr. Faulkner had progressed rapidly through the ranks of the civil service at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Energy. In his over-twenty year career he rose from junior China intelligence analyst to a nationally-recognized leader in bio-based products and a senior policy advisor to the Secretaries of Energy in both Bush Administrations.
Born and raised in central Illinois, Principal Deputy Faulkner received a Bachelor's degree in Asian Studies from the University of Illinois and a Master's degree from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. He also attended the University of Singapore as a Rotary Scholar. At these institutions, he studied French and Mandarin Chinese languages. Mr. Faulkner played intercollegiate basketball at home and abroad.
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He is involved in his church and community as well as Boy Scouts and youth baseball. Mr. Faulkner was appointed in the early 1990s to two Arlington County, Virginia, economic commissions.
Mr. Faulkner lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife and son.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you very much.
And then, Dr. Bodde, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID L. BODDE, DIRECTOR, INNOVATION AND PUBLIC POLICY, INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR AUTOMOTIVE RESEARCH, CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
Dr. BODDE. Thank you, Madame Chairman.
I would like to speak this morning to three basic ideas: first, the importance of recognizing and focusing on the transition from the current infrastructure to a hydrogen infrastructure; second, the need for long-term, fundamental research to resolve five key questions in the hydrogen economy; and third, the importance of enabling entrepreneurs and innovators to take the results of this research and move them into the marketplace and move them into commercial practice.
Let me take those ideas one at a time.
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First, the transition is a competitive transition. I think it is helpful to think of three competing infrastructures: first, the internal combustion engine, both spark ignition and compression ignition, and the fuel industries that have built up around that, which are perfectly satisfactory from a consumer point of view, offering mobility services that are reasonably priced and widely available; the next competing infrastructure that is emerging into the market, the hybrid electric vehicle that uses that same fuels infrastructure; and then the third one, the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, the ultimate competitor that removes oil as the issue in our national life and removes carbon as an environmental issue.
Now if you look at the competitive battle amongst these three, there are some lessons that come out of this look for market share. First, it is a 50-year struggle. It takes a long time to change out these infrastructures. Second, and equally important, that means that all three infrastructures will co-exist during some period during the transition, and that means the hybrid electric vehicle will also be an important contributor, both because of its fuel efficiency and also because it will pioneer some key electric management technologies later useful for the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. Policies that accelerate this transition will be helpful, will gain more traction, than those that are not cognizant of the transition.
Now what technologies would be useful? Well, one thing that would would be a hydrogen appliance for service stations. This is one of the recommendations that came out of the National Academy of Sciences' report that—I served on that committee, also, advanced technology for hydrogen production with electrolysis, this is for small-scale distributed manufacturing of hydrogen, breakthrough technologies for small-scale performing, and integrated standard fueling station. All of these are needed for a distributed hydrogen production economy that will be part of any transition to hydrogen.
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The second key idea is that fundamental research is needed to answer five big questions. And these five questions are: one, can we store hydrogen on board vehicles at near atmospheric pressures? I believe that if we cannot do this, if we have to rely on either cryogenic liquids or high-pressure gas, that this is—comes about as near to be a showstopper for the hydrogen economy as anything that I could think of. And basic research in a variety of areas to accomplish this, I think, is of fundamental importance.
The second major question concerns carbon. Can we capture and sequester the carbon dioxide from hydrogen manufacturing in a societally acceptable way? If the answer is yes, then coal as a feedstock offers a very large and very cost-effective pathway to the hydrogen economy. If the answer is no, then we have to be about very quickly developing alternatives to coal.
And that is the third major question: can we sharply reduce the cost of hydrogen from non-coal resources, in particular, from nuclear, nuclear electricity, both in terms of high-temperature electrolysis of steam and in terms of thermochemical cycles that would chemically produce the hydrogen?
Fourth, fuel cells. We need to have improved fuel cells in order to gain the efficiency on board the vehicle that offsets the inefficiencies from manufacturing hydrogen.
And finally, improved batteries.
Now all of these require broad-based programs, basic research, a wide-scale search for ideas.
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The third major idea is enabling entrepreneurship. This is particularly important when the locus of innovation in the motor industry is shifting from the OEM, that is the big three automakers, down toward the suppliers, the tier one, the tier two, the tier three suppliers, and it is becoming a networked pattern of innovation as opposed to a linear pattern of innovation.
Now in many other industries, mature industries, from computers to aerospace, entrepreneurs have become the agents of change and the most important agents of change. It is important that entrepreneurs be enabled, and programs such as the SBIR, STTR, the ATP, the various alphabet soup of technology and entrepreneur support, are quite important for that.
But in addition, the kind of commitment that Congressman Inglis talked about in terms of long-term stability of government policies is very important here, because entrepreneurs seek opportunity, and they seek opportunities that will be stable across the tenure of time that it takes to launch and mature a high-growth, high-technology kind of company.
States and universities have a strong role here, and we at Clemson University are very pleased with our work at the International Center for Automotive Research, called the ICAR. We intend for this institution to be a major player and innovation laboratory in moving technology not only from our own laboratories and the laboratories in South Carolina, but from any place in the world into the entire automotive cluster, not only the major manufacturers but the suppliers as well.
That concludes my statement, Madame Chairman.
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[The prepared statement of Dr. Bodde follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID L. BODDE
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for this opportunity to discuss the Road to the Hydrogen Economy, a road I believe we must travel if we are to ensure a world well supplied with clean, affordable energy derived from secure sources. I will speak to this from the perspective of motor vehicle transportation and address the questions posed by the Committee within the framework of three basic ideas.
First, research policy should view the hydrogen transition as a marketplace competition. For the next several decades, three rival infrastructures will compete for a share of the world auto market: (a) the current internal combustion engine and associated fuels infrastructure; (b) the hybrid electric vehicles, now emerging on the market; and (c) the hydrogen fueled vehicles, now in early demonstration. We can judge policy alternatives and applied research investments by their ability to accelerate the shift in market share among these competing infrastructures.
Second, and in parallel with the marketplace transition, fundamental research should focus on sustaining the hydrogen economy into the far future. Key issues include: (a) storing hydrogen on-board vehicles at near-atmospheric pressure; (b) sequestering the carbon-dioxide effluent from manufacturing hydrogen from coal; (c) sharply reducing the cost of hydrogen produced from non-coal resources, especially nuclear, photobiological, photoelectrochemical, and thin-film solar processes; (d) improving the performance and cost of fuel cells; and (e) storing electricity on-board vehicles in batteries that provide both high energy performance and high power performance at reasonable cost.
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And third, the results of this research must be brought swiftly and effectively to the marketplace. This requires economic policies that encourage technology-based innovation, both by independent entrepreneurs and those operating from the platform of established companies. Clemson University, through its International Center for Automotive Research and its Arthur M. Spiro Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, intends to become a major contributor to this goal.
In what follows, I will set out my reasoning and the evidence that supports these three basic ideas.
THE HYDROGEN TRANSITION: A MARKETPLACE COMPETITION
Much thinking about the hydrogen economy concerns ''what'' issues, visionary descriptions of a national fuels infrastructure that would deliver a substantial fraction of goods and services with hydrogen as the energy carrier. And yet, past visions of energy futures, however desirable they might have seemed at the time, have not delivered sustained action, either from a public or private perspective. The national experience with nuclear power, synthetic fuels, and renewable energy demonstrates this well.
The difficulty arises from insufficient attention to the transition between the present and the desired future—the balance between forces that lock the energy economy in stasis and the entrepreneurial forces that could accelerate it toward a more beneficial condition.
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In effect, the present competes against the future, and the pace and direction of any transition will be governed by the outcome. Viewing the transition to a hydrogen economy through the lens of a competitive transition can bring a set of ''how'' questions to the national policy debate—questions of how policy can rebalance the competitive forces so that change prevails in the marketplace.
A Model of the Competitive Transition
The competitive battle will be fought over a half century among three competing infrastructures:(see footnote 1)
The internal combustion engine (ICE), either in a spark-ignition or compression-ignition form, and its attendant motor fuels supply chain;
The hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), now entering the market, which achieves superior efficiency by supplementing an internal combustion engine with an electric drive system and which uses the current supply chain for motor fuels; and,
The hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (HFCV), which requires radically distinct technologies for the vehicle, for fuel-production, and for fuel distribution.
Figure 1 shows one scenario, based on the most optimistic assumptions, of how market share could shift among the contending infrastructures (NRC 2004). Several aspects of this scenario bear special mention. First, note the extended time required for meaningful change: these are long-lived assets built around large, sunk investments. They cannot be quickly changed under the best of circumstances. Second, the road to the hydrogen economy runs smoothest through the hybrid electric vehicle. The HEV offers immediate gains in fuel economy and advances technologies that will eventually prove useful for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, especially battery and electric system management technologies. Although this scenario shows significant market penetration for the HEV, its success cannot be assured. The HEV might remain a niche product, despite its current popularity if consumers conclude that the value of the fuel savings does not compensate for the additional cost of the HEV. Or, its gains in efficiency might be directed toward vehicle size and acceleration rather than fuel economy. Either circumstance would make an early hydrogen transition even more desirable.
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22549c.eps
Any transition to a HFCV fleet, however, will require overcoming a key marketplace barrier that is unique to hydrogen—widely available supplies of fuel. And to this we now turn.
The Chicken and the Egg(see footnote 2)
Most analyses suggest that large-scale production plants in a mature hydrogen economy can manufacture fuel at a cost that competes well with gasoline at current prices (NRC 2004). However, investors will not build these plants and their supporting distribution infrastructure in the absence of large-scale demand. And, the demand for hydrogen will not be forthcoming unless potential purchasers of hydrogen vehicles can be assured widely available sources of fuel. Variants of this ''chicken and egg'' problem have limited the market penetration of other fuels, such as methanol and ethanol blends (M85 and E85) and compressed natural gas. This issue—the simultaneous development of the supply side and demand sides of the market—raises one of the highest barriers to a hydrogen transition.
Distributed Hydrogen Production for the Transition
To resolve this problem, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NRC 2004) recommended an emphasis on distributed production of hydrogen. In this model, the hydrogen fuel would be manufactured at dispensing stations conveniently located for consumers. Once the demand for hydrogen fuel grew sufficiently, then larger manufacturing plants and logistic systems could be built to achieve scale economies. However, distributed production of hydrogen offers two salient challenges.
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The first challenge is cost. Figure 2, below, shows the delivered cost of molecular hydrogen for a variety of production technologies. The ''distributed'' technologies, to the right in Figure 2, offer hydrogen at a cost between two and five times the cost of the large-scale, ''central station'' technologies, on the left in Figure 2. Technological advances can mitigate, but not remove entirely, this cost disadvantage.
22549d.eps
The second challenge concerns the environment. Carbon capture and sequestration do not appear practical in distributed production. During the opening stage of a hydrogen transition, we might simply have to accept some carbon releases in order to achieve the later benefits.
Research to Accelerate a Transition by Distributed Hydrogen Production
A study panel convenienced by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently recommended several research thrusts that could accelerate distributed production for a transition to hydrogen (NRC 2004). These include:
Development of hydrogen fueling ''appliance'' that can be manufactured economically and used in service stations reliably and safely by relatively unskilled persons—station attendants and consumers.
Development of an integrated, standard fueling facility that includes the above appliance as well as generation and storage equipment capable of meeting the sharply varying demands of a 24-hour business cycle.
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Advanced technologies for hydrogen production from electrolysis, essentially a fuel cell operated in reverse, to include enabling operation from intermittent energy sources, such as wind.
Research on breakthrough technologies for small-scale reformers to produce hydrogen from fossil feedstocks.
The Department of Energy has adopted the NAS recommendations and modified its programs accordingly. It remains too early to judge progress, but in any case these technologies should receive continued emphasis as the desired transition to hydrogen nears. However, progress in research is notoriously difficult to forecast accurately. This suggests consideration be given to interim strategies that would work on the demand side of the marketplace, either to subsidize the cost of distributed hydrogen production while demand builds or to raise the cost of the competition, gasoline and diesel fuels. Such actions would relieve the research program of the entire burden for enabling the transition.
FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH TO SUSTAIN A HYDROGEN ECONOMY
At the same time that the marketplace transition advances, several high-payoff (but also high-risk) research campaigns should be waged. These include:
Storing hydrogen on-board vehicles at near-atmospheric pressure;
Sequestering the carbon-dioxide effluent from manufacturing hydrogen from coal;
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Sharply reducing the cost of hydrogen produced from non-coal resources, especially nuclear, photobiological, photoelectrochemical, and thin-film solar processes;
Improving the performance and cost of fuel cells; and,
Storing electricity on-board vehicles in batteries that provide both high energy performance and high power performance at reasonable cost.
On-Vehicle Hydrogen Storage
The most important long-term research challenge is to provide a more effective means of storing hydrogen on vehicles than the compressed gas or cryogenic liquid now in use. In my judgment, failure to achieve this comes closer to a complete ''show-stopper'' than any other possibility. I believe this true for two reasons: hydrogen leakage as the vehicle fleet ages, and cost.
With regard to leakage, high pressure systems currently store molecular hydrogen on demonstration vehicles safely and effectively. But these are new and specially-built, and trained professionals operate and maintain. What can we expect of production run vehicles that receive the casual maintenance afforded most cars? A glance at the oil-stained pavement of any parking lot offers evidence of the leakage of heavy fluids stored in the current ICE fleet at atmospheric pressure. As high pressure systems containing the lightest element in the universe age, we might find even greater difficulties with containment. With regard to cost, the energy losses from liquefaction and even compression severely penalize the use of hydrogen fuel, especially when manufactured at distributed stations.
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The NAS Committee, cited earlier (NRC 2004), strongly supported an increased emphasis on game-changing approaches to on-vehicle hydrogen storage. One alternative could come from novel approaches to generating the hydrogen on board the vehicle.(see footnote 3) Chemical hydrides, for example, might offer some promise here, such as the sodium borohydride system demonstrated by DaimlerChrysler.
Carbon Sequestration
Domestic coal resources within the United States hold the potential to relieve the security burdens arising from oil dependence—but only if the environmental consequences of their use can be overcome. Further, as shown in Figure 2, coal offers the lowest cost pathway to a hydrogen-based energy economy, once the transient conditions have passed. Thus, the conditions under which this resource can be used should be established as soon as possible. The prevailing assumption holds that the carbon effluent from hydrogen manufacturing can be stored as a gas (carbon dioxide, or CO) in deep underground formations. Yet how long it must be contained and what leakage rates can be tolerated remain unresolved issues (Socolow 2005). Within the Department of Energy, the carbon sequestration program is managed separately from hydrogen and vehicles programs. The NAS committee recommended closer coordination between the two as well as an ongoing emphasis on carbon capture and sequestration (NRC 2004).
Producing Hydrogen Without Coal
Manufacturing hydrogen from non-fossil resources stands as an important hedge against future constraints on production from coal, or even from natural gas. And under any circumstance, the hydrogen economy will be more robust if served by production from a variety of domestic sources.
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The non-fossil resource most immediately available is nuclear. Hydrogen could be produced with no CO emissions by using nuclear heat and electricity in the high-temperature electrolysis of steam. Here the technology issues include the durability of the electrode and electrolyte materials, the effects of high pressure, and the scale-up of the electrolysis cell. Alternatively, a variety of thermochemical reactions could produce hydrogen with great efficiency. Here the needed research concerns higher operating temperatures (700C to 1000C) for the nuclear heat as well as research into the chemical cycles themselves. In both cases, the safety issues that might arise from coupling the nuclear island with a hydrogen production plant bear examination (NRC 2004).
In addition, hydrogen production from renewable sources should be emphasized, especially that avoiding the inefficiencies of the conventional chain of conversions: (1) from primary energy into electricity; (2) from electricity to hydrogen; (3) from hydrogen to electricity on-board the vehicle; (4) from electricity to mobility, which is what the customer wanted in the first place. Novel approaches to using renewable energy, such as photobiological or photoelectrochemical, should be supported strongly (NRC 2004).
Improved Fuel Cells
The cost and performance of fuel cells must improve significantly for hydrogen to achieve its full potential. To be sure, molecular hydrogen can be burned in specially designed internal combustion engines. But doing so foregoes the efficiency gains obtainable from the fuel cell, and becomes a costly and (from an energy perspective) inefficient process. The NAS Committee thought the fuel cell essential for a hydrogen economy to be worth the effort required to put it in place. They recommended an emphasis on long-term, breakthrough research that would dramatically improve cost, durability, cycling capacity, and useful life.
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Improved Batteries
The battery is as important to a hydrogen vehicle as to a hybrid because it serves as the central energy management device. For example, the energy regained from regenerative braking must be stored in a battery for later reuse. Though energy storage governs the overall operating characteristics of the battery, a high rate of energy release (power) can enable the electric motor to assist the HEV in acceleration and relieve the requirements for fuel cells to immediately match their power output with the needs of the vehicle. Thus, advanced battery research becomes a key enabler for the hydrogen economy and might also expand the scope of the BEV.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY
For the results of DOE research to gain traction in a competitive economy, entrepreneurs and corporate innovators must succeed in bringing hydrogen-related innovations to the marketplace. In many cases, independent entrepreneurs provide the path-breaking innovations that lead to radical improvements in performance, while established companies provide continuous, accumulating improvement.(see footnote 4) The Federal Government, in partnership with states and universities, can become an important enabler of both pathways to a hydrogen economy.
Federal Policies Promoting Entrepreneurship
From the federal perspective, several policies could be considered to build an entrepreneurial climate on the ''supply'' side of the market. These include:
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Special tax consideration for investors in new ventures offering products relevant to fuel savings. The intent would be to increase the amount of venture capital available to startup companies.
Commercialization programs might enable more entrepreneurs to bring their nascent technologies up to investment grade. For example, an enhanced and focused Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program might increase the number of participating entrepreneurs participating in fuel-relevant markets. A portion of the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) could be focused in like manner.
Outreach from the National Laboratories to entrepreneurs might be improved. Some laboratories, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for example, offer small, but effective programs. But more systematic outreach, not to business in general, but to entrepreneurial business, would also increase the supply of market-ready innovations.
On the demand side, any policy that increases consumer incentives to purchase fuel efficient vehicles will provide an incentive for ongoing innovation—provided that the policy is perceived as permanent. Entrepreneurs and innovators respond primarily to opportunity; but that opportunity must be durable for the 10-year cycle required to establish a new, high-growth company.
States and Universities as Agents of Innovation/Entrepreneurship
Innovation/entrepreneurship is a contact sport, and that contact occurs most frequently and most intensely within the context of specific laboratories and specific relationships. I will use Clemson's International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR) to illustrate this principle. Most fundamentally, the ICAR is a partnership among the State of South Carolina, major auto makers,(see footnote 5) and their Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III suppliers. The inclusion of these suppliers will be essential for the success of ICAR or any similar research venture. This is because innovation in the auto industry has evolved toward a global, networked process, much as it has in other industries like microelectronics. The ''supply chain'' is more accurately described as a network, and network innovation will replace the linear model.
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For these reasons, the ICAR, when fully established, will serve as a channel for research and innovation to flow into the entire cluster of auto-related companies in the Southeast United States. We anticipate drawing together and integrating the best technology from a variety of sources:
Research performed at Clemson University and at the ICAR itself;
Research performed at the Savannah River National Laboratory and the University of South Carolina; and,
Relevant science and technology anywhere in the world.
Beyond research, the ICAR will include two other components of a complete innovation package: education, and entrepreneur support. With regard to education, the Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees offered through the ICAR will emphasize the integration of new technology into vehicle design, viewing the auto and its manufacturing plant as an integrated system. In addition, courses on entrepreneurship and innovation, offered through Clemson's Arthur M. Spiro Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, will equip students with the skills to become effective agents of change within the specific context of the global motor vehicle industry.
With regard to entrepreneur support, the ICAR will host a state-sponsored innovation center to nurture startup companies that originate in the Southeast auto cluster and to draw others from around the world into that cluster. In addition, the ICAR innovation center will welcome teams from established companies seeking the commercial development of their technologies. The State of South Carolina has provided significant support through four recent legislative initiatives. The Research University Infrastructure and the Research Centers of Economic Excellence Acts build the capabilities of the state's universities; and the Venture Capital Act and Innovation Centers Act provide support for entrepreneurs.
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None of these elements can suffice by itself; but taken together they combine to offer a package of technology, education, and innovation that can serve the hydrogen transition extraordinarily well.
A CONCLUDING OBSERVATION
Revolutionary technological change of the kind contemplated here is rarely predictable and never containable. Every new technology from the computer to the airplane to the automobile carries with it a chain of social and economic consequences that reach far beyond the technology itself. Some of these consequences turn out to be benign; some pose challenges that must be overcome by future generations; but none have proven foreseeable.
For example, a hydrogen transition might bring prolonged prosperity or economic decline to the electric utility industry depending upon which path innovation takes. A pathway that leads through plug-hybrids to home appliances that manufacture hydrogen by electrolysis would reinforce the current utility business model. A pathway in which hydrogen fuel cell vehicles serve as generators for home electric energy would undermine that model. The same holds true for the coal industry. A future in which carbon sequestration succeeds will affect coal far differently from one in which it cannot be accomplished.
The only certainty is that the energy economy will be vastly different from that which we know today. It will have to be.
REFERENCES
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Socolow, Robert H. ''Can We Bury Global Warming?'' Scientific American, July 2005, pp. 49–55.
Sperling, Daniel and James D. Cannon, The Hydrogen Transition, Elsevier Academic Press, 2004.
U.S. National Research Council, The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs, The National Academies Press, 2004.
APPENDIX:(see footnote 6) THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE HYDROGEN TRANSITION
At the beginning, it might be helpful to review some general principles regarding technological innovation and how it advances performance throughout the economy. We should begin by understanding technology from the customer perspective—not as a ''thing,'' but as a service.
Technology Viewed as a Service
Fuels and vehicles have little value in themselves, but enormous utility as providers of mobility services. These valued services include performance vectors like:
Time saving: will the vehicle travel far enough that the driver does not waste time with frequent refueling?
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Safety: how well does the vehicle protect its occupants, both by its ability to avoid accidents and by its ability to survive them?
Comfort: can the vehicle mitigate the stress and hassles of road travel for the driver and passengers?
Image: what does driving this particular vehicle say about its occupants?
Ancillary services: does the vehicle have enough generating capacity to meet the growing demand for on-board, electricity-based services?
At any time, consumers emphasize some of these performance dimensions while satisficing along others. Consider the consumer preferences revealed by an EPA analysis of automobile performance from 1981 to 2003. Over this period, average horsepower nearly doubled (from 102 to 197 horsepower), weight increased markedly (from 3,201 to 3,974 lbs), and the time required to accelerate from zero to 60 mph dropped by nearly 30 percent. An energy policy that added fuel security to the competitive performance dimensions for road transportation would do much to promote the hydrogen transition.
Technology-based Innovation: Accumulating
Technological innovations can be grouped into two general classes: those that advance performance by accumulating incremental improvements, and those that offer discontinuous leaps in performance. The term accumulating applies to technologies that advance performance along dimensions already recognized and accepted by customers. Each improvement might be incremental, but the cumulative effect compounds to yield markedly improved performance—consider the improvements in processor speed for computers, for example. Auto manufacturers are accustomed to competing along these dimensions, and the cumulative effect can lead to important advances—but only if the technology competition continues long enough for the gains to accumulate. Most of the fuel saving technologies discussed at this hearing are incremental in nature, and so nurturing this kind of innovation could become an important policy goal.
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Technology-based Innovation: Discontinuous
In contrast, discontinuous technologies introduce performance dimensions quite distinct from what the mainstream customers have come to value, sometimes offering inferior performance along the accustomed dimensions. Because of their inferior mainstream performance, these technologies initially gain traction only in niche markets. With continued use and improvement, however, discontinuous technologies gain adequacy along the original dimensions and then enter the mainstream markets.
Consider the battery electric vehicle (BEV), for example. Many analysts have written off electric vehicles because of their inferior performance in mainstream auto markets—acceleration, range, and recharge time. Yet electric vehicle technologies are emerging in an important niche: the market for personal transportation. This includes golf carts, all-terrain vehicles, touring vehicles for resorts, transportation within gated communities, and so forth. In that market, the chief performance dimensions are convenient access, economy, and ease of use—and style. The current state of electric vehicle technology is adequate for the limited range and acceleration requirements of this niche. But, could electric vehicle technology advance to the point of entry into mainstream markets? Or, could it compete effectively in personal transportation markets in developing countries—say Thailand or China? That is, of course, unknowable. But, please recall that the personal computer was once considered a hobbyists toy, inherently without enough power to enter mainstream applications.
Discontinuous innovation tends to be the province of the entrepreneur, and the companies that such persons found become platforms for the innovations that radically change all markets. Yet entrepreneurs often have low visibility relative to the market incumbents in policy discussions, and their companies are far from household words.(see footnote 7) This is because the entrepreneurs' story is about the future, not the present; about what could be and not about what is. For that reason, policies that encourage entrepreneurship in technologies relevant to the hydrogen transition should become part of the energy policy conversation.
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BIOGRAPHY FOR DAVID L. BODDE
Senior Fellow and Professor: Arthur M. Spiro Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership; Director, Innovation and Public Policy, International Center for Automotive Research, Clemson University. Research and teaching in:
Intellectual property management
Markets for new energy technology
Corporate entrepreneurship
Next-generation hybrid electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
University of Missouri–Kansas City, July 1996 to September 2004
Charles N. Kimball Chair in Technology and Innovation at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Joint appointment as Professor of Engineering and Business Administration.
Midwest Research Institute (MRI), January 1991 to July 1996
Corporate Vice President and President of MRI's for-profit subsidiary, MRI Ventures. Responsible for new enterprise development through cooperative research, new ventures, licenses, and international agreements. Managed technology development consortium of five private companies to commercialize technology from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Worked with Department of Energy and senior NREL management on strategic initiatives for the laboratory.
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National Academy of Sciences, April 1986 to January 1991
Executive Director, Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems. Directed research and studies on public and private issues in science and technology.
U.S. Government, March 1978 to March 1986
Assistant Director, Congressional Budget Office, United States Congress. Directed economic analyses of legislation affecting energy, industrial competitiveness, agribusiness, science, technology, and education.
Deputy Assistant Secretary, Department of Energy. Policy research regarding nuclear energy, coal, synthetic fuels, electric utilities, technology transfer and national security. Emphasis on nuclear breeder reactors and nuclear non-proliferation. U.S. delegate to International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation, which sought an international agreement on plutonium recycle and measures to slow the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
TRW, Inc., January 1976 to March 1978
Manager, Engineering Analysis Office, Energy Systems Planning Division. Built business using systems analysis and engineering studies. Emphasis on application of aerospace technology to energy problems, especially radioactive waste disposal and synthetic fuels.
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U.S. Army, 1965 to 1970
Captain. Platoon leader, company commander, and battalion operations officer. Airborne and Ranger qualified. Service as combat engineer in Vietnam (1968–69). Bronze Star, Army Commendation Medals. Remained in the Army Reserve as an R&D officer advising on the management of defense laboratories and nuclear research programs.
EDUCATION
Harvard University
Doctor of Business Administration, March 1976. Doctoral thesis on the influence of regulation on the technical configuration of the commercial nuclear steam supply system. Thesis research cited in subsequent books on nuclear energy. Harding Foundation Fellowship.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Master of Science degrees in Nuclear Engineering (1972) and Management (1973). Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship. Experimental thesis on irradiation-induced stress relaxation.
United States Military Academy
Bachelor of Science, 1965. Commissioned Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army.
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CORPORATE BOARD MEMBERSHIPS
Great Plains Energy
Board member of electric energy company, 1994–present. Chair, Nuclear Committee; Chair, Governance Committee; Member, Audit Committee.
The Commerce Funds
Founding director of family of mutual funds, currently with $2.2 billion assets under management. Growth and Bond Funds achieved Morningstar 5-Star ranking. 1995–present.
PERSONAL BACKGROUND
Grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. Married (since 1967) with four children. Enjoy competitive athletics, especially racquetball and tennis. Frequent backpacker, amateur historian, bad poet, and worse musician. Publications in technology management, energy, and policy.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you very much, Dr. Bodde.
Mr. Chernoby.
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STATEMENT OF MR. MARK CHERNOBY, VICE PRESIDENT, ADVANCED VEHICLE ENGINEERING, DAIMLERCHRYSLER CORPORATION
Mr. CHERNOBY. We are going to shift a little bit and use some visual aids to support my conversation, so go ahead to the next slide, please.
[Slide.]
I want to thank the Chairs and the distinguished Members of the House Committee for this opportunity to appear before you today.
I am going to briefly describe DaimlerChrysler's involvement in the Administration's hydrogen initiative, what we are trying to do to advance the overall hydrogen economy, and then as well as some of the specific questions raised today.
Mr. Chairman, you mentioned three keys. You mentioned commitment, collaboration, and discovery. And as I go through these slides, I am going to try and point that out.
In the slide you see before you now, what I am trying to describe is DaimlerChrysler, we have been working on fuel cell technology for over 10 years. We have poured a billion dollars into different technologies for fuel cells that run on different fuel sources. We are committed. We have now centered, in the past few years, all of our work on hydrogen as the base fuel for these fuel cell products. And as you can see on the slide with the various pictures, we are attempting to look at products that could be attractive to a broad range of the—of customers, be it heavy buses for certain types of environments all of the way down to the small and compact car.
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Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
One of the critical enablers is collaboration. We participate as a member for the United States Council for Automotive Research with our partners at Ford and General Motors. And then most recently, we think it is exceptional to have added partners from BP, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, and Shell, because we truly think the march to a completely new technology, a different way of life in the hydrogen economy is going to truly require collaboration in a pre-competitive environment across these multiple industries. We have got to bring together both vehicle and the infrastructure. And as you see in the center of this slide, the joint partnership and how we work together in certain task teams to understand how these infrastructures interface with the vehicle, what about the fuel, fuel quality, how does that relate to the fuel cell, it has all got to come together in order to realize a successful transition to the hydrogen economy.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
At DaimlerChrysler, as Mr. Honda mentioned, we are proud to be a participant in the Department of Energy's demonstration program. We have numerous vehicles that are on the road in the United States already providing information to the Department of Energy. We have also shared information off of these vehicles with the Environmental Protection Agency. And really, there are several key things we are trying to get out of the demonstration product. We are moving from the lab to the road. That is critical. We have already found failure modes and systems to components that we had not seen in the lab environment. And as was mentioned, these now become initiatives and challenges for us to work on both in the research and the development environment as we move forward. So it is critical, when you are moving from a technology, like the internal combustion engine that we have on the road for well more than 50 years, we understand how that affects the environment. With the new technology, we have to develop that understanding. That is why we are participating in three different environments. And DaimlerChrysler, outside of this demonstration project, we have vehicles around the world in a multitude of environments. And as you can see, our demonstration vehicles range from the small vehicle, the F-cell, up to the large sprinter, because these two types of vehicles clearly operate in different environments between the commercial and more of the daily use. So we absolutely think the demonstration fleet is providing very valuable data to feed the codes and standards efforts as well as helping us find new barriers and challenges we need to overcome to bring this product to a reality.
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Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
There was a question raised about, you know, what does DaimlerChrysler do. What do we focus on in order to make decisions on where we put our research funds and how much research funds get placed against a certain topic?
As you can see on the slide, we basically look at five key factors. I would like to tell you there is a perfect math formula that with algebra you can just plug in the numbers and say this is where you put your money. Unfortunately, the world and life isn't that easy. We do look at probability of technical success, the probability of commercial success in the market, the value from a customer perspective, how does it fit with our business strategy, and then what strategic leverage does it provide the company. All of these factors, any type of research that we do, are calibrated, assessed, and then with that assessment, we look at, all right, how are we going to prioritize our funding and our people resource over a said time period.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
There was a question raised about how do we see the fuel cell vehicle, the infrastructure coming together in terms of time in transitioning to truly the hydrogen-based economy for this transportation sector.
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At DaimlerChrysler, we think we are—we project we are going to go through four different phases. Right now, we have moved from basically what we call market preparation. That is basically setting up the infrastructure, setting up the vehicles in the lab environment, and getting ready to put some vehicles actually on the road that are fit for daily use. Fit for daily use, I have to qualify, only in certain environments. As an example, we have had severe challenges with cold start, so you will find many of the vehicles around the world aren't necessarily in extremely cold environments.
We think we are going to go through two more stages before this finally becomes the reality. We are going to head to a ramp-up stage. That is where we think some of the technological barriers that are facing us through all of this great pre-competitive research are going to be overcome. And we will be able to put a larger fleet in the field. This larger fleet is going to be limited by the growth of the infrastructure. We have got to have both the infrastructure there, the fueling, along with the vehicle to make it work. So we project that will be the next stage.
And then the final stage will actually be commercialization. This is where the—all of the major technical barriers, including cost and value to the customer, and then broad-based movement of the infrastructure have to come together to make it viable to move to large-scale production and then large-scale purchase and use by the customer base.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
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At DaimlerChrysler, though, we are absolutely convinced, both in the short-term, the near-term, and potentially in the long-term, there is going to be a wide range of technologies that are going to be attractive to the marketplace. We are working on all of them at once, because we believe there is a place for each one of these technologies in the market where they provide maximum value to the customer. As an example, a hybrid provides maximum value to the customer who operates in a city environment. The customer who drives mostly on the highway may be more attracted to a diesel. And so as we transition between now and the hydrogen economy, we are going to keep working on trying to provide a broad-based set of propulsion technologies for the market to enable them to implement them to benefit not only the environment, but energy security, because penetration is what is going to matter. We don't get a benefit from either one of those unless we get market penetration, and so we have got to provide maximum value to the customer.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
There are several key technology challenges in front of us to transition to the hydrogen economy. We have—we would summarize them into the fuel cell system itself, durability, cost. We have done some great work in terms of the pre-competitive environment, between academia, government, and industry in overcoming a challenge such as cold start. So that is one behind us, but we have got many more to go. The battery system, as was commented earlier, is a significant challenge as well. And then finally, hydrogen storage, as Dr. Bodde mentioned, is a very significant challenge that we absolutely must find a way to overcome if we expect to have broad-based penetration of the market and not take space away from the customer.
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Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
So if we look at the—how we think we are going to transition, obviously, we are very focused at DaimlerChrysler on the near-term in providing both the advanced powertrains and hybrid technology. And then we, obviously, are very committed to a transition to an H2 fuel cell vehicle and then the ultimate infrastructure and economy that is going to come together with the broad-based focus on zero emissions, ultimate low energy consumption for the environment, and then finally the concept of energy self-sufficiency and energy security that comes along with it.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
I think that is it.
Thank you, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Chernoby follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARK CHERNOBY
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I want to thank the Chairs and distinguished Members of the House Committee on Science for this opportunity to appear today.
I am coming before you today to describe our involvement in the Administration's Hydrogen Initiatives, and what DaimlerChrysler is doing to advance the overall hydrogen economy, as well as, address the questions presented to me by the Subcommittee on Research and the Subcommittee on Energy.
What is DaimlerChrysler doing to advance a hydrogen economy?
DaimlerChrysler has been working on fuel cell technology for transportation utilizing hydrogen for over ten years. We have invested over $1 Billion in R&D and have developed five generations of vehicles (NECAR1, 2, 3, and 4, and the F–Cell). Of all manufacturers, we have the largest world wide fleet of fuel cell cars and buses (100 vehicles) participating in several international demonstration projects in the United States, Europe, and Asia. (See Figure 1: DaimlerChrysler Fuel Cell History)
How does DaimlerChrysler participate in the Administration's Hydrogen Initiatives?
As a member of the United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR), DaimlerChrysler is a partner in the Department of Energy's (DOE) FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership along with General Motors and Ford Motor Company, and BP America, ChevronTexaco Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corporation, and Shell Hydrogen. The recent addition of these five major energy providers has strengthened the Partnership considerably, by providing expertise to solve the infrastructure challenges. DaimlerChrysler has also been working with the DOE since 1993 on advanced automotive technology research. We support the initiative as members on technical teams related to advanced automotive technology, including:
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— Energy Storage
— Light Weight Materials
— Advanced Combustion
— Hydrogen Storage
— Fuel Cell
— Codes & Standards
— Electrical and Electronics
— Vehicle Systems Analysis
Through these tech teams, we help develop priorities based on future needs and manage a portfolio of research projects directed at a set of Research Goals and Objectives. (See Figure 2: FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership)
We also are one of four recipients to participate in the DOE Hydrogen and Fleet Demonstration Project. By the end of 2005, we will have 30 vehicles located in three ecosystems (Southern California, Northern California, and Southeastern Michigan) and were the first OEM to provide valuable technical data to the DOE. (See Figure 3: DOE Hydrogen Fleet & Infrastructure Demonstration & Validation Project)
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What criteria does DaimlerChrysler consider when making investment decisions regarding its portfolio of advanced vehicle research and development programs?
DaimlerChrysler uses five factors of measurement to determine investment priorities in our advance technology portfolio. They are:
— Probability of Technical Success
— Probability of Commercial Success
— Value
— Business Strategy Fit, and
— Strategic Leverage
(See Figure 4: Five Key Investment Factors)
What factors would induce DaimlerChrysler to invest more in the development of hydrogen-fueled vehicles?
Several factors could contribute to inducing DaimlerChrysler to invest more in the development of hydrogen fueled vehicles. Key factors include:
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— Significant technological advances in fuel cells and hydrogen storage/production
— Major governmental policy support such as incentives, regulatory shifts,
— Changes in consumer demand and competitive pressure
— Significant long-term increases in gasoline prices
What do you see as a probable timeline for the commercialization of hydrogen-fueled vehicles?
The current technology is being evaluated in several fleet demonstration projects around the world. The largest is the DOE's program in the United States. These programs include a few hundred vehicles worldwide and several hydrogen fueling stations.
DaimlerChrysler projects that the hydrogen fueled vehicle technologies will evolve in discreet phases driven be the following cadence of events:
— Breakthrough in basic research
— Bench/laboratory development
— ''On road'' testing and development
— Parallel manufacturing process development
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Within the next 4–6 years, we will enter another phase utilizing technologies that address some of the current deficiencies including durability, range, and cold start, as well as, lower cost. This phase will see vehicle numbers in the low thousands and the beginning of a local infrastructure to support them.
The third phase will require significant vehicle technical breakthroughs in hydrogen storage, fuel cell cost, and a significantly expanded infrastructure. Technological breakthroughs are required in hydrogen storage and fuel cell technology (focused on cost & durability). DaimlerChrysler shares a commitment with our partners in USCAR effort to achieve these gains. It is a challenge to predict a definitive timeline for technological discovery. The vehicle fleet could grow to tens of thousands if significant shifts occur in the infrastructure and value to the consumer. The infrastructure must expand to a much larger scale beyond local support. This will be critical to support the freedom to travel that consumers will demand when we move from a market dominated by local ''fleet'' customers to the average consumer.
High volume commercialization will require a highly distributed infrastructure capable of delivering cost competitive hydrogen and fuel cell powered vehicles that can compete with other fuel efficient technologies. It is likely that this will require continued government policy support for vehicle and fuel. (See Figure 5: DaimlerChrysler Fuel Cell Strategy)
What about the other advanced vehicle technologies DaimlerChrysler is currently developing, such as hybrid vehicles and advanced diesel engines?
DaimlerChrysler is engaged in a broad range of advanced propulsion technologies. Fuel cell vehicles are a long-term focus of this technology portfolio, which also includes efficient gasoline engines, advanced diesels, and hybrid powertrain systems. (See Figure 6: DaimlerChrysler's Advanced Propulsion Technologies)
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DaimlerChrysler is focused on providing the market with the ability to select the advanced propulsion technology that best fits the needs of the individual customer. Each of the short-term technologies optimizes its benefit to the consumer in specific drive cycles (hybrid/city, diesel/highway) and hence its value to the customer.
DaimlerChrysler has developed and implemented technologies that improve the efficiency of the current gasoline propulsion system. We must continue to enhance the gasoline combustion propulsion system since it will be the dominant choice in the market for many years to come. We offer the Multi-Displacement System (MDS) available in the HEMI in seven Chrysler Group vehicles. MDS seamlessly alternates between smooth, high fuel economy four-cylinder mode when less power is needed and V–8 mode when more power from the 5.7L HEMI engine is in demand. The system yields up to 20 percent improved fuel economy.
We are also working on further development of gasoline direct-injection which considerably enhances fuel economy by closely monitoring fuel atomization.
DaimlerChrysler offers four different diesel powertrains in the United States, not including heavy trucks. Advanced diesel technology offers up to 30 percent better fuel economy and 20 percent less CO emissions when compared to equivalent gasoline engines. The diesel provides maximum benefit in highway driving which for many customers is a daily occurrence. Advanced diesel is a technology that is available today and can help reduce our nation's dependency on foreign oil.
Designing more engines to run on Biodiesel is a current objective at DaimlerChrysler. Biodiesel fuel reduces emissions of diesel vehicles, including carbon dioxide, and lowers petroleum consumption. Each Jeep Liberty Common Rail Diesel (CRD) built by DaimlerChrysler is delivered to customers running on B5 biodiesel fuel. Nationwide use of B2 fuel (two percent biodiesel) would replace 742 million gallons of gasoline per year, according to the National Biodiesel Board.
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DaimlerChrysler and GM have recently combined efforts to develop a two-mode hybrid drive system that surpasses the efficiency of today's hybrids. The partnership will cut development and system costs while giving customers an affordable hybrid alternative that improves fuel economy. The first use of the system will be in early 2008 with the Dodge Durango.
What do you see as the potential technology showstoppers for a hydrogen economy?
The most significant technology showstoppers that DaimlerChrysler recognizes as challenging the viability of the hydrogen economy include fuel cell durability, on-board hydrogen storage and advanced battery durability performance. Though there are major efforts and investment being put into fuel cell development, the current systems have to make significant gains in life expectancy and extreme operating conditions that the average consumer will demand.
No current on-board hydrogen storage system meets the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership targets for cost and performance. To meet customer expectations for driving range, a large amount of hydrogen is required to be stored on-board. Today's compressed hydrogen storage technology has limits in storage density which leads to a compromise in passenger compartment space in order to provide the driving range that consumer's enjoy today. Additionally, the current level of technology for high-pressure storage tanks that are available has associated manufacturing processes that take multiple days per tank. The on-board hydrogen storage tank industry currently does not have the capacity to support even low-volume production levels. Alternative and novel methods of storing hydrogen on-board are critical to the hydrogen economy.
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While several advancements have been made in battery technology in recent years, the current level of technology does not support performance requirements for power, energy and durability. (See Figure 7: Technology Showstoppers)
In addition to the technology challenges identified above, the cost challenges are significant barriers. To realize large scale market penetration, we will have to approach the value that customers enjoy with current propulsion technologies.
Even with a viable vehicle, the hydrogen economy will not become a reality without a highly distributed infrastructure. Our Energy Partners in the FreedomCAR and Fuel effort are committed to the research and technology development required to realize this goal. Industry and government will need to work together to develop an implementation plan with financial viability for all entities.
To what extent is DaimlerChrysler relying on government programs to help solve those technical challenges?
DaimlerChrysler realizes that the technical challenges associated with moving towards the hydrogen economy are too great and too costly for any one company to solve. Therefore, we see a benefit in multiple companies working together with government in pre-competitive technology development. Due to the enormity of this transition, DaimlerChrysler actively participates in USCAR with Ford Motor Company and General Motors and in the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership along with the other USCAR members as well as the U.S. Department of Energy, BP America, ChevronTexaco Corporation, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corporation and Shell Hydrogen. The research required to solve the technical challenges of the hydrogen economy is universally viewed as ''high risk'' by industry. The research sponsored by DOE through the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership provides a forum to pull together some of the best minds and organizations involved in advancement of the hydrogen economy to help address that risk. The development of the hydrogen infrastructure must progress in parallel with fuel cell vehicle technologies. (See Figure 8: Technology Relationship Strategy)
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How are automakers using, or how do they plan to use, the advanced vehicle technology developed for hydrogen-fueled vehicles to improve the performance of conventional vehicles?
As stated earlier, DaimlerChrysler is working on a broad portfolio of technologies to improve the efficiency and environmental impact of transportation. In the short-term we continue to improve the internal combustion engine (ICE). In the mid-term we are developing hybrid vehicles utilizing electric drive systems, integrated power modules and advanced batteries. In the long-term fuel cell vehicles with on-board hydrogen storage from a national hydrogen infrastructure will emerge.
The current portfolio of R&D within the DOE's FreedomCAR and Fuel Initiative is focused on the long-term hydrogen vision, but many of the technologies are useful and will mature in the shorter-term as transition technologies. Cost effective, light-weight materials can be applied to vehicles in the short-term to improve fuel efficiency regardless of the propulsion technology. Advanced energy storage and motors will benefit both hybrid and fuel cell vehicles. Novel approaches to hydrogen storage are uniquely required by hydrogen fueled vehicles, but can support stationary and portable applications in the industrial and consumer markets.
It is important to advance and mature many of the aspects of the technology as early as possible. There are many challenges and breakthroughs needed to realize the President's vision of a ''Hydrogen Economy.''
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BIOGRAPHY FOR MARK CHERNOBY
Mark Chernoby is the Vice President of Advance Vehicle Engineering for the Chrysler Group Business Unit at DaimlerChrysler. In this position, he is responsible for engineering Chrysler Group products in the early stages of the program cycle, CAE, Crossfire programs, GEM operation and Government Collaborative Programs. He was promoted to this position in November, 2003.
During his 19 years at Chrysler & DaimlerChrysler, Mark has worked in component, system, and full vehicle engineering. He worked in powertrain component and system engineering for the first nine years of his career. Mark then moved to full vehicle engineering managing the NVH development for Chrysler's products for a period of five years. Mark then had a position responsible for managing all of the functional requirements for a new line of large passenger cars. In has last position, Mark was responsible for the NVH, Crash, and Core Vehicle Dynamics of Chrysler Group Products.
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Mark graduated from Michigan State University in 1983 with a B.S. in Engineering, University of Michigan–Dearborn in 1985 with a M.S. in Engineering, and from the University of Michigan in 1990 with a MBA.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
Dr. Crabtree, you are recognized. Turn on your microphone, please.
STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE W. CRABTREE, DIRECTOR, MATERIALS SCIENCE DIVISION, ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY
Dr. CRABTREE. Is it working?
Yes. Good. Thanks.
Chairman Biggert, Chairman Inglis, Members of the Energy and Research Subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to testify today and share my thoughts on the hydrogen economy.
I will address the role of basic research in bringing the hydrogen economy to fruition. As background for my testimony, I would like to introduce into the record the report ''Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy'' based on the workshop held by the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences. This report documents the vision of hydrogen as the fuel of the future and the scientific challenges that must be met to realize a vibrant and competitive hydrogen economy. (This information appears in Appendix 2: Additional Material for the Record.)
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The enormous appeal of hydrogen as a fuel is matched by an equally enormous set of critical scientific and engineering challenges. Currently, nearly all of the hydrogen we use is produced by reforming natural gas. In a mature hydrogen economy, this production route simply exchanges a dependence on foreign oil for a dependence on foreign gas, and it does not reduce the production of environmental pollutants or greenhouse gases. We must find carbon-neutral production routes for hydrogen with the capacity to displace a large percentage of our fossil fuel use.
The most appealing route is splitting water renewably, because the supply of water is effectively inexhaustible, free of geopolitical constraints, and splitting it produces no greenhouse gases or pollutants. Although some routes for splitting water renewably are known, we do not know how to make them cost-effective, nor do we understand how to adapt them to a diversity of renewable energy sources. The onboard storage of hydrogen for transportation is the second critical basic science challenge. To allow a 300-mile driving range without compromising cargo and passenger space, we must store hydrogen at high density and with fast release times.
Since the 1970s, over 2,000 hydrogen compounds have been examined for their storage capability. None have been found that meet the storage demands. This critical storage challenge cannot be met without significant basic research. We must better understand the interaction of hydrogen with materials and exploit this knowledge to design effective storage media.
The critical challenges for fuel cells are cost, performance, and reliability. High cost arises from expensive catalysts and membrane materials. Performance is limited by the low chemical activity of catalysts and the ionic conductivity of membranes.
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Although catalysts have been known for centuries, we still do not understand why or how they work. Our approach to catalysis is largely empirical. We often find that the best catalysts are the most expensive metals, like platinum. The challenge is to understand catalysis on the molecular level and use that understanding to design low-cost, high-performance catalysts targeted for fuel cells.
Membranes are another critical basic research challenge for fuel cells. Currently, fuel cells for transportation depend almost exclusively on one membrane: a carbon-fluorine polymer with sulfonic side chains. Our ability to design alternative membranes is limited by our poor understanding of their ion conduction mechanisms. Significant basic materials research is needed before practical new membrane materials can be found and developed.
These three challenges are critical for the long-term success of the hydrogen economy: production of hydrogen by splitting water renewably, storage of hydrogen at high density with fast release times, and improved catalysts and membranes for fuel cells.
For each of these challenges, incremental improvements in the present state-of-the-art will not produce a hydrogen economy that is competitive with fossil fuels. Revolutionary breakthroughs are needed of the kind that come only from high-risk, high-payoff basic research.
The outlook for achieving such breakthroughs is promising. The recent worldwide emphasis on nanoscience and nanotechnology opens up many new directions for hydrogen materials research. All of the critical challenges outlined above depend on understanding and manipulating hydrogen at the nanoscale. Nanoscience has given us new fabrication tools capable of creating molecular architectures of unprecedented complexity and functionality.
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The explosion of experimental techniques to probe matter at ever-smaller link scales and time scales brings new knowledge within our reach. Numerical simulations running on computer clusters of hundreds of nodes can model the atomic processes of water splitting, hydrogen storage and release, catalysis, and ion motion in membranes. These recent scientific developments set the stage for breakthroughs in hydrogen materials science needed for a mature, sustainable, and competitive hydrogen economy.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Crabtree follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF GEORGE W. CRABTREE
Chairmen Biggert and Inglis, and Members of the Energy and Research Subcommittees, thank you for the opportunity to testify today and share my thoughts on the hydrogen economy. I will address the role of basic research in bringing the hydrogen economy to fruition. As background for my testimony, I would like to introduce into the record the report on ''Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy'' based on the Workshop held by the Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences. This report documents the vision of hydrogen as the fuel of the future, and the scientific challenges that must be met to realize a vibrant and competitive hydrogen economy.
Let me start my testimony by recalling the energy challenges that motivate the transition to a hydrogen economy. Our dependence on fossil fuel requires that much of our energy come from foreign sources; securing our energy supply for the future demands that we develop domestic energy sources. Continued use of fossil fuels produces local and regional pollution that threatens the quality of our environment and the health of our citizens. Finally, fossil fuels produce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that threaten our climate with global warming.
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Hydrogen as a fuel addresses all of these issues: it is found abundantly in compounds like water that are widely accessible without geopolitical constraints, it produces no pollutants or greenhouse gases as byproducts of its use, and it converts readily to heat through combustion and to electricity through fuel cells that couple seamlessly to our existing energy networks.
Critical Challenges: Production
The enormous appeal of hydrogen as a fuel is matched by an equally enormous set of critical scientific and engineering challenges. Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen does not occur naturally in the environment. Instead, hydrogen must be produced from natural resources like fossil fuels, biomass or water. Currently nearly all the hydrogen we use is produced by reforming natural gas. To power cars and light trucks in the coming decades we will need 10 to 15 times the amount of hydrogen we now produce. This hydrogen cannot continue to come from natural gas, as that production route simply exchanges a dependence on foreign oil for a dependence on foreign gas, and it does not reduce the production of environmental pollutants or greenhouse gases. We must find carbon-neutral production routes for hydrogen. The most appealing route is splitting water renewably, because the supply of water is effectively inexhaustible and splitting it produces no greenhouse gases or pollutants. Although some routes for splitting water renewably are known, we do not know how to make them cost-effective, nor do we know how to adapt them to a diversity of renewable energy sources. Splitting water renewably is a critical basic science challenge that must be addressed if the hydrogen economy is to achieve its long-term goals of replacing fossil fuels, reducing our dependence on foreign energy sources, and eliminating the emission of pollution and greenhouse gases.
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Critical Challenges: Storage
The on-board storage of hydrogen for transportation is a second critical basic science challenge. To allow a 300-mile driving range without compromising cargo and passenger space, we must store hydrogen at densities higher than that of liquid hydrogen. This may seem a daunting task, but in fact there are a host of materials where hydrogen combines with other elements at densities 50 percent to 100 percent higher than that of liquid hydrogen. Since the 1970s over two thousand hydrogen compounds have been examined for their storage capability; none has been found that meet the storage demands. The challenge is to satisfy two conflicting requirements: high storage capacity and fast release times. High hydrogen capacity requires close packing and strong chemical bonding of hydrogen, while fast release requires loose packing and weak bonding for high hydrogen mobility. This critical storage challenge cannot be met without significant basic research: we must better understand the interaction of hydrogen with materials and exploit this knowledge to design effective storage media.
Critical Challenges: Fuel Cells
The use of hydrogen in fuel cells presents a third critical scientific challenge. Fuel cells are by far the most appealing energy conversion devices we know of. They convert the chemical energy of hydrogen or other fuels directly to electricity without intermediate steps of combustion or mechanical rotation of a turbine. Their high efficiency, up to 60 percent or more, is a major advantage compared to traditional conversion routes like gasoline engines with about 25 percent efficiency. The combination of hydrogen, fuel cells, and electric motors has the potential to replace many of our much less efficient energy conversion systems that are based on combustion of fossil fuels driving heat engines for producing electricity or mechanical motion.
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The critical challenges for fuel cells are cost, performance and reliability. High cost arises from expensive catalysts and membrane materials; performance is limited by the low chemical activity of catalysts and ionic conductivity of membranes; and reliability depends on effective design and integration of the component parts of the fuel cell. Although catalysts have been known for centuries, we still do not understand why or how they work. Our approach to catalysts is largely empirical; we often find that the best catalysts are the most expensive metals like platinum. Nature, by contrast, uses inexpensive manganese to split water in green plants and abundant iron to create molecular hydrogen from protons and electrons in bacteria. These natural examples show that cheaper, more effective catalysts can be found. The challenge is to understand catalysis on the molecular level and use that understanding to design low cost, high performance catalysts targeted for fuel cells.
Membranes are another critical basic research challenge for fuel cells. Currently fuel cells for transportation depend almost exclusively on one membrane, a carbon-fluorine polymer with sulfonic side chains. While this membrane is an adequate ion conductor, it requires a carefully managed water environment and it limits the operating temperature of the fuel cell to below the boiling point of water. We need new classes of membrane materials that will outperform the one choice currently available. Our ability to design alternative membranes is limited by our poor understanding of their ion conduction mechanisms. Significant basic materials research is needed before practical new membrane materials can be found and developed.
Meeting the Challenges: Basic Research
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The three challenges outlined above are critical for the success of a hydrogen economy:
Production of hydrogen by splitting water renewably;
Storage of hydrogen at high density with fast release times; and
Improved catalysts and membranes for fuel cells.
For each of these challenges, incremental improvements in the present state-of-the-art will not produce a hydrogen economy that is competitive with fossil fuels. Revolutionary breakthroughs are needed, of the kind that come only from high-risk/high-payoff basic research.
The outlook for achieving such breakthroughs is promising. The recent worldwide emphasis on nanoscience and nanotechnology opens up many new directions for hydrogen materials research. All of the critical challenges outlined above depend on understanding and manipulating hydrogen at the nanoscale. Nanoscience has given us new fabrication tools, through top-down lithography and bottom-up self-assembly, that can create molecular architectures of unprecedented complexity and functionality. The explosion of bench-top scanning probes and the development of high intensity sources of electrons, neutrons and x-rays for advanced materials research at DOE's user facilities at Argonne and other national laboratories brings new physical phenomena at ever smaller length and time scales within our reach. Numerical simulations using density functional theory and running on computer clusters of hundreds of nodes can now model the processes of water splitting, hydrogen storage and release, catalysis and ionic conduction in membranes. These scientific developments set the stage for the breakthroughs in hydrogen materials science needed for a vibrant and competitive hydrogen economy.
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Significant progress in basic research for the hydrogen economy is already occurring. Basic research on catalysis for fuel cells published in 2005 revealed that a single atomic layer of platinum on certain metal substrates has more catalytic power than the best catalysts now in use; this discovery could significantly reduce the cost and enhance the performance of fuel cells. A new route for splitting water using sunlight was created with the self-assembly of porphyrin nanotubes decorated with gold and platinum nanoparticles. These tiny nanoscale composites have already demonstrated water splitting driven by solar radiation, and they minimize manufacturing cost through their ability to self-assemble. Models of hydrogen storage compounds using density functional theory now predict the density of hydrogen and strength of its binding with unparalleled accuracy. This permits an extensive theoretical survey of potential storage materials, many more than could be practicably fabricated and tested in the laboratory.
Conclusion
The vision of the hydrogen economy as a solution to foreign energy dependence, environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emission is compelling. The enormous challenges on the road to achieving this vision can be addressed with innovative high-risk/high-payoff basic research. The great contribution of basic research to society is the discovery of entirely new approaches to our pressing needs. The phenomenal advances in personal computing enabled by semiconductor materials science and their impact in every sphere of human activity illustrates the power of basic science to drive technology and enhance our daily lives. The challenges for the hydrogen economy in production, storage and use are known. Recent developments in nanoscience, in high intensity sources for scattering of electrons, neutrons and x-rays from materials at DOE's user facilities, and in numerical simulation using density functional theory open promising new directions for basic research to address the hydrogen challenges. The breakthroughs that basic research produces in hydrogen materials science will enable the realization of a mature, sustainable, and competitive hydrogen economy.
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Thank you, and I will be happy to answer questions.
BIOGRAPHY FOR GEORGE W. CRABTREE
George Crabtree is a Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and Director of its Materials Science Division. He holds a Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Illinois at Chicago, specializing in the electronic properties of metals. He has won numerous awards, most recently the Kammerlingh Onnes Prize for his work on the properties of vortices in high temperature superconductors. This prestigious prize is awarded only once every three years; Dr. Crabtree is its second recipient. He has won the University of Chicago Award for Distinguished Performance at Argonne twice, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Award for Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Solid State Physics four times, a notable accomplishment. He has an R&D 100 Award for his pioneering development of Magnetic Flux Imaging Systems, is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and is a charter member of ISI's compilation of Highly Cited Researchers in Physics.
Dr. Crabtree has served as Chairman of the Division of Condensed Matter of the American Physical Society, as a Founding Editor of the scientific journal Physica C, as a Divisional Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters, as Chair of the Advisory Committee for the National Magnet Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, and as Editor of several review issues of Physica C devoted to superconductivity. He has published more than 400 papers in leading scientific journals, and given approximately 100 invited talks at national and international scientific conferences. His research interests include materials science, nanoscale superconductors and magnets, vortex matter in superconductors, and highly correlated electrons in metals. Most recently he served as Associate Chair of the Workshop on Basic Research Needs for the Hydrogen Economy organized by the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences, which is the subject of this hearing.
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Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you very much, Dr. Crabtree.
Dr. Heywood, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN B. HEYWOOD, DIRECTOR, SLOAN AUTOMOTIVE LABORATORY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Dr. HEYWOOD. It is a pleasure to be here to testify before you this morning.
This hearing is focused on hydrogen. I want to spend a couple of minutes developing my understanding of the context within which we ought to think about hydrogen. And that—the critical part of that context is that our U.S. transportation systems' petroleum consumption, first of all, is so large that it is almost beyond our comprehension, and that makes changing what we do extraordinarily difficult. And that consumption is growing at a significant rate. The consumption is already large. Twenty-five years from now, it is projected to be 60 percent higher. Fifty years from now, it is expected to be twice what it is today.
What are our options for dealing with this in a broader way before we focus on hydrogen? And I find it useful to talk about this in two ways, to say there are two pars that we should be pursuing aggressively.
And the first of these is to improve the performance of our mainstream internal combustion engines, transmissions, other vehicle components step by step, and there is a lot of potential for doing that. The challenge is, it costs more, so the price goes up. It goes up a bit if the improvement is small. It goes up more if the improvements are larger. Hybrid vehicle technology is a clear example of that. And to date, the response of the market to somewhat higher cost but more efficient vehicles has not been to reduce fuel consumption. It has largely been traded for higher vehicle—larger vehicle size, higher vehicle weight, and better vehicle performance.
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We need to do something with a sense of urgency to reduce our petroleum consumption through these mainstream technology improvements, and we need to reinforce that more broadly within the government by developing a combination of fiscal and regulatory strategies to raise the importance of vehicle fuel consumption in the marketplace so that vehicle buyers and vehicle users are much more aware of their fuel consumption, what it costs them, and what it costs the Nation more broadly.
Now the second path relates to the longer-term, because even with improvements in mainstream technology, without drastic changes in our technology and our vehicles, we will still be dependent on petroleum-like fuels, and the greenhouse gas emissions that come from our transportation sector will still be significant. If we want to get to much lower energy consumption, recognizing that the availability of petroleum is going to decline as this century progresses, we need approaches like hydrogen and fuel cell technology to make—to take the next step.
But our challenge is that big changes in technology, whether it be to hydrogen and fuel cells or to advanced batteries and electricity as the energy carrier, take a long time to have an impact. Yes, we have hydrogen vehicles out there, a limited number already driving around, they cost in the order of $1 million each. In 10 or 15 years, there will be trial fleets, prototypes of what these technologies could be, but the costs will still be substantially above what conventional vehicle costs are.
Our own estimates are that to look at when hydrogen and fuel cells could have a noticeable impact on transportation's energy consumption, we judge that to be at least 40 or 50 years away. That is much longer than most people are willing to acknowledge. And the reason is that most people leave out the time required to build up production facilities for any new technology so that it is both sold and then out there in the in-use vehicle fleet in sufficient quantities driving around to have an impact on transportation's energy consumption.
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Let me comment more specifically for a couple of minutes on the government programs that you are here reviewing today.
I think it is important that we have major programs developing hydrogen technology and ideas and the technology needed for a hydrogen infrastructure. But there are alternatives. Hydrogen—success with hydrogen is not guaranteed, and there are alternatives that we are investing in but not with the same sense of commitment and urgency. One is electric vehicles using electricity as the energy carrier, and the critical technology there is advanced energy storage batteries. Another is producing fuels from biomass in energy-efficient ways. Yes, we have programs designed to develop those technologies, but that could be a very important contributor on this longer-term time scale, and we don't understand how we can best do that yet nor what the environmental impacts could well be.
And then we have to think seriously about very different vehicle concepts. I think we have really got to give up on the ''living room on wheels'' current American vehicle. It has got to be a lot smaller ''living room'' with much smaller ''furniture'' in it, because it has to be much lighter, because we cannot continue on this transportation energy growth path that we are now on. And that will take inventiveness in vehicle concepts as well as new materials and new fabrication and assembly processes.
All of these need strong emphasis. The future may not be hydrogen alone. It may be hydrogen plus electricity plus biofuels plus very different vehicle concepts as we move into the middle of this century. And it is our government's responsibility to invest in the R&D that examines these options and starts to pull them into real life where they could make a contribution.
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Let me end by saying that I think our Department of Energy hydrogen program is a substantial program. It is well organized. The DOE people managing this program interact strongly with the auto and energy industries. All of that is essential to producing a good research and advanced development agenda. There is also a strong strategic plan and vision behind that and a concrete set of milestones and deliverables that make this, I think, a very appropriate program on hydrogen.
But our programs that are dealing with improving mainstream technology, engines, transmissions, and other vehicle components, new materials for vehicles, we have these programs, but they don't have the same scope and intensity, nor do our efforts on advanced batteries. And I offer for your consideration the need to build these other programs up to the point where they are much more aggressively pursuing these parallel opportunities to hydrogen.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Heywood follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN B. HEYWOOD
It is a pleasure to testify before your committee today on meeting the future energy needs of our U.S. transportation system. I have been working in this area at MIT for the past 37 years doing technical research and broader strategic analysis on how to reduce the environmental impacts and fuel consumption of our transportation vehicles. Summaries of our groups' relevant recent studies are attached to this testimony.
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Our work, and that of others, looking ahead some 10–30 years underlines how important it is that we in the U.S. aggressively pursue two parallel paths related to transportation energy and greenhouse gas emissions. By we, I mean the relevant people in the government, the auto and petroleum industries, the R&D community, and the broader car buying and car using public.
The two paths are:
1. Working effectively to improve current engine and drivetrain technologies, reduce vehicle weight and drag so we significantly reduce vehicle fuel consumption, and to provide incentives to individual light-duty vehicle owners and users to buy such improved technology vehicles and drive them less.
2. Developing the framework and knowledge base for an eventual transition to transportation energy sources, vehicle technologies, and energy consumption rates that offset the expected declining availability and rising cost of petroleum-based fuels, and which on a well-to-wheels and cradle-to-grave basis have low greenhouse gas emissions. This future transportation energy carrier could be hydrogen, it could include electricity, and in part it could be biomass derived fuels.
It is very much in our national interest to pursue both these paths aggressively, and with a real sense of urgency. The only feasible way to impact our steadily growing U.S. petroleum imports and consumption within the next twenty-five years is through reducing the fuel consumption of our U.S. transportation fleet. There are many ways to improve current vehicle technology to increase efficiency, but for most of these, the initial vehicle cost goes up by more than past experience indicates this consumer market will support. There is a strong need, therefore, for the U.S. Government to provide incentives to all the involved stakeholders (including consumers), as soon as possible, to ''pull and push'' this technology into the marketplace and ensure it is used. I will discuss some of my MIT groups' work on this shortly. However, even these actions will not result in much lower petroleum consumption and very low greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. light-duty fleet. The importance of these actions is that given the size of our vehicle fleet (some 230 million light-duty vehicle), this is the only way to get off the projected growth from today's light-duty vehicle fleets consumption of 140 billion gallons of gasoline a year (an enormous amount!) to some 1.6 times that (220 billion gallons per year) twenty-five years from now. Whether petroleum resources are available to allow this growth is unclear. While it is likely that ''unconventional petroleum'' such as gasoline and diesel like fuels made from tar sands, natural gas, and biomass, will increase their contribution, it will still be modest compared to this projected 25-year ahead total.
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Thus the primary driver for this first path is to reduce the impact that higher petroleum prices, petroleum availability concerns and shortages, and rising negative balance of payment issues could have on our security, economy, and way of life.
In addition, however, success along this first path will have a significant enabling impact on the second path. It is anticipated by many that by mid-century we will need (in the U.S. and elsewhere) to be on a transition path to much lower vehicle fleet greenhouse gas emissions. If the transportation energy demand in the U.S. at mid-century is as large as many current projections now indicate, then that transition task due to its size, technological difficulty, and likely cost is unbelievably challenging. We are now starting to learn just how challenging that will be. If through improved efficiency and conservation we in the U.S. have cut that energy transition challenge in half, just think how large a difference that will make.
It will not be easy to ''cut the challenge in half.'' Over the last 20–30 years, consumers have bought larger and heavier vehicles, with higher performance, and have thus negated the roughly 30 percent improvement in vehicle fuel efficiency that improvements in engine and transmission efficiencies, reduced drag, and materials substitution have realized. A coordinated set of government actions will be needed to provide the push and pull to realize in-use fuel consumption benefits from future improvements. My group has been analyzing such a coordinated regulatory and fiscal approach. Our assessment is that an integrated multi-strategy approach has the best chance of realizing our objectives, since it shares the responsibility even handedly amongst the major stakeholders—industry and consumers, and each strategy reinforces the others. Gains only will come if we tackle all aspects of the problem simultaneously. Our proposal is to combine on improved version of CAFE regulations to push more fuel-efficient technology into new vehicles with a reinforcing feebate system imposed at time of vehicle purchase (substantial fees for purchasers who buy high fuel-consuming vehicles and rebates for those who buy low fuel consuming vehicles). Such a feebate system could be revenue neutral. To reinforce more fuel-efficient choices at vehicle purchase, taxes on transportation fuels should be steadily increased year by year for the next few decades by some 10 cents per gallon per year. These additional fuel taxes could be used to expand the now depleted Highway Trust Fund revenues to renovate our deteriorating highway systems and provide adequate maintenance. On the fuel side, in parallel, targets and a schedule could usefully be set for steadily increasing the amount of low greenhouse gas emitting biomass-based transportation fuels produced to augment our petroleum-based fuel supply. This would draw the petroleum and alternative fuel industries fully into our national effort. Details of our proposal area given in the attached MIT Energy and Environment article, ''A Multipronged Approach to Curbing Gasoline Use'' June, 2004, and its Bandivadekar and Heywood reference. Such a multi-strategy approach could also provide a transition period so major U.S. market suppliers with different model lineups, and health care and pension legacy costs, would have time to respond appropriately.
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Now let me say a few words about the second and longer-term path—working to implement a low greenhouse gas emitting energy stream for transportation. It may be that hydrogen will turn out to be the best of the low greenhouse gas emitting choices we have identified to date. There are, however, other options that warrant substantial federal and industry R&D. The time scales for radical changes in technology to be implemented and have impact are long, much longer than we realize. My group at MIT is working hard to understand these important time scales better. There are several sequential steps that a new automotive technology must go through before that technology becomes a large enough fraction of the on-the-road vehicle fleet to make a difference. The first step is developing the new technology to the point where it is competitive in the marketplace with standard technology vehicles. While more expensive new-technology more-efficient vehicles can be subsidized, this can only be done to push their introduction up to modest levels. Once market competitive, the production volumes of the new technology components must expand to a significant fraction of total new vehicle production. For engines, for example, this takes one to two decades. For fuel cell hybrid vehicles we estimate this to be 20–30 years. Then the new technology must penetrate the in-use vehicle fleet and be driven significant mileage, which takes almost as long as the production expansion step. Thus for internal combustion engine hybrids the total time to noticeable impact is expected to be some 30-plus years. For hydrogen and fuel-cell hybrids it is likely to be more than 50 years. Hence my emphasis on the first path for nearer-term improvements, and my judgment that any transition to hydrogen on a large scale is many decades away. (See MIT Energy & Environment article, ''New Vehicle Technologies: How Soon Can They Make a Difference,'' March, 2005, attached).
Now, some comments on a transition to hydrogen-fueled vehicles. First, the rationale for attempting such a transition is to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our transportation systems in the longer-term. Thus the source of the energy used to produce hydrogen is critical. It would have to be either coal or natural gas with effective carbon capture and sequestration, or nuclear power systems which generate both hydrogen and electricity. Electrolysis of water with ''renewable electricity'' from solar or wind energy does not appear a plausible way to produce hydrogen; it makes much more sense to use renewable electricity to displace coal in the electric power generating sector. Thus not only are there major hydrogen fuel cell technology issues (including cost) to be resolved, there are also major technical and cost challenges in the production, distribution and storage of hydrogen to be resolved as well. Hydrogen produced directly from fossil fuels without carbon sequestration, or from the electric power grid via electrolysis, even when used in fuel cell powered vehicles (which could be significantly more efficient than internal combustion engine powered vehicles), will not save energy nor reduce greenhouse gases.
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Are there alternatives that warrant greater federal resources? The above discussion suggests that electric vehicles with advanced high-energy-density batteries recharged with electricity from renewable or low CO electric power systems is one at least partial alternative. Such vehicles would be range limited, but if that range is more than say 200 miles these could be a substantial fraction of the market. Efficiently produced biofuels can also be low net CO emitting and the extent these can contribute is not yet clear. New, much lighter weight, vehicle concepts, may be significantly smaller in size, are also likely to be a significant and necessary long-term option. All of these should be important parts of the U.S. Government's R&D transportation energy initiatives. While they are part of the Government's current portfolio, the level of funding, strategic planning, and industry and R&D community involvement should be increased.
Our longer-term list of plausible efficient vehicle technologies and the energy sources that go with them is too short, and the difficulties in realizing these options in the real world are so challenging, that a much larger federal effort on this second path I have been discussing is warranted.
The above discussion broadly to addresses the first two questions asked in the Committee's letter requesting testimony. Let me now provide a more focused summary of my response.
Question 1: How might the future regulatory environment, including possible incentives for advanced vehicles and regulations of safety and emissions, affect a transition to hydrogen-fueled motor vehicles? How could the Federal Government most efficiently accelerate such a transition?
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I have explained how important it is for the U.S. Federal Government through regulatory and fiscal policies to reduce the energy requirements of our total transportation system. Not only would this help reduce our petroleum consumption and thus our oil imports in the nearer-term; it would also make the task of a future hydrogen transition (or more complex mix of low greenhouse gas emitting energy sources and technologies) significantly less challenging.
Question 2: Is the current balance of funding between hydrogen-related research and research on advanced vehicle technologies that might be deployed in the interim before a possible transition to hydrogen appropriate? What advanced vehicle choices should the Federal Government be funding between now and when the transition to a hydrogen economy occurs? How are automakers using, or how do they plan to use, the advanced vehicle technology developed for hydrogen-fueled vehicles to improve the performance of conventional vehicles? Are automakers likely to improve fuel economy and introduce advanced vehicles without government support?
The government's FreedomCAR and Fuels program is a thoughtfully structured program of significant scale intended to advanced hydrogen fuel and vehicle technologies. It is a partnership between DOE, Ford, DaimlerChrysler, GM and several petroleum companies. Its focus is on applied research with some pre-competitive advanced development. The program plan has had, and continues to have, substantial industry input. DOE cost shares major advanced development projects with the auto companies. The companies involved have substantial programs of their own in these areas, though the details of these programs are largely proprietary. This program approach in my judgment does a reasonable job of using federal funds to encourage the necessary development of new and better ideas, and new knowledge related to hydrogen and its use in transportation.
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The FreedomCAR and Fuels Program also supports activities intended to improve the efficiency of mainstream engine and propulsion system technologies. Given the importance of the first pathway I have described, this federal effort should be expanded. Also, efforts on advanced battery research and development, and biofuels should be expanded to better meet their potential importance in the longer-term. The Federal Government must play the role of supporting a broad portfolio of research relevant to transportation energy and transportations greenhouse gas emissions and involve all sectors of the R&D community that can contribute. Our universities, the source of the technical leadership we will need over the next several decades, must be more actively involved.
Question 3: What role should the Federal Government play in the standardization of local and international codes and standards that affect hydrogen-fueled vehicles, such as building, safety, interconnection, and fire codes?
I have not addressed this question directly. Due to the long time scales involved in any transition to hydrogen or other new technologies, this is not as urgent a task as is technology development. However, as is already happening in the FreedomCAR and Fuels Program, work on these issues should be underway with the relevant Standards and Codes organizations, and with the industries involved.
Attachments
Three articles from MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment publication ''Energy & Environment'':
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1. ''Vehicles and Fuels for 2020: Assessing the Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicle,'' March, 2003.
2. ''A Multipronged Approach to Curbing Gasoline Use,'' June, 2004.
3. ''New Vehicle Technologies: How Soon Can They Make a Difference?'' March, 2005.
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BIOGRAPHY FOR JOHN B. HEYWOOD
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Professor Heywood did his undergraduate work in Mechanical Engineering at Cambridge University and his graduate work at MIT. He then worked for the British Central Electricity Generating Board on magnetohydrodynamic power generation. Since 1968 he has been on the faculty in Mechanical Engineering Department at MIT, where is he now Director of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory and Sun Jae Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His current research is focused on the operating, combustion and emissions characteristics of internal combustion engines and their fuels requirements. He is involved in studies of automotive technology and the impact of regulation. He has also worked on issues relating to engine design in MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing Program; he was Engineering Co-Director of the Program from 1991–1993. He is currently involved in studies of future road transportation technology and fuels. He has published some 180 papers in the technical literature and has won several awards for his research publications. He holds a Sc.D. degree from Cambridge University for his published research contributions. He is a author of a major text and professional reference ''Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals,'' and co-author with Professor Sher of ''The Two-Stroke Cycle Engine: Its Development, Operation, and Design.'' From 1992–1997 he led MIT's Mechanical Engineering Department's efforts to develop and introduce a new undergraduate curriculum. In 1982 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers. He was honored by the 1996 U.S. Department of Transportation National Award for the Advancement of Motor Vehicle Research and Development. He is a consultant to the U.S. Government and a number of industrial organizations. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering in 1998. In 1999, Chalmers University of Technology awarded him the degree of Doctor of Technology honoris causa. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. He is now directing MIT's Mechanical Engineering Department's Center for 21s' Century Energy which is developing a broader set of energy research initiatives. In January 2003, Professor Heywood was appointed Co-Director of the Ford-MIT Alliance. In 2004, City University, London, awarded him the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.
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Discussion
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you very much, Dr. Heywood. And thank you to all of the panelists.
We will now move to Member questions.
And I will yield myself five minutes.
I had the opportunity to drive a hydrogen car about a month ago, and we are going to have to change all our terminology. You don't have a gearshift. You just push a button for drive. You can't step on the gas. I don't know how we are going to get used to saying ''stepping on the hydrogen'' or something. It just doesn't seem to fit as well. But it was quite an experience. And then opening the hood and being able to put your hand on the engine and it is not hot, it is cool. It is—it must be energy efficient. But I understand that they are talking about it being within the next decade that this might be coming out.
But my question really goes to the development of the fuel and how that is going to be. And I think it was Dr. Bodde that mentioned that the type of hydrogen that would be used. I understood from that that it was either—the car that I was driving was liquid hydrogen, which was stored under the back seat. And then they—but they haven't decided whether compressed hydrogen or liquid would be something that would be used. I—this was a GM car. Sorry. But I know you are all working together. But—and then it can be filled right from the—again, it couldn't be called a gas pump. We would have to change to the hydrogen pump or whatever. But are we really that close? It seemed that they hadn't—at least this—and I am—and from all of your testimony, I see that there hasn't been a decision yet, but it seemed to me between liquid and compressed or whatever we might find. It is kind of like beta versus VHS. You know, which is going to be the way to go, because will this be made, you know, on an industry-wide basis with the research from—on the FreedomCAR? How are we—who is making those decisions, and how is this all integrated with the Department of Energy and the basic research?
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So whoever would like to answer that. Mr. Faulkner.
Mr. FAULKNER. Well, I could start, and some of my colleagues can fill in.
I think the timeline that we are working on with our industry partners is 2015 for a commercialization decision. The Department of Energy, the government, doesn't make these vehicles, doesn't make the fuels. We work on research and development to help them, our private sector partners, make these decisions. So looking at that time scale, roughly 2015, start to make the entry point in the market about 2020. There are some cars on the road. You have driven them, I have driven them. But they are not cost-effective yet. There are technology issues we have to sort through, but that is the time scale we are on, and every year, we are progressing closer to that.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Any other comments?
Dr. CRABTREE. Yes.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Dr. Crabtree.
Dr. CRABTREE. You mentioned two alternatives: liquid or compressed gas. I think both of those have deficiencies that, in the long-term, really won't give us the driving range that we need. What we need to do is find a way to store hydrogen as part of a solid material as a hydrogen compound. And that is the thing that, really, we can't do yet. If you look at what we could do in the next five years, we could do either liquid storage or gas storage, but we really don't know how to go solid-state storage, and that is the one—that is the area that we need to do if we are going to have a long-time, long-term impact.
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So this really is a basic research issue.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Okay.
Dr. Bodde.
Dr. BODDE. Let me say that I concur with that completely.
We know perfectly well how to compress hydrogen now. The issue, though, is what is going to become of an automobile that is given the casual maintenance that our cars do and that is fueled by a compressed gas at 10,000 p.s.i. for the lightest element on the Earth? Now as we all sit here in this hearing room, if your car is doing what my car is doing, it is out in the parking lot dripping atmospheric pressure fluids onto the paving. Imagine what would happen if it were a very high compressed tank of hydrogen.
So I think for demonstration fleets, that will work fine. In order to pioneer the opening of the technology, it will work just fine. But for the long-term effective hydrogen economy, I agree with Dr. Crabtree. I think we have to have some form of solid-state storage or some form of that near atmospheric pressure storage.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Dr. Heywood.
Dr. HEYWOOD. Let me broaden that and say that this is one of many areas where we are learning that what we have today is fantastic. Gasoline and diesel fuel have an extraordinarily high energy density, lots of energy per unit volume, or mass, and they are liquids. And we are struggling mightily, and we will need new ideas and research to explore those ideas before we can make gaseous fuels, like hydrogen, manageable in anywhere near the same way.
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Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you. Thank you.
Mr. Chernoby.
Mr. CHERNOBY. Just in closing, I would agree with the comments of all of my colleagues here.
At DaimlerChrysler, we do believe that compressed hydrogen is probably the near-term alternative for limited fleet use, but in the long-term, we absolutely must provide the customer with a range. We absolutely must provide them with the space, as Dr. Heywood said earlier, that they enjoy in their moving ''living room,'' and that is going to require something different than compressed hydrogen, and we do not think that liquid, at this point, from what we see, is the answer. There has to be basic research to find something else that is going to find something that is going to satisfy all of those needs.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. So it really will be a conglomerate that will make this—everyone will probably be on the same track because of the necessity when we find the right type of fuel?
Dr. CRABTREE. It is interesting, if you look at what is—what the commercial options are now that—the demonstration fleets, some are liquid, some are gas. Each one has their own proponents. Not too many are solid-state. That is the one, I think, that has to come.
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Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
Going back and forth, Mr. Carnahan, would you be ready, or should we have one more question from the other side of the aisle?
[No response.]
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you. Chairman Inglis, you are recognized for five minutes.
Chairman INGLIS. Thank you, Madame Chairman.
You know, when I was a kid, Alcoa Aluminum used to advertise on ''Meet the Press'' with a very effective jingle that said, ''Alcoa can't wait. We can't wait for tomorrow.'' And I wonder whether the role that we have is to be saying to the academics, ''We can't wait.'' And I wonder if the role of Mr. Chernoby and people in the private sector is to say, ''We have got to do it, because we want to make some money at it.'' But I wonder if our role is really to say, like President Kennedy did in 1961, we have got to get to the Moon before the end of the decade.
So maybe you could comment on what is the role of the people up here, the government folks. What should we be saying? It seems to me that the statistics that you have cited are alarming. The—two things are alarming. One is our use of fuel, as Dr. Heywood talked about, and the other is the length of time that we are hearing. So these seem to be on a collision course. We have got this enormous use, and we have got this time that is working against us. And so one of my items here was talking about commitment, which is a question for us in the government. What kind of commitments should we make to really moving this along? And anybody want to comment on what should be the role of government in this process to light the fire on all of the researchers and to really insist, like Alcoa, ''We can't wait until tomorrow''?
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Dr. HEYWOOD. And I am glad you said, ''We can't wait until tomorrow,'' because that is absolutely the case. And in some areas, we are getting a move on. We have got a sizable hydrogen program. In other areas, we are not, particularly, in my view, in government efforts to regulate through fiscal and regulations like CAFE, to force movement. I think the government's responsibility is to both push and pull these technologies into the marketplace.
Research is another way of sort of smoothing, lubricating, seeding that process. And I think that is a very important thing for you to think about as well. But I urge you to hang on to this. We can't wait. We have got to assess how this problem is developing and getting worse and sort out what we, government and others, can do collectively to get a move on in resolving these problems.
Chairman INGLIS. Yes, sir.
Dr. Crabtree.
Dr. CRABTREE. So you mentioned getting to the moon, which is often applied to hydrogen and sometimes to the larger energy problem as well. I think there is one difference from the Apollo program. There, President Kennedy could say, ''Let us do it,'' and he had the NASA do it. It was very well coordinated. In the case of energy, cars, and hydrogen, it has to be sort of the economy. It is a complex system. It is a lot of people interacting and making independent decisions, so you don't get that direction from the top.
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So I think what the government can do is incentivize that activity. And there are really two aspects to it. One is what we can do now, sort of incremental hydrogen economy, and we have heard some of the—my colleagues have talked about that. One is what we would like to be able to do, the mature one that we need, let us say, 20 or 30 years from now that would really have an energy impact. The first one is sort of a commercial demonstration stage now. So you need one kind of incentive for that.
The second one is really basic research. You need a completely different kind of incentive for that. You have to work on both levels, and soon these two, sort of—these two prongs will come together and we will get the result that we want.
Chairman INGLIS. Here is my idea. Somebody comment on this, maybe Mr. Chernoby or Dr. Bodde might want to talk about this, is that gas at $3 a gallon lights a fire in the consuming public. When it gets to that level and you go to fill up your SUV and it is $42, I think you say, ''This can't be.'' I mean, ''I can't continue to spend $42 per fill-up.'' Right? I mean, does that light the—DaimlerChrysler, does that get you going? Does that get you excited?
Mr. CHERNOBY. Well, a couple of things.
You talked about commitment of the researchers. I can just share that the researchers we deal with, I can assure you, there is huge commitment, huge tenacity and focus on trying to get these problems solved, so I am not worried, really, about the motivation of the researchers. But similar to what Dr. Heywood said earlier and what you just mentioned, I think the role of government is two critical areas.
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Number one, it is obviously to help all of us in a pre-competitive environment with basic research, because we have got to overcome these challenges. But then you talked about the marketplace. That is the key here. That is—for me, that is the big difference between this challenge and the Apollo program. Without the marketplace in poll, there is no penetration, and without product penetration, there is no motivation to build an infrastructure.
So I would say, short-term, it is not just about seeing the research, but it is about sitting down with all of us, the energy industry, the auto industry, and other constituents, and we have got to talk about how can we get that motivation in the marketplace. I don't personally—and this is not speaking for the company, personally, I don't believe $3 is going to do it. I mean, you are—like Dr. Heywood said, I mean, you look at the costs and the challenges we have to overcome on some of these technologies today, there has got to be a pretty big incentive or a reason for a customer to value and move to that. That is why we think there is a lot of transition, like Dr. Heywood said, that we are going to go through before we ultimately get to the hydrogen economy. But working closely with all of us on what is the business model going to be and how can the government play a role in that business model to make it viable for not only an automotive company but an energy company as well to make this a reality. But without the marketplace, it is not going anywhere.
Dr. BODDE. My observation on federal policies, if you allow me.
If you look at the history of federal policy and energy, going back to the first Arab oil embargo of October of 1973, the chief problem, as I see it, has been consistency. We have gone from one thing to another thing. When oil prices were high in the 1970s, there was Project Independence. When oil prices fell in the 1980s, it was all, ''Well, what the heck. Let the market reign here.'' I think the chief ingredient of any effective federal policy is going to be consistency. Durability over the long-term. That allows entrepreneurs, innovators, investors to plan on the economic regime that is going to prevail over the time scale that it takes for them to bring technologies into the marketplace.
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And so item one, I would say, is consistency.
Item two is attention to the demand side. All of this talk about research, about CAFE standards, and so forth, all deals with the supply side, that is the supply of vehicles, the supply of fuels. There has to be a demand side pull from consumers as well.
Now it is interesting to observe, as Dr. Heywood has, the response to the more fuel-efficient vehicles that haven't proven to be the more fuel-economic vehicles. Fuel-efficiency, that is in the sense of moving metal down the road, has improved consistently over the last 20 years. Fuel economy has been flat. The reason is the increase efficiency was taken as greater weight, as greater acceleration, as greater vehicle performance, and this is what the marketplace is demanding.
My guess, also, is that at $3 a gallon, that might not change very much, and I think serious consideration has to be given to other demand-side policies that start to create a consumer interest in translating greater efficiency into greater economy.
Mr. FAULKNER. Sir, your red light has been on for a while, but you raise a really fascinating and philosophical question. Could I respond for a minute?
Chairman INGLIS. If the Chair will allow it.
Mr. FAULKNER. Is that allowed?
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You noted the alarming rise in the use of oil. That is true. That has been going on for some time. Many are aware of that, and the length of time we are talking about, 2015, 2020, full breakout in the market 2030, 2040, 2050, and then you noted, we can't wait. But I think—it may be unpopular, but I think, in a sense, it is our duty to say we have to wait, not that that is complacent but that fundamental science doesn't occur overnight. Some of these things everyone has talked about, breakthroughs that are needed, and if you are set on the right pace research and development. You talk about commercialization of these technologies in the private sector. It is going to take a while to affect those changes.
And I would note that the President sees the urgency of that, that is why he set the vision. That is what he talked about this fundamental issue we have to address. And for the government, the federal role, the Department of Energy, we have to manage it. There are several different programs. It is a difficult task to integrate the Office of Science's fundamental research in our office and other departments.
And Congress's role is to hold our feet to the fire. Ask us for metrics. Ask us to come in and justify what we are spending. And I think, as the President has said, and the Secretary, pass an energy bill.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
The gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Carnahan, is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you, Madame Chairman.
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Welcome to all of you, and this is a very timely and important discussion that we are having here today. And I was fascinated just recently reading the—if you haven't seen it, look at the August issue of National Geographic on things that are coming after petroleum, basically, and they highlight a lot of these new technologies.
But I want to particularly ask Mr. Chernoby, or anybody else on the panel, about the FreedomCAR research and where you see that going from here, and really give me a better idea of where that is today.
Mr. CHERNOBY. I would summarize a few key points.
We have talked a lot about hydrogen and fuel cells and hydrogen storage today. If you look at the FreedomCAR research portfolio, we manage a portfolio that is even broader than that. Similar to what Dr. Heywood said earlier, it is critical as well, as we research things for the long-term, what can we be doing to implement things we learn in the short-term? There is quite a bit of research going on still in lightweight advanced materials, very important, and as soon as something gets on the shelf that engineers can grab and use and the supply base can figure out how to process, we will implement it, if it provides the right value to the customer: lighter weight vehicles, more fuel efficiency. We don't have to wait for a hydrogen economy. There is basic battery research going on, another critical enabler.
We have several examples like that that we manage in this pre-competitive environment at FreedomCAR. So we absolutely believe that—DaimlerChrysler, and I think my compatriots and Ford and GM would agree, this is absolutely the best way to make sure we compile some of the brightest minds, not only in industry, but in academia and the other research environments around the world. And it is that combination of minds that is actually going to help us get these breakthroughs to market, not just in the long-term for the hydrogen, but feeding in all of the other things we are doing in our portfolio to provide benefit in the near-term as well.
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Mr. FAULKNER. Sir, if I could add, the Secretary——
Mr. CARNAHAN. Yes, please.
Mr. FAULKNER.The Secretary of Energy, Sam Bodman, was out in Michigan recently where he did two events in one day. He cut the ribbon, groundbreaking of the new solar factory, but he also was with Mr. Chernoby and his colleagues to talk about renewing two agreements with the U.S. Car Group. One of them was on batteries and one of them was on materials.
And I think that kind of success that we have in partnering together with the auto industry, if there wasn't success, they wouldn't be wanting to sign up and renew these agreements. And there are—am I correct that the batteries that we have pioneered in that consortium are now on every hybrid in America?
Mr. CHERNOBY. Yeah, absolutely. Some of the very basic and preliminary work on what we call nickel metal hydride batteries was done through that consortium, and that is what you will find in basically every hybrid vehicle on the road today.
Mr. CARNAHAN. We have also talked about several incentives here today, and I have worked with some here in the Congress about instituting a tax credit that would go partially to consumers and partially to manufacturers to help in this transitional time period to these alternative fuel vehicles.
What kind of impact do you see that having? Some have argued because the demand is growing and the technology is coming online that those kinds of incentives aren't necessary. And I would be interested in your comments about that.
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Mr. CHERNOBY. Well, I would add, similar to what Dr. Heywood said earlier, let the data speak for itself.
If you look at the penetration of these—some of these technologies, it has not been in astronomically large numbers. I mean, they occupy a very, very small percentage of the annual vehicle sales in, not only the United States, but around the world. So any incentive that is going to help the customer find the right value equation, and that is why I urge you to think about not only incentives—don't pick a single technology. Think about the broad range of technologies. One may be more attractive to one customer versus another. And that is what we have got to focus on, providing the ability for those technologies to penetrate across as broad of a range of the market as we can. We, at DaimlerChrysler, feel we very much ought to focus on today's clean and advanced diesel to augment the hybrid discussion, because there are a lot of customers who drive in a highway-driving environment.
So absolutely, we believe that we have to do something, as Dr. Bodde said, on the demand side and continue to do so, not only in the long-term hydrogen economy, but in the short-term as well.
Dr. BODDE. That said, however, perhaps we should not be too pessimistic about reading the current data. It is characteristic of any technology, if there is a long gestation period in which not much seems to be happening in the marketplace in which market share growth and market penetration doesn't happen, then a tipping point is reached and the technology takes off.
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I mean, you look at Internet use, Internet subscribers. The Internet has been around for a long time, and it is only in the last five years that we get this vertical—near-vertical acceleration.
My guess is that the same thing is going to happen with the hybrid vehicles, perhaps hybrid diesel vehicles. The same thing is going to happen with the hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
What we need to be about is to look at the conditions needed for that marketplace takeoff to occur and to work specifically to put those conditions in place so that the market itself will then take it over.
Mr. FAULKNER. Just another comment.
I think it is important not to get too far ahead of the technology in incentives. The President has proposed tax incentives for hybrids, but I think the fuel cell vehicles are still a ways down the road, and you can consider those as that technology improves. Timing is very important.
Dr. CRABTREE. Briefly, that—we heard a lot about incentivizing and getting the technology out there for the consumer and for the manufacturer, but I think it is important to incentivize the research as well. The things we can do now and put out now or that consumers can decide about now and make now are really not the ones that we want to do 20 years from now to have a big impact on energy.
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So we shouldn't leave that basic research component out of the equation.
Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Timing is everything.
Mr. CARNAHAN. Thank you, Madame Chair.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. And your time has expired.
And the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Bartlett, is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
I have many questions, but time will permit, perhaps, only three quick ones.
I understand that if we were to wave a magic wand and every American car could have a fuel cell in it with platinum as a catalyst that one generation—and it doesn't last all that long, I understand, but one generation would use all of the platinum in all of the world. Is that true?
Secondly, right now today, 85 percent of all of the energy we use in this country comes from fossil fuels. Are you all familiar with Hubbard's Peak? Do you know what is meant by Hubbard's Peak? Okay. We now may be at Hubbard's Peak in terms of oil. If that is true, gas is not far behind.
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And I would caution, don't be sanguine about this enormous supply of coal. At current use rates, it will last 250 years. If you increased its use exponentially only two percent a year, and we will have to do more than that if we run down Hubbard's Peak with gas and oil, it lasts 85 years. When you recognize that you probably are not going to run your car by putting the trunk full of coal, you are going to have to convert it to a gas or a liquid, now you have shrunk it to 50 years. That is all that is out there at two percent growth rate and converting it to some form we are going to use.
Only 15 percent of our energy today comes from renewables. I include in that the eight percent that comes from nuclear and only seven percent from true renewables. Since hydrogen is not an energy source, you will always use more energy producing the hydrogen than you get out of it. Where are we going to get all of this energy as we run down Hubbard's Peak? Are we going to have a really nuclear nation, because the effective growth in energy from the renewables is really pretty darn limited?
And the third question deals with: all of you seem to agree that if hydrogen—if we are going to move to a hydrogen economy, you have got to have solid-state storage. Is there something in the science that inherently makes hydrogen storage a higher density than electron storage? What you are really talking about now is just another battery, aren't you, which is what hydrogen solid-state storage is going to be? Another battery? In the science, is there something inherently so superior about hydrogen storage that it is going to be a better battery than storing electrons?
Is it true about platinum that one generation of American cars lasting, what, 200 hours for each solar—for each fuel cell, we have used all of the platinum in all of the world?
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Dr. CRABTREE. Well, may I comment on that?
I really don't—I have heard that statement as well, and I haven't tried to verify it.
Mr. BARTLETT. Could you, for the record, all of you, give us some input on that? It is really nice to know that, because if that is the path we are running down, it is not going to be a very fruitful one.
INSERT FOR THE RECORD BY DOUGLAS L. FAULKNER
A study by TIAX, LLC determined that there are sufficient platinum resources in the ground to meet long-term projected platinum demand if the amount of platinum in fuel cell systems is reduced to the Department of Energy's (DOE) target level. The DOE-sponsored study shows that total world platinum demand (including jewelry, fuel cell and industrial applications) by 2050 would be 20,000 metric tons against a total projected resource of 76,000 metric tons. This study assumes that fuel cell vehicles attain 80 percent market penetration by 2050 (from U.S., Western Europe, China, India and Japan). The study shows that the limiting factor in keeping up with increased platinum demand is the ability of the industry to respond and install additional production infrastructure. Since in the out-years, recycling would provide almost 60 percent of the supply, the industry will have to be careful not to overbuild production capacity in a more accelerated market demand scenario.
Platinum availability is a strategic issue for the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Platinum is expensive and is currently critical to achieving the required levels of fuel cell power density and efficiency.
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As such, the Department has been focused on reducing and substituting for (with non-precious metal catalysts) the amount of platinum in fuel cell stacks (while maintaining performance and durability) so that hydrogen fuel cells can be cost competitive with gasoline internal combustion engines.
Significant progress has been made and is still being made by national laboratories, universities and industry to reduce the amount of platinum needed in a fuel cell stack by replacing platinum catalysts with platinum alloy catalysts or non-platinum catalysts, enhancing the specific activity of platinum containing catalysts, and depositing these catalysts on electrodes using innovative processes. The Office of Science has recently initiated new basic research projects on the design of catalysts at the nanoscale that focus on continued reduction in the amount of platinum catalyst required in fuel cell stacks.
Typically, it takes three to five years to increase platinum production capacity in response to an increase in demand. Fuel cell vehicle production may create a brief platinum supply deficit, leading to short-term price increases.
The TIAX study shows that platinum prices over the last one hundred years fluctuated based on major world events (e.g., world war, etc.); however, the mean price (adjusted for inflation) remained stable at $300 per troy ounce. However, over the last couple of years platinum has been higher at $900 per troy ounce.
Mr. BARTLETT. Secondly, where are you going to get all of this energy, if we are at Hubbard's Peak, and we probably are, with oil at $60 a barrel and going nowhere but up, I think? Where are you going to get this energy?
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We have got to have a big culture change until we are using less energy. We are like a young couple that just had a big inheritance from their grandparents, and they have affected a lifestyle where 85 percent of the money they are spending comes from their grandparents' inheritance, only 15 percent from their income. And their grandparents' inheritance is not going to last until they die. Now they have got to somehow transition themselves from this lavish lifestyle, living largely on the inheritance from their grandparents. How are we going to do that, and where are you going to get the energy from from this hydrogen economy?
You know, what we are really doing is nibbling at the margins. We have got to face the fundamental problem that we are at Hubbard's Peak and going to start down the other side shortly. Where are you going to get the energy to come from? What are you telling people?
Dr. HEYWOOD. May I respond to that one, please?
That is one reason I have talked about these two paths forward, because to make the drastic changes that—in culture lifestyle economies that you are really suggesting, which I think we will have to consider, within this century most likely, have to make. That is going to take time.
But in the nearer-term, there are things we can do that are better than nibbling at the edges. Yes, they have that characteristic, but they will do more. We can—you know, we could half our transportation energy consumption with the sort of technologies that are almost ready today, but we need to realize that that is what we will have to do in some way to survive in the long-term. And I think that discussion needs to be held much more publicly, and we have all got to contribute to this and understand the dilemma that we are facing.
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Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
Before my time runs out, is there something scientifically, inherently so much better about a hydrogen battery than there is an electron battery that we should be pouring these billions of research into that?
Dr. HEYWOOD. The recharge time is one big difference. You could recharge a hydrogen tank relatively quickly compared to recharge an energy storage battery.
Mr. BARTLETT. I sleep all night. My battery can charge while I sleep.
Is there something inherently better about density?
Dr. CRABTREE. May I comment on that?
I think the energy density that you can store in hydrogen, as a chemical fuel, is higher than you can get from electricity as an electrical fuel——
Mr. BARTLETT. But we are still working on that and don't, in fact, know, correct?
Dr. CRABTREE. If you look at some interesting charts in this report, you will see that hydrogen has the ability to replace your battery in your laptop and give you three times or four times the run time for the same weight and the same volume.
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Mr. BARTLETT. Good. We ought to be moving——
Dr. CRABTREE. As a matter of fact, it is better.
Mr. BARTLETT. We ought to be moving quickly then.
Thank you.
Dr. BODDE. One final comment, if I may, sir.
You asked the old what source of energy. Eventually, you get to nuclear and renewables that eventually—this 85 percent inheritance is gone, no matter what scenario you are in, an environmentally limited one or other, and you are into nuclear for whatever supply you have.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you for helping to get that message out.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. The gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Sodrel, is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. SODREL. Indiana.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Indiana.
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Mr. SODREL. Yeah, Indiana.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Excuse me. There is a little difference.
Mr. SODREL. But—well, now we do say ''you all'' in southern Indiana, and I understand how you could make a mistake.
Going to the question that Mr. Bartlett framed about how we produce hydrogen, I understand the Icelanders that—embarked on a robust program trying to create hydrogen using geothermal energy. Are any of you familiar with what is going on there? It is kind of a joint industry effort, is it not, where they are—they have a lot of volcanoes and a lot of heat. And I understand they are trying to convert their entire country to hydrogen fuel. Given that their country only has 300,000 population, it would be a little bit like us converting a city to hydrogen fuel, but do you know how that is coming along?
No?
Mr. FAULKNER. We can get you details for the record, though, sir, if you wish.
Mr. SODREL. Yeah, I would appreciate it.
INSERT FOR THE RECORD BY DOUGLAS L. FAULKNER
Iceland's goal is to become the first nation in the world to achieve the vision of a hydrogen economy. The move to a hydrogen economy has significant government support, and surveys conducted by Icelandic New Energy indicate significant public support as well. With a population of less than 300,000 (the majority of which resides in the capital of Reykjavik), transforming the Icelandic transportation sector to hydrogen will require far fewer hydrogen fueling stations than what will be required in the United States. Advances include:
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Iceland has an abundance of relatively inexpensive renewable energy that is used for heating and provides 100 percent of the Nation's electricity (80 percent from hydropower and 20 percent from geothermal).
Currently, there is one hydrogen fueling station, located along a major highway in Reykjavik, which serves as a national demonstration project. Hydrogen is produced on site via renewable electrolysis. The station is a publicly accessible retail fueling station that also offers gasoline and diesel and includes a convenience store. It supports the operation of three hydrogen fuel cell buses that run regular routes around Reykjavik; there are no other hydrogen vehicles at this time.
The next phase of the country's hydrogen demonstration will involve the conversion of the entire Reykjavik bus fleet to hydrogen. Future phases will include promoting the integration of fuel cell powered vehicles for passenger use and examining the possibility of replacing the fishing fleet with hydrogen based vessels.
Iceland collaborates with the United States through the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy (IPHE), which was established in November 2003 to facilitate global collaboration on hydrogen and fuel cell research, development, and demonstration (RD&D). With a membership including 16 countries and the European Commission, the IPHE provides a forum for leveraging scarce RD&D funds, harmonizing codes and standards, and educating stakeholders and the general public on the benefits of and challenges to the hydrogen economy.
Mr. SODREL. The second question relates to the FreedomCAR initiative.
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We have a lot of foreign manufacturers of automobiles. I know Toyota has an enormous plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. It is kind of in my neighborhood. Honda, and other foreign automobile manufacturers have made significant investments in fuel cell. How do you feel about greater involvement of foreign car makers that have domestic plants in this FreedomCAR initiative? Would it help shorten the time frame here or should we ask them to participate?
Dr. BODDE. Well, in my opinion, the world auto industry is truly a global auto industry, and frankly, it makes little sense, in my opinion, to distinguish between what is domestic and what is foreign. I mean, if you look at the research alliances that are now created, you see them between General Motors and Toyota. You see them between Ford and other foreign companies. And so these things all kind of fit together anyway as an international research picture. And so I think almost whether you do or don't include them in the U.S. program, that technology is going to get to them one way or another, because it is a worldwide technology institution.
Mr. CHERNOBY. Well, we have had some discussion in the U.S. Car/FreedomCAR effort about including some of our compatriots around the world. At this time, we haven't made any final decisions on whether we want to do that or not, but we absolutely, in the pre-competitive environment, like Dr. Bodde had said, look at what we are doing around the world. One of the challenges that we do have, though, is there isn't necessarily consensus in some of the world governments on how we ought to approach this effort, and the codes and standards, and the effect, eventually, on not only the infrastructure of the vehicles that go along with it.
So worldwide harmonization is clearly one of the barriers that we always work on in the auto industry and both jointly with government. And it is likely to be one here unless we figure out a way to get it under control.
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Mr. SODREL. Thank you. I don't have any further questions.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. I thank the gentleman from Indiana.
The gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Gutknecht.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Ohio.
No, I am from Minnesota.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. It is nice that you care to admit it.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Listen. First of all, let me offer this disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I don't play one. And we are honored to have you scientists here to talk to us.
Those of you who did not hear Roscoe Bartlett's special order last night, I hope you will all at least get a chance, and I hope Roscoe will put together a ''Dear Colleague'' to share with the rest of us some of the interesting information he has shared in his special order last night on the House Floor. It was last night, wasn't it, Roscoe?
Mr. BARTLETT. Yes.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Okay. And what he really said, and I will just extend his remarks a bit here, was he said that energy is so cheap today, and he had some—in fact, I would yield to the gentleman a minute, if he wants, to share some of the examples of just how cheap energy really is.
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Mr. BARTLETT. Oh, thank you very much.
A barrel of oil is about $60 today. And you can buy the refined product of that for about $100 at the pump, 42 gallons of gas, $2 and something a gallon, right? That will buy you the work equivalent of 12 people working all year for you. That is the work output you are buying from $100 worth of gasoline. If you go out this weekend and work really hard all day, I will get more mechanical work done with an electric motor with less than 25 cents worth of electricity. That is what you are worth, in terms of mechanical work: less than 25 cents a day.
This—these fossil fuels are so darn cheap. We are just as assuredly addicted to them as a cocaine addict is to his drug. It has become a drug for us.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, reclaiming my time, and I—those were just some of the remarks he made last night, and I thought it was fascinating. And it really sort of underscores the importance of this meeting, but it also—I think we need to look at this whole energy thing in that context, that fossil fuel energy is incredibly cheap, even at $60 a barrel. Somebody figured it out, we still pay four times more for a gallon of water in a convenience store than we pay for that gallon of gasoline, even at $60 a barrel. And I am not defending the oil companies or the oil barons that have us ''over the barrel,'' no pun intended.
I want to come back to—and I was particularly interested in some of the comments by Dr. Heywood, because I think that, in some respects, you nailed it, that—I am a believer in doing all we can to advance the science relative to hydrogen power and some of these other things, but I have come to the conclusion, at least, again, as a layman, that hydrogen is, in some respects, a very, very good battery, but I think we have to—we don't want to oversell it long-term, in terms of its value as an energy source. And I am interested in some of the other technology.
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And maybe, Dr. Faulkner, you could comment on this, because I know there are some people—there are people who have come in to see me, and again, I am not a scientist. I don't play one here in the Congress, but I am just a curious guy. One of the technologies that people have talked to me about are super magnets. Are any of you doing any work with super magnets? And do you know what I am talking about?
All right. We will have them come and talk to you, because I found it fascinating that we now have—well, I will go on to a different subject.
INSERT FOR THE RECORD BY DOUGLAS L. FAULKNER
The term ''Super magnets'' is a broad description for several families of rare Earth magnets. I am not aware of any DOE work in the area of super magnets. Superconducting magnets, on the other hand, are electromagnets, which use an electric current to generate a magnetic field, and the electricity runs through superconducting materials, such that very large magnetic fields can be generated without electrical resistance creating large amounts of waste heat. The Department's Office of Science uses superconducting magnets in some of its particle accelerators.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. And that subject is really about renewable fuels, because on the other Committee that I serve on, the House Agriculture Committee, I chair a Subcommittee, and we have responsibility for some of the renewable fuel programs. And there again, there are some amazing things happening, sometimes without any oversight responsibility or funding from the Federal Government in terms of producing this fuel even cheaper.
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Just out of curiosity, how many of you know right now how much it costs at a—one of our more advanced ethanol plants to produce a gallon of ethanol? What would the cost be? What would you guess?
Dr. Faulkner.
Mr. FAULKNER. Well, about $2.10.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Next?
Dr. BODDE. I would have to look that one up for you, but I go with his number in the absence of anything else.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. All right.
Mr. CHERNOBY. I would have been more in the $3 realm.
Mr. GUTKNECHT. Okay.
Dr. HEYWOOD. I would add that those costs depend on where you draw your boundary and what costs that add up to that figure are included. There is a lot of variability in studies of producing ethanol and the reality, and it depends how the numbers are worked out.
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Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, let us do simple arithmetic. You have to buy the corn, right? It is about $2.20 a bushel right now. And you have to amortize the cost of the plant, right? The biggest cost in producing ethanol right now is in energy. I mean, you have to cook the corn. But according to my most efficient plants in my District, right now, at $2.20 a bushel of corn, and we have to assume the cost of producing that corn, and believe it or not, maybe even a little profit for the guy who grows it is in that $2.20, the answer is, and not only from my ethanol plants, but also according to the Chief Economist at USDA, the answer is 95 cents a gallon. Does that surprise you? It surprises most Americans. And I say that, because right now, in both the pure cost basis and in terms of BTUs, ethanol is cheaper than gasoline.
I yield back my time.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much.
I am from California. I am very proud of being from California.
I would just like to get down to some fundamentals, and first of all, let me suggest that Roscoe Bartlett adds a great deal to every hearing that I go to, and I am happy to have him with us and making his contributions.
Let us—I would like to ask—go back to the cost of hydrogen. From what I take it, after the exchange between you folks and Roscoe, is that there actually isn't an energy savings reasons to go to hydrogen as a fuel, because it actually would use more energy to create it than what you get out of it once it is actually manufactured, is that correct? So we are actually—the hydrogen fuel angle is that it will—it is a cleaner burning fuel for the air, is that why we want to go in that direction?
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Mr. BARTLETT. If the gentleman would yield for a quick moment.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes.
Mr. BARTLETT. It is true that it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than what you get out of it. When you use hydrogen, you can conveniently use it in a fuel cell that gets at least twice the efficiency of the reciprocating engine. So at the end of the day, you may use less energy, in spite of the energy loss. We are not going to suspend the second——
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right.
Mr. BARTLETT.—law of thermodynamics. In spite of that loss, we may end up using less energy with hydrogen.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. So would it depend on, as Roscoe is suggesting, that we—that the development of fuel cell type engines rather than the current type of engines that we have in automobiles?
Dr. BODDE. Well, both are certainly true. You do need a fuel cell, of course, to offset the inefficiencies in producing the hydrogen. But on the other hand, anything that you manufacture is subject to the second law. And so there is always an increase in entropy or a degrading of the energy source, no matter—from any human activity.
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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, I have—actually, I have been told—we just had a briefing the other day on biodiesel that suggested that that is not the case with biodiesel, with canola oil, that actually you get more BTUs out of—there are more BTUs left over by the process by a three to one margin than it takes to actually produce the biodiesel.
Dr. BODDE. As Dr. Heywood said, it depends where you draw the boundaries around the system.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. But none of you have heard that that is—you think that is an inaccurate statement if it is—when the boundaries are drawn the same around hydrogen as around biodiesel?
Dr. BODDE. I don't know the specifics of that particular one, sir, but I would be suspicious of anything that appears to create energy out of nothing. That energy always comes from some place.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yeah, well, we know that solar—as my colleague is suggesting, that the plants are actually taking in solar energy, and that is part of the process that nature has provided us, and that is the explanation of where extra energy could come from. And do any of you have anything else to say about the—comparing a biodiesel approach to a hydrogen approach in terms of the cost of energy in creating your final product?
Dr. HEYWOOD. Let me comment on that.
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One advantage of hydrogen, and I think it is real, is that it has no carbon. So it is analogous to a gasoline or diesel fuel. You can put it in the tank of a vehicle. And when it is used to drive the vehicle, there is no carbon dioxide, no greenhouse gases, emitted, so that is one of its important advantages.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. I think that is an advantage with the biodiesel as well. Is—does biodiesel create greenhouse gases? I——
Dr. HEYWOOD. Well, that——
Mr. FAULKNER. It might be a net zero, but——
Dr. HEYWOOD. That depends on the details.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right, because the plants absorb a certain amount of the——
Dr. HEYWOOD. And I would add that this may well not be an either or, because we talked primarily about passenger vehicles, but the freight part of our transportation system is very significant in terms of its energy consumption. And the big piece is the long-haul trucks, which use diesel engines. They are very efficient engines, and there is nothing on the horizon that looks like it could challenge them, in terms of efficiency.
So sources of fuel for diesel engines in—of the long-term future, is something we should be looking at and——
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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right.
Dr. HEYWOOD.—exploring and developing, and biodiesel is one option.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, it is—if you have to reconfigure the engine of every car that is manufactured in order to take hydrogen in a way that is efficient, meaning you have to end up with a fuel cell engine rather than the engines that we have, it is enormous costs in terms of transition. So we would want to make sure the end result was taking care of the fundamental problem, which is running out of energy.
Let me ask you about the hydrogen engine.
Now someone told me that a byproduct of a hydrogen engine or a fuel cell is water, and—pure water, but would this not be a problem in areas like in half of the United States where it freezes in the wintertime? Would this not be a—some kind of a problem to have water coming out of the engine?
Mr. CHERNOBY. Well, actually—I will comment.
That has been one of the challenges that we have been working on, not just water coming out of the engine, but water within the fuel cell itself. What you will find, during the process of converting the hydrogen to electricity in the fuel cell, there is quite a bit of heat that is generated to warm the water up. And the challenge we have been working on, I think, we—not only DaimlerChrysler, but other OEMs as well, have found ways to overcome is how do we manage that water within the fuel cell during that initial start-up stage when that heat is in there.
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So clearly, you are absolutely right. The challenge of that water being there in a cold environment is something that has to be managed.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. We have not—that particular hurdle has not been jumped over yet.
Mr. CHERNOBY. We have made exceptional progress in the last 12 months. I won't say we are done.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Because I can't imagine—I can—coming from California, as I do, we wouldn't mind having, I guess, more water on our roads, but if it froze, if we lived in Minnesota, as my friend here does, I would imagine that a significant part of the year, the last thing you want to have is water spread on the road and having to drive your car or have to rely on the road for transportation.
So this is a significant—it seems to me that that would be a significant problem.
Thank you very much, Madame Chairman.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
The gentleman yields back.
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The gentleman from Texas, Mr. McCaul.
Mr. MCCAUL. Thank you, Madame Chairman.
I am a member of the hydrogen fuel cell caucus, and we were introduced to a hydrogen fuel cell car, and I was able to drive it. And it was a great experience, but I asked them how much it cost to build them—and we obviously have the technology today to do it, but I asked how much did it cost to build this, and the answer was $1 million for the car.
That is obviously the issue here, bringing the cost down.
The energy companies in my district, when I talk to them about this issue, and I am very interested in it, they tell me that the timeline is 20 to 30 years out in the future. I don't want to accept that answer, and I wanted to get your response to that.
And in addition, I wanted to ask the question or possibly get a comment on the energy bill that we hope is going to come out of conference committee. There will be approximately $2 billion appropriated for alternative energy, including hydrogen. And where would you think—where would you direct that money if you were king for a day and could call the shots on that?
And then finally, the role of the universities, I have a university in my District, and in my view, I think the universities have a role to play with respect to developing these alternative energies.
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I will just open it up to the panel.
Dr. HEYWOOD. Let me comment on the time scales.
It is important that we say—or sort out time scale to what. And we have got fuel cell cars out already. There will be larger fleets 10 or 15 years from now. The DOE commercialization decision is pitched for 2015, 10 years from now. Our judgment was that fuel cells—we will know whether they are marketable within about 15 years. That is not all that different.
But then there is this time scale to build up production. And we have never gone through a large-scale change in a propulsion system, except for the diesel transition in Europe. Diesels took over from 10 percent of the market in Europe in 1980 to 50 percent now. So it took 25 years. Diesels, a well-established technology, to go from small scale to 50 percent of the market. How long will it take fuel cells? That is where we get to 20, 30, 40 years before there are enough fuel cells to have an impact on our energy consumption.
Mr. MCCAUL. So the energy companies are—they are accurate when they say that?
Dr. HEYWOOD. They are right.
Mr. MCCAUL. Okay.
Dr. CRABTREE. May I comment?
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The last two parts of your question about where should the funding go and what—and the role of universities.
I believe that there is an enormous amount of basic research that needs to be done, and the best place—one of the best places to do that is universities. Universities and national labs working together can actually accomplish that goal.
When you have $2 billion to spend, you—it actually isn't a lot if only a fraction of it goes to hydrogen. You have to be careful with how you spend it, and I think there needs to be a balance. So there should be a balance between helping industry do the research, as many of the companies do, and universities and national labs. I think these are the three places it should go——
Mr. MCCAUL. Good.
Dr. CRABTREE.—with very carefully targeted goals.
Dr. BODDE. Let me offer a comment, also, sir, if I may, on the role of the universities.
I think it is important to recognize that universities are fundamentally ''people factories.'' That is, their basic product is people. And turning out people who are not only capable in the technology, but capable innovators is probably a very primary thing and probably one that may have been underappreciated in the university for a number of years.
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Beyond that, of course, is the basic research, the blue sky research. But I think there is an emerging role for universities, also, as innovation centers, as centers not only for the creation of new technology ideas, but the capturing of those—of the economic value in those ideas, because as we look at competitive worldwide industries, we are beginning to see increasing pressures on the central R&D functions in virtually every company. And if that is to happen, if that translating function is to happen, then it has got to go someplace, and I believe the universities can emerge and play some role, not the only role, of course, but an increasing role in that.
Mr. FAULKNER. A couple of comments, sir.
Universities are a key partner for my office across the board, and they are for this hydrogen initiative. I mentioned in my oral testimony that we have three Centers of Excellence we have initiated. They include 20 universities just in that alone.
On the cost, I think one thing to mention is, yes, there aren't that many cars on the road, so just like anything else, the prices are high. The more you make, the more the costs come down.
One thing we have started to look at, and I mentioned this in my oral testimony, I think this is an exciting field, is manufacturing R&D. I think we need to look more at this and other renewable areas, too, but to look at how to take things in the laboratory out into the plant floor or the factory floor and move it on out into commercialization. And we are going to be looking more and more at that in the years ahead. This is a spin-off of the President's manufacturing initiative. And we are looking at things like high-volume manufacturing, standardizing components, developing an infrastructure, developing a supplier base. And this is going to be a critical factor in helping to bring those costs down as you manufacture the hydrogen initiative.
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Mr. MCCAUL. If I could ask one more question, Madame Chair.
Twenty to thirty years to have market saturation, but when do we think the first hydrogen cars will actually be out on the market?
Mr. CHERNOBY. Well, again, it gets back to your time question. I don't find it so easy to actually put a specific date on the invention of technology and research. If we had that kind of crystal ball, I think we would be in a lot better shape. But we look forward to vehicles, and then when you say ready, it depends upon, again, at what value for the customer and what price point. But during the—this next decade is when we would expect, at DaimlerChrysler, we ought to have that commercial vehicle viable for the marketplace, from a technical perspective.
But it is only as good as having available the infrastructure. I thought the ethanol discussion was very interesting. We have built millions of vehicles capable of running on ethanol, and they are out there in the marketplace today. But yet it shows you that unless you have got market pull and market incentive, it doesn't all come together to benefit either the environment or energy security.
Mr. MCCAUL. Thank you, Madame Chair.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
I think we have time for a few more questions, if everybody is very brief asking the question and answering the question.
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So Chairman Inglis, would you like to go ahead for five minutes?
Thank you.
Chairman INGLIS. I thank you.
Mr. Chernoby, I understand that you have some dealings with the—with codes and standards tech team. And one of the significant roles of the Federal Government or government somewhere may be the setting of codes and standards, especially for the storage of hydrogen. Do you want to comment on any suggestions that you have for us at the federal level or what should be our approach? It is a little bit early, I know, to—maybe to project those, but suggestions from you about how to approach codes and standards.
Mr. CHERNOBY. I would give you three key suggestions.
Number one, don't try to move to locking down a code or a standard too early while technology is still in the evolutionary stage. When technology starts to settle down, then, in a pre-competitive environment, we can all work together, both industry and government, to set the right standards.
So number one, don't move too quickly.
Number two, as you already do in a very proactive mode, work with us. We will all work together to try to find the right balance to make sure that every standard we issue is going to be viable in the marketplace and provide everything it has got to do, whether it be safety for the consumer right on down to the various environmental benefits we might need.
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And then finally, we have got to work together to keep an eye on the global codes and standards. And I know the government is already participating in some harmonization community—or collective efforts around the world. We have got to do our best, as we try and develop these codes and standards, that they are very similar so that we can gain volumes of scale, bring the costs down, and make the vehicles viable in the marketplace.
Chairman INGLIS. With these test vehicles that have been mentioned that we are driving around, have there been any local fire chiefs in various cities that have said, ''Not in our city,'' or anything like that, I mean, such that we are already seeing some discrepancies in the standards?
Mr. CHERNOBY. I wouldn't say in those terms, but there have been local fire chiefs that have raised their hand and said, ''Come talk to me. We would like to have some input. We would like to work with you.'' And that is virtually in almost every state where we are participating today. So we absolutely welcome and—that type of conversation effort, so we are collectively working together to find the rest—the best answer.
Chairman INGLIS. Anybody else want to comment on that? The codes and standards?
Thank you, Madame Chair.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
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We will—I think we will skip over, if you don't mind, Dr. Bartlett, to Mr. Schwarz from Michigan, who just arrived for his first round.
Mr. SCHWARZ. Thank you, but I have no questions.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Oh, well, then we won't.
Mr. Bartlett is recognized.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
Let me take just a moment to define, for those who are listening or those who may be reading this testimony, what we mean by ''Hubbard's Peak.'' This resulted from the work of a geologist working for the Shell Oil Company back in the 1940s and 1950s who noticed the exploitation and exhaustion of oil fields that tended to follow a bell curve, increasing production to a peak and then falling off as you pull the last oil out of the field. He—in estimating the fields yet to be found and adding those to the fields he knew were in existence for the United States, he predicted, in 1956, that the United States would peak in oil production in about 1970. His prediction turned out to be exactly right. Every year since 1970, we have not only found less oil, we have pumped less oil.
Using his analysis techniques, he predicted that the world would peak at about 2000. That slipped a little because of the Arab oil embargo, oil price spike hikes, and a worldwide recession. And there are many insiders who believe that we are now at Hubbard's Peak.
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And so Hubbard's Peak represents the peak oil production in the world, and it is only downhill after that. A plateau for a while, and then downhill after that.
I would just like to caution and get your comment on it, that we shouldn't be too optimistic about the energy we are going to get from agriculture. Tonight, 20 percent of the world will go to bed hungry. Until we learned to do no-till cropping, we were losing the battle with maintaining our topsoil. It was ending up in our bays, and from the whole central part of our country, to the Mississippi delta. If—to get a lot of energy from agriculture, we are either going to have to eat the corn that we would have fed to the pig, we are going to have to live lower on the food scale, because you can't feed the corn to the pig and then eat the pig, because there is an awful—that is a very poor energy transfer, by the way, when you are doing that.
Also, if we are going to take a lot of the biomass off, I have some real concern about our ability to maintain topsoil. As I said, until we learned to do no-till farming, we were losing that battle. We are just now barely able to hold the quality of our topsoil with no-till farming. If we are raping the soil of a lot of this organic material, the tills will deteriorate, the soil will have no acceptable tills, and we are—you know, it is going to become a mud pit when it is wet and a brick when it is dry. That is how you make brick. You take soil that has no humus in it and put it in an oven and bake it.
Do you share some concerns about the potential for getting energy from agriculture in the long haul?
Dr. HEYWOOD. Let me respond.
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Yes, I do. There is a question what—how big a contribution we think it might be able to make.
There are several questions. One is how big a contribution, and the other is exactly what you have just talked about, what are the long-term environmental impacts of monocultures grown on a large scale to produce fuel.
And I have a Ph.D. student who is working on a project that is focused exactly on that, because there is very—there is not a lot of prior work that looks at these longer-term impacts. And what we have found so far is that people's predictions on these impacts vary a lot. So there really is a need to dig into that question and understand it better.
But even if biofuels contribute five percent or 10 percent to our liquid transportation fuel system, that is—it is not easy to find five and 10 percent. So that might be an important five and 10 percent.
Mr. FAULKNER. I believe, sir, a quick answer for me is I am more sanguine than you might be on that subject. I would note that the Department of Energy and Agriculture just recently published a report that we internally call ''The Billion Ton Study.'' That is over a billion tons of forest material and agricultural material, that is not just the corn kernel. There is starch. It is also waste material, like corn stalks and sugar cane gas, are available—or could be available in the future to produce biofuels, products, and power, and I think that is a study I would like to get to you, if that is okay.
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INSERT FOR THE RECORD BY DOUGLAS L. FAULKNER
In April 2005, the U.S. Departments of Energy and Agriculture published the following report assessing the potential of the land resources in the United States for producing sustainable biomass: Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply. This study indicates that a billion tons of biomass supply consisting of renewable resources from both agricultural and forestry supplies could be utilized in an environmentally and economically sustainable manner. According to the report, these resources are capable of supplying more than 30 percent of the Nation's present petroleum consumption and include agricultural residues such as corn stalks and sugarcane bagasse. Presently, the Department is supporting the Department of Agriculture in its efforts to determine how much of the residue can be removed without reducing soil fertility and depressing grain yields in subsequent years after residue removal.
[The report appears in Appendix 2: Additional Material for the Record.]
Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Secretary, I am not sure we—it is appropriate to call these things ''waste material.'' Anything that goes back to the soil to maintain the health of the soil, putting organic material back into the soil, that is really not a ''waste material.'' For one year, you may see it as ''waste material,'' but if you keep doing that for a long time, I have some concern about what is going to happen to our topsoil and our ability to grow these crops.
Dr. CRABTREE. May I make one comment on your question about where the energy will come from after Hubbard's Peak?
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It is just one statistic, you might be interested, one fact. The sun gives, in one hour, more energy to the Earth than we use in one year, so there is an enormous resource in solar energy, if we knew how to tap it, that would, indeed, supply our needs.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. I am a big solar enthusiast. I have a place in West Virginia off the grid, and we produce all of our electricity, so I will tell you that you have to be pretty sparing in your use of electricity. And we have a number of panels. You are going to have to have a very different lifestyle when you can't use your grandparents' inheritance anymore, you have to live on your 15 percent income.
Dr. BODDE. With that said, sir, I think we are just beginning to see the effects of energy conservation, or efficient energy use, I guess I should say, and as energy prices rise, as engineers begin to look at the services that energy provides, as opposed to the energy itself, I think there is huge potential for that to relieve some of this problem already. Will it relieve the whole thing? No, of course not. But as Dr. Heywood said, five or 10 percent is not bad.
Mr. BARTLETT. Just one comment, Madame Chairman. Thank you for the time.
We better do that, sir, or we are going to have no energy to invest in the alternatives that we must transition to. Today, we are using all of our energy, just barely able, at $60 a barrel, to produce enough to keep our economies going. We have no energy to invest, essentially none to invest. We have to make big investments of time and energy if we are going to transition. And we will transition, by the way. We will either do it on our course or at nature's course. But we will transition from fossil fuels to renewables. The question is, how bumpy will that ride be?
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Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
The gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much, Madame Chairperson. This is a very important hearing.
While you gentlemen are sitting there, conferees are meeting on the massive energy policy bill, and I would venture to say that although the Science Committee and the previous speaker and others worked their heart out, the predominance of the bill obviously deal with fossil fuel.
But the Science Committee did have its voice, and I am pleased to note that there were a number of options and alternatives and excellent additions to the legislation per this committee.
I am also pleased to note, as I understand it, Mr. Faulkner, that we have added $33 million in fiscal year 2006 regarding the hydrogen program. I hope that is accurate, and you might comment in my questions.
Let me just say that I come from Texas, so I come from oil country. And in fact, one of my amendments in the bill spoke to determining the extent of deposits off the Gulf of Mexico so that we could plan long range in a more organized manner what we had at our access, if we will, particularly in light of the fact that the greater exploration is probably more off the Louisiana and Texas coasts than it might be off of Texas—off of California and Florida.
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So there are some concerns about energy resources, particularly oil and gas, even though there are those of us who live in that environment and certainly support that environment in a safe and healthy way, we are also open-minded to recognize that the United States has to have options.
And so I pose these questions with the backdrop of the development that is going on off the shores of Louisiana and Mexico and also international oil development and the new findings on LNG. There are options that I think that we should be involved in.
I will pose two questions, keeping that in mind, and a sub-question.
One, it may have been asked, but I am interested in the proposed sources for hydrogen, particularly the options include nuclear and natural gas, clean coal, wind, and renewables. And I would be interested from all of you as to what shows the most promise.
Then we have done some work in the Science Committee on fuel cells. And in fact, we had some amendments along those lines in the energy bill. Fuel cells and fuel production are experiencing competitive pressures significant enough to affect pricing, is my question, is the market in fuel cells, if that pressure is affecting pricing? And if it is not, when will we see a truly competitive fuel cell market? And what drives down prices and advances technology?
Mr. Chernoby, in your remarks, I would be interested in whether you have hybrid cars already, using hydrogen or other alternatives.
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And then for all of you to answer the question of the great need to educate more scientists and engineers, which is an issue that I have worked on on this committee. I am frightened by the prospect that we may not have a farm team of physicists and chemists, engineers, and I have worked to help finance the historically black colleges and Hispanic-serving colleges and community colleges. But I welcome your comments on what we could do on expanding that area.
And I yield to the gentlemen.
I ask, also, that my remarks may be submitted into the record.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Without objection.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Faulkner, would you start, please? And is that $33 million accurate? Do you know? Or have we given you more?
Mr. FAULKNER. Yes, ma'am. The President announced an initiative for $1.2 billion over five years. We are on track for that initiative. I was looking at the chart in front of me. Fiscal year 2005 appropriations for the whole initiative, which includes my office, the Nuclear Office, Fossil Office, Science, and also the Department of Transportation, appropriations for fiscal year 2005, was, roughly, $225 million. Our presidential request for that same group is roughly $260 million.
You mentioned——
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Ms. JACKSON LEE. And you are getting more money for hydrogen? That is what I was asking. You don't have that——
Mr. FAULKNER. Well, this is the hydrogen fuel initiative. It is fuel cells, hydrogen production——
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you.
Mr. FAULKNER. You asked several other questions. I will provide answers for a couple of those, and my colleagues will probably fill in others.
You asked what shows the most promise for sources of hydrogen. I think, right now, it is too early to say. We are pursuing several different pathways. We are still early in this initiative, and I would hate to cut off promising research and development by picking a winner or a loser this early in the game.
You talked about scientists and engineers, and I would just note that we have an initiative that I personally am very fond of in our office with the National Association for State Universities and Land Grant Colleges that we have been working on with them for the last couple of years. It's not directly related to the hydrogen initiative, but we think there is a lot of excitement here, and we share your interest in building these—growing more scientists—the scientists and engineers in America. And if you would like, we could give you more information on that, and that does include historically black colleges you mentioned.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. I would. Thank you.
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INSERT FOR THE RECORD BY DOUGLAS L. FAULKNER
Since 2004, the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC) have been building a partnership to improve communication between the two scientific communities, advance the development and use of energy efficiency and renewable technologies, and educate the young scientists and engineers that America needs for securing our energy future.
For EERE, the 217 NASULGC institutions of higher education, which include 18 historically black institutions and 33 American Indian land-grant colleges, provide an opportunity for focusing research, extension/outreach, and curriculum development activities on energy efficiency and renewable energy issues. EERE can use NASULGC's Cooperative Extension and Outreach networks to improve the dissemination of results coming from university researchers and DOE research laboratories, and to spread the use and adoption of energy-saving and renewable energy technologies and products for residential, commercial, and other sectors.
For NASULGC affiliated institutions, the outcome is to develop relevant curriculum, research, and outreach programs with EERE's latest technologies that will assist their students and the citizens of their state. NASULGC can work with EERE to help its member institutions increase their responsiveness to practical issues and provide opportunities for faculty and students to gain access to research and cutting edge knowledge.
EERE and NASULGC are working together to assist young people's understanding and appreciation for math and science through a hands-on learning program with 4–H kids. Young participants apply physics, mathematics, and other disciplines to lighting and other energy technologies. Energy efficiency and renewable education programs are also being delivered to youth and adults.
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Dr. BODDE. One comment, if I may, on the colleges and colleges as ''people factories,'' in particular.
I think that is very important to the economic growth and the scientific growth of this country.
One of the things, though, that I think that research universities have to do is learn to become more effective partners with technical colleges to allow an effective transition and effective unified program between them. That is one of the things that we are trying to put in place at the ICAR now is a partnership with a—the local technical university so that we provide to the upstate coalition in—or the upstate auto cluster, I should say, a completely unified educational program that ranges from the technical level to the graduate research level.
Dr. HEYWOOD. Could I comment on that question about education?
From our perspective, I think government graduate fellowships focused on specific areas do several very useful things. They pull young people into those areas, and they become—that becomes their area of expertise. And also, fellowship students are extremely useful, from a faculty member's perspective, because they are, in a sense, free labor to start on a new topic. And so they really have an effect of allowing faculty members to branch out into new research areas, and that is exactly the sort of—pulling young people into this—these areas that are going to be critical to us for the next many, many decades, and also providing opportunities for starting up new and, hopefully, interesting and promising research activities.
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Back to the sources of hydrogen, I would like to add just one comment.
I think it is—Mr. Faulkner is quite right. It is too early to start to make choices, but I think it is worth saying something about many people's feeling that if we have got renewable electricity, then we can make hydrogen with, sort of, no environmental impacts. Well, if we got renewable electricity, that is fantastic stuff, and it will displace coal-generated electricity. And I sometimes feel like, well, why would you take a really good wine and convert it into a not so good wine. Electricity is a fantastic wine. Hydrogen isn't quite as good.
So I think that is a very good question. There are questions like that that we need to dig into, but it is too early to say. But we are going to have to be imaginative, because if we don't produce the hydrogen without releasing greenhouse gases, we have really—we have not moved forward very much at all.
Dr. CRABTREE. Yeah, may I comment on that, too?
I would like to reinforce what Dr. Heywood said that it is very important to produce the hydrogen without carbon. And the one way in which you can do that is to split water. There are many ways to split water. You mentioned nuclear and electrolysis, but there are other ways, too, notably solar energy. It would be wonderful to take a beaker of water, put it into a container that is highly technological, set it in the sun, and simply produce hydrogen with no other energy input. And in fact, that can be done in the laboratory now with about 18 percent efficiency. Of course, it is much too expensive to do commercially, but I think that is the challenge.
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So if we can do that, we have solved lots of problems: we don't have any dependence on foreign energy sources, because the sun falls on everyone's head; we don't produce any greenhouse gases; we don't produce any pollutants; and the supply is, effectively, inexhaustible.
So I think this is the route we should go. It is a question of which renewable energy sources we use.
Dr. BODDE. One further comment on universities.
The American university has become truly an international, multi-national enterprise. There are students coming to us preferentially from all over the world. We have attracted into our universities some extraordinary talent, the greatest talent that exists in many countries. I think we need to find ways to retain that talent within this country, not only when they are graduate students, but afterwards. And I think we should look again at our security policies and ask if we are not straining out a whole lot of folks that we really wish that we would have around here?
Mr. CHERNOBY. And just to close your question on the fuel cell vehicles.
Yes, at DaimlerChrysler, we have approximately 100 different fuel cell vehicles on the road around the world, many of those here in the United States in the DOE demonstration project, gaining valuable data to help us understand what are the new problems we face when we move from the lab to the environment.
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And I would add, on education, we don't—we, at DaimlerChrysler, also very—think it is very important to attract young people to the technical arenas. We participate very strongly in efforts at the elementary school level, the middle school level, and through things like the first robotics competition at the high school level. It is absolutely critical to attract them to the technical fields in the first place before they get to the collegiate type of environment.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you very much.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Just a quick couple of questions to—before we close.
Dr. Bodde, the first recommendation of the National Academy's report was for DOE to develop an increased ability to analyze the impact of new technologies, such as hydrogen, on the entire energy system so that the Department can wisely set priorities for energy R&D. How would you rate the Department's current systems analysis effort? And should it be changed, in your opinion, to improve it?
Dr. BODDE. Well, it is certainly too early to judge, but I think the response from the Department of Energy was quite immediate and quite effective. The office was established, housed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and has begun to—a wide-scale set of works.
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But I think this modeling of the entire energy system is very important, because, in the end, it has got to function as an integrated system where we have got to understand how it can function as an integrated system. Further, we have to understand how that system is evolving. So it is one thing to create models for the system, but it is another thing, also, to monitor progress as it goes along to monitor where bets are being placed, say, in the private sector. Where is private venture capital going in these things?
And I guess if I could offer one suggestion for a direction that this systems integration or modeling effort would go, it is to add to those capacities an ability to look at where the private sector is going right now, the bets that private investors are placing in new technologies.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
And then, Dr. Crabtree, the DOE is currently funding learning demonstrations with the auto makers and energy companies. Is the information that DOE is getting from the auto makers worth the price of the demonstrations, given the technical challenges that remain?
Dr. CRABTREE. Well, that is a very difficult question to answer. Let me say something generally, which may not be quite the specific answer you are looking for.
I think it is very important to have demonstration projects, because there you learn what the problems are, and you learn how to innovate. And if you look at the history of energy, and let us say, internal combustion engines, that is how the progress was made. So we can't discount that as a very important way to go forward.
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I would balance that with the feeling that we need to put basic research on the table as well. It is really both of those efforts that are going to make the hydrogen economy vibrant, competitive, innovative, and lasting for 100 years, as the fossil fuel economy has done.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Would you say that the money would be better spent on basic research, or does there need to be a balance?
Dr. CRABTREE. I think there needs to be a balance. There absolutely needs to be a balance.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
And I have one more here, if I can find it.
Mr. Chernoby, what role do the entrepreneurs or start-up companies and venture capitalist investors have to play in helping DaimlerChrysler accelerate the commercial introduction of the advanced hydrogen fuel cell vehicles?
Mr. CHERNOBY. Absolutely, they are going to play a critical role, especially in those areas where we develop a new technological innovation that may not be of significant interest to a big company at this point in time to invest. The entrepreneur may be our avenue to actually get that into the commercialization, as Dr. Bodde mentioned earlier.
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So we absolutely see that linkage as one that may be a very critical path in order to get this to a reality.
Dr. BODDE. Just a footnote on that, Madame Chairman.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Sure.
Dr. BODDE. When the laser was first invented at Bell Labs, the inventors of it had a very hard time getting it patented.
And why did they have a hard time getting it patented? Well, it turns out that, for the telephone, it was then understood there was absolutely no use for this innovation. And so it was only by great persuasion that Bell Labs actually managed to capture the patents for this enormously useful, broadly applicable innovation.
Chairwoman BIGGERT. Thank you.
And with that note, we will—before we bring the hearing to a close, I want to thank our panelists for testifying before the Subcommittee today. I think it was—you are just experts in your fields, and it was very, very helpful to all of us.
And if there is no objection, the record will remain open for additional statements from the Members and for answers to any follow-up questions the Subcommittee may ask of the panelists. So without objection, so ordered.
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The hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix 1:
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
Responses by Douglas L. Faulkner, Acting Assistant Secretary, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy
Questions submitted by Chairman Judy Biggert and Chairman Bob Inglis
Q1. Dr. Bodde recommended that the Department of Energy (DOE) keep track of the efforts of auto suppliers and smaller private ventures that support the automotive industry. Has DOE taken any steps in this direction, and what else can be done?
A1. We agree that it is important to stay abreast of commercial and technical developments of auto suppliers and smaller private ventures. A strong supplier base capable of providing parts for advanced vehicles is important to maintain the U.S. auto industry's competitiveness especially given auto manufacturers' increased reliance in recent years on their first and second tier suppliers.
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We monitor developments at supplier companies and smaller private ventures by regularly attending technical conferences, sponsoring technology assessments, tracking the technical literature, visiting R&D facilities, and meeting with researchers. Most importantly, we provide a substantial portion of our transportation-related R&D funding to such companies. In FY05, the Department of Energy's, Hydrogen, Fuel Cell and Infrastructure Program spent approximately $72 million, or 32 percent of its budget and the FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program spent approximately $35 million, or 40 percent of its light duty vehicles budget to fund research at such companies. In addition, many suppliers work directly with our national laboratories which provides further insights into the types of technology challenges arising and how they are being addressed.
Q2. How is DOE working to ensure that the technologies developed under the FreedomCAR program that can be used in conventional vehicles are moved into the marketplace, and that the efficiency gains from the technologies are used to improve fuel economy?
A2. New vehicle technologies normally take about 15 years to reach maximum market penetration. Ultimately, companies must make independent decisions on which combination of technologies makes sense for each to commercialize based upon the establishment of viable business cases. Even if performance and cost targets are met, other market factors (e.g., availability and price of gasoline, investment capital conditions/risk, etc.) will influence industry's decision to commercialize a particular technology.
DOE works closely with industry through the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership and our cost-shared R&D projects to help strengthen the business case for the adoption of technologies on which we work. Partnerships help facilitate technology transfer and information dissemination by creating a common understanding of technical capabilities and barriers and by providing a forum in which to exchange ideas. In addition, as technical progress is made, performance targets are met and validated, and cost is reduced, the technologies become more attractive for industry to adopt and commercialize.
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Q3. What steps might the industry take to assure customers that hydrogen-powered vehicles meet the same or higher standards of safety compared to current vehicles?
A3. Ultimately, customer assurance of safety will be accomplished by establishing a safety record and experience base that demonstrates safe use of hydrogen by the public. Since that experience base does not yet exist, it is critical that early hydrogen demonstrations operate with safety at the highest priority level. To accomplish this, both DOE and industry are working together through the following activities to ensure safety:
Establishing codes and standards. All major domestic and international codes and standards organizations are working with industry and other stakeholders to establish the initial safety standards and codes which will guide the roll-out of hydrogen technology. A number of key codes and standards have been completed and are in the process of being adopted. As the technology evolves over the next decade, these codes and standards will be revised. In addition, the Department of Transportation is performing their regulatory role of establishing vehicle standards, crash worthiness and pipeline safety.
Ensuring safety of demonstration vehicles and fueling. To ensure safety during hydrogen demonstrations, layers of safety systems are being employed. For example: 1) Vehicles are equipped with a number of hydrogen leak detectors that trip below the concentration level of hydrogen that would support combustion, 2) Accident sensors (similar to those used to deploy air bags) are employed to prevent fuel flow following an accident, and 3) Service stations are equipped with sensors and monitors, and refueling operations are conducted by trained personnel.
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Ensuring safety of DOE projects. DOE has implemented a series of measures to ensure safe operation of our R&D program: A primary measure is the DOE Hydrogen Safety Panel, an independent group which counsels DOE on safety matters, performs reviews of project safety plans and conducts site audits of facility conducting R&D.
Training. DOE is working with government, industry and fire professionals to develop and conduct training for first responders.
Reporting incidents and lessons learned. DOE is in the process of establishing an international hydrogen incident database so that information from hydrogen incidents or ''near-misses'' from around the world can be shared throughout the hydrogen community, helping to prevent future safety problems.
Q4. Professor Heywood argues that because of the high risk of failure of the hydrogen research initiative, DOE should increase funding for alternative vehicle technologies, such as electric vehicles and biomass fuels. What do you think the chances are that technical barriers will cause the hydrogen initiative to fail? Is DOE providing enough funding to alternatives?
A4. We believe the Administration's requests have provided enough funding for R&D in vehicles and biomass. We agree that their merits are significant. We also believe the chance of achieving technical success in the development of hydrogen technologies is very good, due to extensive program planning, management and review.
Question submitted by Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett
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Q1. In your opinion, is a limited world platinum supply likely to be a barrier to the widespread adoption of fuel cells?
A1. No. A study by TIAX, LLC determined that there are sufficient platinum resources in the ground to meet long-term projected platinum demand if the amount of platinum in fuel cell systems is reduced to the Department's target level. The DOE-sponsored study, shows that world platinum demand (including jewelry, fuel cell and industrial applications) by 2050 would be 20,000 metric tons against a total projected resource of 76,000 metric tons. This study assumes that fuel cell vehicles attain 80 percent market penetration by 2050 (from U.S., Western Europe, China, India and Japan). The study shows that the limiting factor in keeping up with increased platinum demand is the ability of the industry to respond and install additional production infrastructure. Since in the out-years, recycling would provide almost 60 percent of the supply, the industry will have to be careful not to overbuild production capacity in a more accelerated market demand scenario.
Platinum availability is a strategic issue for the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Platinum is expensive and is currently critical to achieving the required levels of fuel cell power density and efficiency. As such, the Department has been focused on reducing and substituting for (with non-precious metal catalysts) the amount of platinum in fuel cell stacks (while maintaining performance and durability) so that hydrogen fuel cells can be cost competitive with gasoline internal combustion engines.
Significant progress has been made and is still being made by national laboratories, universities and industry to reduce the amount of platinum needed in a fuel cell stack by replacing platinum catalysts with platinum alloy catalysts or non-platinum catalysts, enhancing the specific activity of platinum containing catalysts, and depositing these catalysts on electrodes using innovative processes. The Office of Science has recently initiated new basic research projects on the design of catalysts at the nanoscale that focus on continued reduction in the amount of platinum catalyst required in fuel cell stacks.
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Typically, it takes three to five years to increase platinum production capacity in response to an increase in demand. Fuel cell vehicle production may create a brief platinum supply deficit, leading to short-term price increases.
The TIAX study shows that platinum prices over the last one hundred years fluctuated based on major world events (e.g., world war, etc.), however, the mean price (adjusted for inflation) remained stable at $300 per troy ounce. However, over the last couple of years platinum has been higher at $900 per troy ounce.
Question submitted by Representative Michael E. Sodrel
Q1. Please provide details of Iceland's effort to convert entirely to a hydrogen economy. Is DOE working with Iceland on this effort? Have they made any advances, including in geothermal energy, that will help to advance a hydrogen economy in the U.S.?
A1. Iceland's goal is to become the first nation in the world to achieve the vision of a hydrogen economy. The move to a hydrogen economy has significant government support, and surveys conducted by Icelandic New Energy indicate significant public support as well. With a population of less than 300,000 (the majority of which resides in the capital of Reykjavik), transforming the Icelandic transportation sector to hydrogen will require far fewer hydrogen fueling stations than what will be required in the United States. Advances include:
Iceland has an abundance of relatively inexpensive renewable energy that is used for heating and provides 100 percent of the Nation's electricity (80 percent from hydropower and 20 percent from geothermal).
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Currently, there is one hydrogen fueling station, located along a major highway in Reykjavik, which serves as a national demonstration project. Hydrogen is produced on site via renewable electrolysis. The station is a publicly accessible retail fueling station that also offers gasoline and diesel and includes a convenience store. It supports the operation of three hydrogen fuel cell buses that run regular routes around Reykjavik; there are no other hydrogen vehicles at this time.
The next phase of the country's hydrogen demonstration will involve the conversion of the entire Reykjavik bus fleet to hydrogen. Future phases will include promoting the integration of fuel cell powered vehicles for passenger use and examining the possibility of replacing the fishing fleet with hydrogen based vessels.
Iceland collaborates with the United States through the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy (IPHE), which was established in November 2003 to facilitate global collaboration on hydrogen and fuel cell research, development, and demonstration (RD&D). With a membership including 16 countries and the European Commission, the IPHE provides a forum for leveraging scarce RD&D funds, harmonizing codes and standards, and educating stakeholders and the general public on the benefits of and challenges to the hydrogen economy.
Question submitted by Representative Michael M. Honda
Q1. Given the level of innovation in advanced vehicle technologies as demonstrated by foreign-owned automobile manufacturers such as Toyota, Nissan and Honda, would it benefit the U.S. to expand more of the cooperative research, development and demonstration programs (including FreedomCAR) to include foreign-owned companies with domestic R&D and manufacturing facilities?
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A1. The Department's public/private partnership to develop hydrogen and hybrid-electric vehicle technologies—the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership is not a partnership with individual auto companies, but is between DOE and the U.S. Council for Automotive Research (USCAR). Under the USCAR umbrella, car companies are able to engage in cooperative, pre-competitive research, and to coordinate the industry's interaction with government research organizations. Auto companies that are conducting substantial automotive research and development activities within the U.S. are able to apply for membership in USCAR.
Even though many foreign companies have substantial production facilities within the United States, they do not have staff in North America with the appropriate R&D expertise or experience to qualify for participation in the development of technology goals and milestones for these programs.
Foreign car companies, however, have been and continue to be able to contribute their ideas to the programs by meeting with DOE program managers and by participating in DOE workshops, stakeholder meetings, program reviews, and solicitations. They also are able to provide input through public comments on pre-solicitation and go/no-go decision notices. We also frequently visit their R&D facilities and monitor technological developments outside of the United States.
ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
Responses by David L. Bodde, Director, Innovation and Public Policy, International Center for Automotive Research, Clemson University
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Questions submitted by Chairman Judy Biggert and Chairman Bob Inglis
Q1. What steps might the industry take to assure customers that hydrogen-powered vehicles meet the same or higher standards of safety compared to current vehicles?
A1. Years of experience with hydrogen production and use clearly demonstrate that a high degree of safety can be achieved. But all this experience has been gained in applications that are professionally managed and maintained. When hydrogen is introduced into the consumer economy, an entirely different set of issues arise, not only for consumers but also for first-responders to emergencies.
Safety will be especially important during the transition period, as any hydrogen-related accidents will draw intense public scrutiny. This applies to every part of the hydrogen supply chain—production, logistics, dispensing, and on-vehicle use. Thus, all parts of an emerging hydrogen industry, not just the vehicle makers, must move aggressively to define and resolve potential safety issues. The Department of Energy should take the lead here—for example, by raising the importance of safety in its FreedomCAR program. This could be done by creating a ''safety team'' in addition to the team developing codes and standards. Further, safety should be considered a system-wide issue and integrated into all the technical teams.
Some specific issues pose special concerns. In my view, high pressure hydrogen storage on-board vehicles poses the greatest single safety challenge, especially as these vehicles age. Plainly, much design effort should be devoted to fail-safe systems, and manufacturers must build these vehicles for quality and durability. For the longer-term, low-pressure, solid-state storage systems might offer relief, but for now these remain research goals and far from marketplace reality.
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Finally, all companies participating in the emerging hydrogen economy must share safety-related information widely. This serves their self interest, as an accident anywhere is likely to impugn hydrogen activities everywhere.
Q2. What have you learned from your experience on the National Academies' review panel on FreedomCAR? What recommendations do you feel most important?
A2. The FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership takes on an extraordinary challenge: to precipitate revolutionary change in a global vehicle and fuels infrastructure that has served well for over 100 years and that continues to perform well from a consumer perspective. The challenge is in part technological, but in equal measure it is social and economic—yet the chief policy instrument used by the Federal Government has been technology development. The technologists, however, cannot do it all, and private businesses must respond to the marketplace. Therefore, success will require strong and consistent leadership from elected officials in order to supplement technology as a pathway to change.
In my view, the most important recommendation from the National Academies' review were:
Hydrogen storage and fuel cell performance. Extraordinarily ambitious goals have been set for the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, especially in the crucial areas of on-vehicle hydrogen storage and fuel cell performance. Increased attention and support will be required, especially for membrane research, new catalyst systems, electrode design, and all aspects of energy storage.
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Risk hedging. As a hedge against delay in meeting these goals, the program should emphasize:
Advanced combustion engines and emissions controls;
Battery storage of energy, a ''no regrets'' strategy that will also serve the hybrid electric vehicles, plug-hybrids, and eventually the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle; and,
Management of electric energy systems, also serving all forms of electric drive vehicles.
Congressionally directed funding. The panel noted that diversion of resources from critical technology areas increases the risk that the program will not meet its goals in a timely manner.
Q3. Professor Heywood argues that because of the high risk of failure of the hydrogen research initiative, the Department of Energy (DOE) should increase funding for alternative vehicle technologies, such as electric motors and biomass fuels. What do you think the chances are that technical barriers will cause the hydrogen initiative to fail? Is DOE providing enough funding to alternatives?
A3. My own concern is not so much that the hydrogen initiative will fail by encountering some fundamental physical barrier. Rather, I fear that technical barriers and parsimonious funding will delay deployment of a hydrogen economy well beyond the goals set by the DOE.
In the meantime, this nation—and, indeed, the world—will continue to rely in the internal combustion engine. Therefore, simple prudence would suggest we hedge our bets (as above) both with improvements to the ICE and with alternative fuels that could backstop a delayed hydrogen economy.
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Question submitted by Representative W. Todd Akin
Q1. In your testimony, you stated that, ''coal offers the lowest cost pathway to a hydrogen based energy economy.'' However, within DOE, the carbon sequestration program is managed separately from the hydrogen and vehicles programs. What can we do as a Congress to encourage greater cooperation between these programs, and how does the current structure of DOE hinder efforts to use coal for hydrogen fuel cells?
A1. This separation has concerned at least two National Academies' committees as well. The concern is to bring the several parts of this very complex set of programs to fruition at the appropriate time. The systems analysis function was established to provide the analytical means to accomplish this. However, implementation, as you note, is in question.
Question submitted by Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett
Q1. In your opinion, is the limited world platinum supply likely to be a barrier to the widespread adoption of fuel cells?
A1. Yes, we plainly must develop alternative design approaches that avoid the use of expensive materials like platinum. Otherwise, fuel cells will become too costly for wide scale deployment. Membrane and catalyst research will be important here—see response A2 to Chairman Biggert and Chairman Inglis, above.
Question submitted by Representative Michael M. Honda
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Q1. Given the level of innovation in advanced vehicle technologies as demonstrated by foreign-owned automobile manufacturers such as Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, would it benefit the U.S. to expand more of the cooperative research, development, and demonstration programs (including FreedomCAR) to include foreign-owned companies with domestic R&D and manufacturing facilities?
A1. Yes, I think there could be some value in that, though the information sharing must be reciprocal. But more importantly, I believe the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership should make greater efforts to engage the entrepreneurial sector of the U.S. economy. If we look at past technological revolutions, we observe that the industry incumbents rarely led the change. The telegraph companies did not bring us the telephone, the telephone companies did not bring us the Internet, and the electron tube makers did not bring us solid state electronics. Thus, much evidence suggests that encouraging entrepreneurship in road transportation might provide a powerful pathway to a hydrogen economy.
ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
Responses by Mark Chernoby, Vice President, Advanced Vehicle Engineering, DaimlerChrysler Corporation
Questions submitted by Chairman Judy Biggert and Chairman Bob Inglis
Q1. What steps might the industry take to assure customers that hydrogen-powered vehicles meet the same or higher standards of safety compared to current vehicles?
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A1. Hydrogen-powered vehicles will be required to meet the same safety standards as current vehicles. What government and industry can do together to prepare the public for hydrogen vehicles is safety education. For example, first responders to a hydrogen vehicle accident need to know proper procedures for ensuring safety of the vehicle occupants just as they have been trained for current vehicles. A good first step towards this end is the Department of Energy's Hydrogen Vehicle Validation program. Government and industry are working together to develop public education programs that include hydrogen safety.
Q2. Professor Heywood argues that because of the high risk of failure of the hydrogen research initiative, DOE should increase funding for alternative vehicle technologies, such as electric vehicles and biomass fuels. What do you think the chances are that technical barriers will cause the hydrogen initiative to fail? Is DOE providing enough funding to alternatives?
A2. As a partner of the FreedomCAR program we are satisfied with the diversity of the Department of Energy's alternative vehicle research programs. DaimlerChrysler also believes as Professor Heywood in a broad research portfolio approach to the future. Hydrogen storage is one of the high risk challenges for public acceptance of a hydrogen vehicle. The challenge is high but it is a risk we must take as we pursue all alternatives to the current vehicle propulsion technologies.
Question submitted by Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett
Q1. In your opinion, is a limited world platinum supply likely to be a barrier to the widespread adoption of fuel cells?
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A1. The current platinum loading of fuel cell electrodes is cost prohibitive for most commercial applications. In order to gain consumer acceptance platinum in a fuel cell must be reduced to a fraction of the current level. Therefore, the supply of platinum will be of less concern when fuel cells are ready for the mass market.
ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
Responses by George W. Crabtree, Director, Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Questions submitted by Chairman Judy Biggert and Chairman Bob Inglis
Q1. What steps might the industry take to assure customers that hydrogen-powered vehicles meet the same or higher standards of safety compared to current vehicles?
A1. The public acceptance of hydrogen depends not only on its practical and commercial appeal, but also on its record of safety in widespread use. The special flammability, buoyancy, and permeability of hydrogen present challenges to its safe use that are different, but not necessarily more difficult, than for other energy carriers. One important step to insuring hydrogen safety is research to understand the combustibility of hydrogen in open spaces where it is naturally diluted and in closed spaces where it may concentrate by accumulation. Additional areas of research needed for hydrogen safety are the effect of mixing with volatile hydrocarbons like gasoline or alchohol, on hydrogen ignition, the embrittlement of materials by exposure to hydrogen that may cause leaks, and the development of sensing techniques selective for hydrogen.
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A second key element is development of effective safety standards and practices that are widely known and routinely used, like those for self-service gasoline stations or plug-in electrical appliances. Despite the danger of open exposure to gasoline and household electricity, the injury rate from these hazards has been minimized by thorough education to a few simple codes and standards. Similar codes and standards need to be developed and widely disseminated for hydrogen.
Q2. In your testimony, you explain the challenge of hydrogen storage as follows: that we are searching for a material that allows, at the same time, both close and loose packing and weak and strong bonding of hydrogen molecules. Is there any known precedent or parallel phenomenon that gives us some confidence that such a material exists or can be created?
A2. The challenge of simultaneously satisfying the twin criteria of high storage capacity and fast charge/release rates is formidable. However advances in nanoscience over the last five years open promising new horizons for satisfying the seemingly conflicting requirements of strong bonding and close packing for high capacity and weak bonding and loose packing for fast charge/release. A storage medium composed of tiny nanoparticles, for example, can provide short diffusion lengths for hydrogen within the nanoparticle leading to high charge/release rates, combined with dense packing of hydrogen as a chemical compound with the host medium. Two promising new materials have been developed in the last year: ammonium borane (NHBH) and MgC(NH), each of which can be artificially nanostructured to enhance its release rate while maintaining its high hydrogen storage capacity.
The search for new nanostructured storage materials is enormously streamlined by theoretical modeling of their storage behavior using modern density functional theory implemented on computer clusters containing hundreds of nodes. Such advanced modeling enables accurate simulation of the storage capacity and release rate of hundreds of candidate materials without the expensive and time consuming step of fabricating them in the laboratory. This efficient ''virtual screening'' dramatically increases the number of materials that can be searched, with only the most promising candidates tested for physical performance in the laboratory. The formulation of density functional theory and powerful computer clusters enabling this efficient screening were not available even a few years ago.
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Q3. Professor Heywood argues that because of the high risk of failure of the hydrogen research initiative, the Department of Energy (DOE) should increase funding for alternative vehicle technologies, such as electric vehicles and biomass fuels. What do you think the chances are that technical barriers will cause the hydrogen initiative to fail? Is DOE providing enough funding to alternatives?
A3. The demand for energy is projected to double by 2050 and triple by 2100. This means that by 2050 we must create an energy supply chain and infrastructure that duplicates today's capacity. This challenge is beyond the reach of a single energy source or energy carrier. To meet the challenge, we must develop a mix of energy options and rely on each to shoulder a portion of the load. Like hydrogen, the alternatives suggested by Professor Heywood are worthy of serious consideration, but they are not without their risks. Electric vehicles substitute electricity for fossil fuels at the point of use, but the electricity they require must be generated, typically from burning fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. Thus the pollution, greenhouse gas emission, and fossil fuel consumption at the point of use is simply shifted to the point of electricity production. This option has approximately neutral impact on the national energy challenges of adequate supply, secure access, local pollution and climate change.
Biomass fuels, while carbon neutral, are not plentiful enough to displace all the gasoline used for transportation in the Nation. Even the most optimistic estimates for biomass fuels claim only to be able to replace the foreign oil used for transportation, and this would occur only after a long development period graced by significant breakthroughs in genetic engineering that are presently beyond the reach of science. Because significant breakthroughs are required, it is impossible to rank the risk of failure of biomass fuels as greater or less than that of hydrogen.
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Many energy options must be developed simultaneously, and each will require breakthroughs that we do not know how to achieve at present. Hydrogen solves all four national energy challenges: it is abundant, widely accessible, and free of pollution and greenhouse gas emission if produced by splitting water renewably. Other energy options like electric cars and fuel from biomass address only some of the challenges, and may require equally expensive and difficult breakthroughs. Without the advantage of a crystal ball, it is prudent to invest in several of the most promising energy options. Hydrogen is among the most promising options, for its ability to address, and perhaps solve, all four energy challenges. Alternatives should also be funded, though electric cars themselves have little direct impact on the energy challenges. Biomass addresses climate change much less effectively than hydrogen (it is carbon-neutral, while hydrogen is carbon-free) and is only abundant enough, even with massive planting of energy crops, to supply a fraction of our transportation fuel needs.
Question submitted by Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett
Q1. In your opinion, is a limited world platinum supply likely to be a barrier to the widespread adoption of fuel cells?
A1. There is consensus that if all the family cars and light trucks in the Nation were converted to hydrogen fuel cell propulsion, there is not enough platinum in the world to supply the catalysts needed for their operation. This is a clear barrier to the immediate replacement of internal combustion engines with fuel cells using present technology. However, many other factors, such as the lack of viable on board hydrogen storage media, the short lifetime of fuel cell energy converters under normal automotive use, the poor starting performance of fuel cells in cold weather, and the high expense of fuel cells compared to internal combustion engines, prevent significant penetration of fuel cell cars in the marketplace in the near future. Under these conditions, the scarcity of platinum for catalysts is not the major factor limiting widespread use of fuel cell automobiles.
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The replacement of platinum by less expensive and more active catalysts is a vibrant field of research with promise of significant progress before the other factors limiting fuel cell penetration are resolved. We know that plentiful, less expensive catalysts exist, because we see them every day in the biological world. Green plants use abundant, inexpensive manganese as their catalyst for the water splitting step in photosynthesis. The molecular configurations and reaction pathways for the catalysis of water splitting in plants, however, remains tantalizingly just beyond our scientific reach. Using powerful computer analysis and the world's most intense x-ray sources located at DOE national laboratories, scientists are now on the verge of solving the structures of the natural catalytic reactors that plants use in photosynthesis. When these catalytic mechanisms are fully revealed in a few years, we will be able to reproduce them, perhaps in improved form, for use in the artificial environment of fuel cells. This breakthrough, which is now within sight, will open new horizons for catalysis not only in fuel cells, but also in a host of other energy conversion applications. It's achievement will require significant advances in several scientific frontiers: high resolution structure determination, advanced density functional modeling of the structure and dynamics of the catalytic process, and nanoscale fabrication of artificial catalytic assemblies. Investments in these high risk-high payoff scientific advances will yield ample dividends in fundamental knowledge and control of the natural catalytic mechanism of green plants.
ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
Responses by John B. Heywood, Director, Sloan Automotive Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Questions submitted by Chairman Judy Biggert and Chairman Bob Inglis
Q1. What steps might the industry take to assure customers that hydrogen-powered vehicles meet the same or higher standards of safety compared to current vehicles?
A1. Safety is a major concern in the FreedomCAR and Fuels Program. The FreedomCAR and Fuels Program has a group within its management structure which involves representatives from industry that is focused on safety. An understanding of the key safety issues and appropriate responses to those issues are being developed. Existing vehicle and fuel safety regulations will apply to hydrogen-fueled vehicles, and the need for new requirements and standards is being explored. Dealing with hydrogen-related safety issues will be a significant challenge, but in my judgment is unlikely to be a show-stopper. Those involved in the program are well aware that major safety incidents would adversely affect the broader public's response to an evolving hydrogen-fueled vehicle program.
Q2. You make several recommendations for areas to receive increased funding, ranging from improved combustion engines to electric batteries. Unfortunately, we are living in difficult budget times, and any increase must be accompanied by a decrease, or an increase in revenues. Are there areas of research that you feel the Federal Government should not be funding at current levels?
A2. We are living in difficult budget times because of the tax reductions the President and Congress have implemented over the past five years. Few of us have yet realized just how serious our transportation energy predicament is, or that petroleum availability shortages could affect our transportation system within the next decade or so. Failure of the supply of gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel to grow to meet the anticipated growth in demand for these fuels (both in the U.S. an elsewhere) would be expected to create major economic and social impacts. It would take significant time before we would be able to respond effectively.
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We need to recognize that substantial government R&D support for several potentially promising engine, fuel, and vehicle technology opportunities will be required to move these technologies forward towards potential deployment. We need a broader and more balanced U.S. transportation energy technology R&D program; our current government efforts are too focused on hydrogen which, while promising, may not in the end prove to be implementable. Our longer-term choices in the transportation energy area (hydrogen and fuel cells, electricity and battery powered vehicles, much lighter and smaller vehicles, biomass-based fuels, liquid fuels from oil sands, heavy oil, coal) are all extremely challenging ones to attempt to implement.
Are there areas where the federal R&D budget could be cut to provide resources for a broader set of such initiatives? I do not have sufficient knowledge of our government's R&D activities in an overview sense to attempt an answer to that question. One factor that makes that an especially difficult question, in my judgment, is that our government lacks a coherent industrial and technology development policy. One consequence of that lack is that we risk losing our global leadership position in transportation energy technologies and the business opportunities that go with that leadership role.
Question submitted by Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett
Q1. In your opinion, is a limited world platinum supply likely to be a barrier to the widespread adoption of fuel cells?
A1. Platinum production capacity would have to expand substantially if current technology fuel cells (which have a high platinum requirement) were produced in large numbers. However, they will not be produced in large numbers because current technology fuel cells are too expensive to be commercially viable, and their technology with its substantial platinum requirement will have to change significantly before fuel cells can become commercially viable. What is already happening that will stress the platinum supply system is the growth in light-duty vehicles worldwide (from 750 million today to an anticipated two billion in 2050), and the expanding demand for automotive catalysts and their requirement for noble metals like platinum that goes along with that worldwide vehicle growth. Thus, it is clear that much improved automotive fuel cell technology, with much lower platinum loadings, will need to be developed if fuel cells are to become a practical and marketable technology.
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ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
Responses by Arden L. Bement, Jr., Director, National Science Foundation
Q1a. What progress has been made toward addressing the principal technical barriers to a successful transition to the use of hydrogen as a primary transportation fuel since the Administration announced its hydrogen initiatives, FreedomCAR and the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative?
A1a. The National Academies' report, The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs (http//www.nap.edu/books/0309091632/html/), published in 2004, identifies the following principal technical barriers to a successful transition to the use of hydrogen as a primary transportation fuel: 1) Development and introduction of cost-effective, durable, safe, and environmentally desirable fuel cell systems and hydrogen storage systems; 2) development of the infrastructure to provide hydrogen for the light-duty-vehicle user; 3) sharp reduction in the costs of hydrogen production from renewable energy sources over a time frame of decades; and 4) capture and storage (''sequestering'') of the carbon dioxide by-product of hydrogen production from coal.
The National Science Foundation, as part of the interagency Hydrogen R&D Task Force, established and co-chaired by OSTP and DOE, participates in monthly meetings at the White House Conference Center in order to ensure coordination among the agencies and to address relevant research related to potential technical barriers. NSF-supported principal investigators (PIs) have contributed to important developments addressing hydrogen production and storage and fuel cell-related basic research. For production of hydrogen, a progression can be expected of using natural gas, then coal, biomass, and ultimately water as feedstocks. One NSF PI is studying improved production of hydrogen from methane (a principal component of natural gas) and the oxygen in air using high pressures and reactor conditions that favor so-called ''cool flames.'' Such systems hold promise for substantially improving the ratio of hydrogen to water produced in the reaction and have the advantage that catalysts are not needed (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0215756).
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New reforming catalysts that produce hydrogen from hydrocarbons and steam and that have increased activity and improved stability toward key catalyst poisons are being identified through NSF awards. In addition, new catalytic routes to hydrogen from renewable resources like plant byproducts have been developed for use in water (http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/pr0369.htm) and could to used in fuel cell applications. Some progress has been made in developing a new generation of non-platinum-based fuel cell catalysts.
Advances in research related to formation of hydrogen from water are exemplified by Science magazine's having listed water as a Breakthrough of the Year for 2004. NSF PIs are determining structural and dynamic properties of nanoscale clusters of small numbers of water molecules and how they interact with the protons and electrons that are intimately involved in charge transfer leading to hydrogen production. Their studies are also addressing the nature of bonds between water molecules and surfaces, information that will help us understand reactions at fuel cell electrodes. Progress in catalyzed photo-induced electron transfer that is relevant to production of hydrogen from renewable solar energy has been reported from work conducted by NSF PIs and provides insight into the multiple electron transfer events that characterize this process.
Materials for storing hydrogen are under active development by NSF PIs. ''Molecular containers'' that are porous on the nanoscale are being synthesized and their hydrogen-storage properties characterized, as are various solid-state materials ranging from metal alloys to carbon nanotubes. These developments have been recently summarized http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/83/i34/html/8334altenergy.html. NSF PIs have also identified materials like palladium nanowires that can detect hydrogen at extremely low concentrations. Such sensor materials could serve as leak detectors for hydrogen and contribute to its safe use in storage and transportation systems.
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Fuel cell developments attributable to NSF support are exemplified by progress in low-temperature versions of these devices. In particular, improved performance has been seen with the introduction of fully fluorinated membranes and better electrode structures that increase catalyst utilization.
High temperature Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have the potential to operate at high efficiency without noble metal catalysts. Currently available oxide membranes, which are critical for ionic transport in higher-temperature fuel cells, are inefficient and fail to operate at the lower temperatures needed for use in transportation. Several NSF projects are focused on studying lover-temperature oxide-ion membranes to minimize corrosion and differential thermal expansion, while maintaining selectivity and permeability.
Also noteworthy has been the success of NSF PIs in exploiting the exquisite machinery of microbes, which can utilize hydrogen without the elaborate storage and pressure systems of conventional approaches. A single-chambered microbial fuel cell (http://www.nsf.gov/news/news–summ.jsp?cntn–id=100337) has been shown recently to offer highly mobile and efficient energy production.
Q1b. What are the remaining potential technical ''showstoppers?''
A1b. The aforementioned National Academies' report articulates several ''showstoppers.'' For example, at this time, capabilities of hydrogen storage materials are still inadequate. If catalysts for fuel cells are to he economically competitive, they would either need to be about an order of magnitude more active and have high resistance to poisoning by carbon monoxide if they contain expensive platinum; or alternative, efficient non-platinum-based catalysts would need to be found. There are also challenges associated with developing manufacturing techniques that would enable catalyst coatings to be deposited uniformly on surfaces of arbitrary shape.
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Q2a. What are the research areas where breakthroughs are needed to advance a hydrogen economy?
A2a. Catalysis impacts many of the technical areas for which breakthroughs are needed to drive a hydrogen economy. Ranging from fuel cell electrodes to photo-induced production of hydrogen, better catalysts will be critical for making progress. In turn, catalyst improvement requires better understanding of a variety of technical issues. Membrane performance, for instance, demands excellent ionic conductivity along with physical and chemical durability. Such a combination of properties poses a challenge due to the lack of fundamental knowledge of synthesis-structure-function relationships in the polymers that are commonly employed as membranes. Another example involves the use of platinum supported on carbon for electro-catalysis in low-temperature acid fuel cells. Reduction of loadings of platinum or other precious metal in electrodes has been identified as essential in order to reduce system costs, but there are also problems with catalyst dissolution and corrosion of the material that supports the catalyst.
Novel materials are needed for safe and reliable hydrogen production and storage, as well as for developing infrastructure to distribute hydrogen. Failure mechanisms due to materials degradation, such as hydrogen-induced embrittlement in pipelines, need to be understood and controlled. As noted above, better membrane materials for fuel cells and superior hydrogen storage materials are needed.
Most hydrogen is currently synthesized from natural gas. Other potential sources of hydrogen include coal and biomass through gasification processes. Basic research is needed to identify optimal hydrogen production strategies from these feedstocks and, for biomass, to ensure effective gas cleanup. Carbon management must be addressed when using fossil fuels as a feedstock.
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Splitting water through electrolysis and photolysis needs to be aggressively pursued. Fundamental questions about water's properties at the molecular level still exist and must be resolved if we are to design systems that can more efficiently split water by photochemical or electrochemical means.
There are also basic questions about biological systems that use hydrogen that hold promise for significant increases in energy efficiency if they could be used to form the basis for hydrogen-fueled systems. Central to our understanding of biological systems is the enzyme hydrogenase, the catalyst for reversible hydrogen oxidation. Hydrogenases are components of chemically driven energy production in microbes in the absence of oxygen. Understanding them using physical, genomic and biochemical methods could yield important information for design of systems that mimic the efficiency of chemical and light energy transduction found in biological systems. Guided by advances in theory, modeling and simulation, the synthesis of ''model'' systems that possess characteristics of hydrogenases represents a promising complementary approach to this objective.
Q2b. How is NSF-funded research addressing those basic research questions?
A2b. The principal investments of NSF-funded research related to fuel cell and hydrogen themes are in the following areas: 1) mechanisms of hydrogen production and utilization in microbes and cellular membranes (Biological Sciences and Geosciences directorates); 2) catalysis, hydrogen production, purification and storage of hydrogen, fuel cell membrane characteristics, and fuel cell design (Engineering and Mathematical and Physical Sciences directorates); 3) experimental and theoretical studies of electrode reactions, water clusters, photo-induced electron transfer reactions, and model hydrogenase systems (Mathematical and Physical Sciences directorate); and 4) materials, including preparation, processing, characterization and properties for potential fuel cell applications and for sequestration of greenhouse gases (Mathematical and Physical Sciences). Some representative projects illustrating how NSF PIs are addressing the research challenges outlined in section 2a were given in section 1a.
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It should be noted that many of NSF's investments are made in response to unsolicited proposals. These may involve individual investigators or multi-investigator teams. The level of investment in hydrogen- and fuel cell-related research, approximately $20 M annually, reflects the strong interest in the U.S. academic scientific and engineering research community in the basic research issues associated with these technologies.
It is also noteworthy that there has been considerable synergy with developments arising from investments in nanotechnology. In addition to the examples of palladium nanowire hydrogen sensors and nanoporous solids that can store hydrogen, membranes prepared from multiple nanostructured layers appear to have promising characteristics with respect to fuel cell usage. Bacteria, which might be regarded as ''nano-machines,'' have recently been found to use hydrogen in extreme environments such as hot springs, (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub–releases/2005-01/uoca-ymf012405.php. Learning how these organisms live on hydrogen and how they convert it to other forms of energy may have the potential for transformative discoveries upon which to build a hydrogen economy.
Q3a. What hydrogen research is NSF currently funding?
A3a. Areas of concentration are reflected in the interagency Hydrogen R&D Task Force topic areas. NSF is represented on 14 teams focusing on catalysis; materials for hydrogen storage; materials research; materials performance, measurement, and analysis; biological and biomimetic hydrogen production; physical and chemical interactions of materials and hydrogen; multi-functional materials and structures; photo-electrochemical hydrogen production; characterization and new synthesis tools; hydrogen internal combustion engines; hydrogen turbines; SBIR/STTR; and workforce/education. Currently, NSF funds approximately 130 awards per year in the areas listed above.
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Q3b. How much of this research, if any, is collaborative with private industry?
A3b. The principal mechanisms that NSF uses to promote interactions with industry are the SBIR/STTR and Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) programs, although the latter is only a small fraction of the agency's portfolio. Some individual investigator awards also have industrial collaborations. NSF estimates a current investment of about $4 M in SBIR/STTR awards in hydrogen-related technology. NSF and DOE established a Memorandum of Understanding that offers NSF SBIR/STTR grantees with technology of interest to DOE additional resources through DOE's ''Commercialization Assistance Program.''
Q3c. How much, if any, is coordinated with the basic research effort at the Department of Energy (DOE)?
A3c. There is considerable coordination with DOE in areas of mutual interest. For example, the two agencies co-chaired a session at the National Hydrogen Association (NHA) Annual National Hydrogen Conference this past April that focused on funding opportunities across agencies for the SBIR/STTR community. For essentially all of the topic areas being coordinated by the interagency Hydrogen R&D Task Force in which NSF participates (section 3a), DOE is also represented. Staff members of these two agencies are collaborating in developing short white papers describing the specific technical challenges associated with each topic area, along with representatives from other agencies as appropriate. Informal relationships have included extending invitations to workshops and contractors' meetings, and sharing information on program announcements, proposals, and awards. The information that is shared helps to ensure appropriate partitioning of investments between the targeted, often short-time-frame perspective of DOE and the high-risk, often longer-term perspective of NSF.
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Q4a. How does the NSF coordinate with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, DOE and the other agencies involved with the Hydrogen Interagency Task Force?
A4a. The interagency Hydrogen R&D Task Force holds monthly meetings at the White House Conference Center. This provides an excellent opportunity to meet with representatives from OSTP, DOE and the other agencies involved with the Task Force. NSF currently has two representatives who regularly attend the meetings.
Q4b. How is this information exchanged between the agencies and to what extent is it beneficial to NSF?
A4b. We have found that the topic areas have been effective in connecting staff members across agencies that support research in areas of common interest. Additionally, the Task Force established a website, http://www.hydrogen.gov, that provides information from all of the participating agencies that is of value both to the agencies and the external community.
Q4c. How does NSF ensure that its research results are available to other agencies?
A4c. Beyond the informal contacts of technical staff facilitated by the Task Force, the NSF has a searchable award database and collects annual and final reports from its PIs. All of this information is available to technical staff at other agencies. NSF convenes workshops on topics related to the hydrogen initiative. The Task Force meetings and contacts provide a mechanism for inviting representatives from other agencies to participate in the workshops and learn about the latest results of NSF's PIs and their thoughts on promising future research and education directions.
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Q4d. Is the Task Force successful in helping agencies understand what hydrogen issues other agencies are working on, and to what degree?
A4d. Our experience has been that the Task Force has been quite successful thus far in lowering barriers to interagency collaboration and providing broader perspectives for investments related to the hydrogen initiative. Most meetings include updates from agency representatives on the various topical areas, meetings, and workshops. In addition, there have been presentations on the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy and on specific programs of participating agencies that have provided useful information on the scope of the federal investment.
Appendix 2:
Additional Material for the Record
STATEMENT BY MICHELIN NORTH AMERICA
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony today on behalf of Michelin North America.
Since 1889, Michelin has been contributing to progress in the area of mobility, through its expertise in the field of tires and suspension systems and the company's willingness to invest in innovation. In a number of instances, Michelin has been the force behind technological breakthroughs, such as the radial tire, the ''Green tire'' and the X One single wide-based tire.
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Michelin is the world leader in the tire industry. We manufacture and sell tires for every type of vehicle, including airplanes, automobiles, bicycles, earthmovers, farm equipment, heavy-duty trucks, motorcycles, and the Space Shuttle. The company also publishes travel guides, maps and atlases covering North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. In 2004 Michelin produced nearly 195 million tires and printed 19 million maps and guides. Our net sales totaled approximately $19 billion. Our tire activities and support services account for 98 percent of our net sales. Suspension systems, mobility assistance services, travel publications and Michelin Lifestyle products account for the remaining two percent of our total business.
Michelin sells its products in over 170 countries, operates 74 production manufacturing facilities in 19 countries and employs nearly 127,000 people around the world. Michelin operates three technology centers on three continents, one of which is located in Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville is the headquarters of Michelin North America which employs over 23,000 people and operates 21 manufacturing facilities in 17 locations.
Michelin is in the business of sustainable mobility. What does that mean? How goods and services move has been a fundamental factor in the development of society, as a tool of discovery and a means of communication and interaction between people.
Roads have played a key role in the phenomena of urbanization, globalization of exchanges and, more generally, economic growth. Road mobility provides access to the world and makes for a more fluid job market, by increasing travel opportunities to and from our homes and places of work. Roads provide those located in areas away from economic centers with a way of bringing products to the marketplace.
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Furthermore, mobility is freedom, perhaps one of the most basic freedoms in any country. To encourage mobility, to support the growth of infrastructure and ease of travel is to encourage freedom itself. With freedom comes responsibility—to travel safely, to conserve limited resources and to respect the environment.
Alongside these advantages, advances in modern modes of transport have often involved significant social and environmental impacts. Transport worldwide, and road transport in particular, is currently developing in a context of population growth, urban development and an increasing awareness of the impact of human activity on the environment. In light of these factors, a transition towards a new attitude to mobility is clearly needed. Sustainable mobility takes into account the necessity of providing satisfactory responses to travel requirements. It must also move toward a reduction in the impact of mobility on the environment, become accessible to more people in as safe a manner as possible and be compatible with the economic objectives and constraints of public authorities, private companies and non-governmental organizations.
Michelin views this concept of sustainable mobility as being in concert with our five core values: respect for customers, respect for facts, respect for people, respect for shareholders and respect for the environment. These values, and how we concretely translate these values to executable actions, are articulated in Michelin's Performance and Responsibility Charter and subsequent Performance and Responsibility reports.
Why is the notion of sustainable mobility important? Between 1950 and 2003, the number of vehicles on the roads throughout the world went from 50 million to more than 830 million, including nearly 700 million cars. According to the projections of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the number of passenger vehicles on the roads throughout the world will reach 1.3 billion in 2030. The distances traveled by people will increase by nearly 50 percent between 2000 and 2030. Over the same period of time, truck freight is forecast to increase by 75 percent.
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As stated earlier, this increase in road traffic has an impact on the environment. Transport represents 26 percent of carbon dioxide emission (17 percent for road transport, nine percent for other modes of transport) according to the International Energy Agency. In industrialized countries, transport consumes about 65 percent of oil resources.
In 2000, as a way of responding to the consequences of increased mobility, Michelin joined with 11 other corporate members of the WBCSD—BP, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Nissan, Norsk Hydro, Renault, Shell, Toyota and Volkswagen—to establish the Sustainable Mobility Project. The goal of this group was to carry out an assessment of mobility throughout the world, analyze the challenges facing the sector and identify the directions to take in order to address these challenges.
Even before participating in the Sustainable Mobility Project, Michelin recognized the necessity of addressing the impacts of rapidly increasing road transport. In 1998, for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Bibendum—Michelin's corporate icon known around the world as the ''Michelin Man''—Michelin organized a rally of advanced technology vehicles. Challenge Bibendum has won worldwide recognition as the premier clean and safe vehicle event in the world, where industry, policy-makers and experts can review the latest technologies and share their visions. The event provides the opportunity to evaluate different technical options that exist to tackle the energy, environmental and safety issues associated with freight and individual mobility worldwide. This event has taken place in Europe, in North America and, last year for the first time, in Asia.
Challenge Bibendum is a mechanism that assists in resolving questions associated with emissions, oil consumption, urban congestion and road safety. It is a unique event for several reasons:
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Challenge Bibendum is open to all energy sources and all powertrain options. No other event is solution-neutral in both concept and competition.
Vehicles are evaluated in real driving conditions, using precisely defined criteria relating to performance, safety and the environment.
Advanced technology vehicles are tested using today's on-road vehicles as a point of reference.
A ''ride and drive'' enables all participants to test and experience for themselves the various technologies.
An educational information center and a symposium, all organized in partnership with the event's participants, complete the technological competition.
Challenge Bibendum is an open forum where all parties concerned from the public and private sectors can freely exchange opinions.
Challenge Bibendum provides an international platform for road vehicle manufacturers to demonstrate state-of-the-art technologies and for participants to witness, assess and document the progress which these advanced, real-world technologies continue to make, as well as showcase the opportunities they represent.
This event, unlike any other in the world, serves as a testing ground and the only one that showcases concept cars featuring technologies, often for the first time, alongside production vehicles that have already made very significant progress. Furthermore, Challenge Bibendum serves as an exchange forum for industry leaders, university researchers, public policy-makers and the media.
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Representatives from numerous organizations from around the world, such as the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the World Bank, the European Commission, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the WBCSD attended the 2004 event in Shanghai, China. In all, 2,000 people, representing more than 200 organizations from 45 countries, gathered at the 2004 Challenge Bibendum.
What conclusions could one draw from the 2004 Challenge Bibendum and the follow-on Bibendum Forum and Rally held in Japan just last month? First, there is no single technology, device, or component that resolves the question of how to achieve sustainable mobility within the parameters we have constructed. The fact that Challenge Bibendum is an event that displays multiple technologies underscores the fact that many of those technologies will help us attain the goal of sustainable mobility. A more holistic view needs to be taken as we move forward. Likewise, when environmental impact issues are examined, it is appropriate to view the consequences of transport from a ''well to wheel'' perspective. The environmental impact to gather, refine or otherwise provide the energy to the vehicle from its source must be taken into consideration.
From the standpoint of technology, the 2004 Challenge Bibendum revealed the following:
The future will include a variety of technologies and non-petroleum fuels.
Advanced internal combustion engines, both diesel and gasoline, continue to make outstanding progress in terms of cleaner combustion, more power density, less noise and less energy consumption.
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Urban pollution can be tackled through sulfur free fuels, particulate filters, next-generation combustion engines and exhaust gas treatments, as well as the progressive development of electric traction.
Hybridization brings both great driving performance and environmental efficiency, especially for higher power and larger size vehicles; it opens a wide array of technical solutions.
Biofuels offer a very significant potential to help reduce CO emissions.
New generation batteries offer much greater promise for electric traction of two-wheelers, cars, taxis, buses, by providing higher power and energy densities—a range of more than 200 miles is now a reality.
Fuel cell vehicle driving performances are improving rapidly; with a current range of up to 250 miles.
Active safety systems such as Electronic Stability Programs (ESP) have proven their efficiency, more systems are becoming widely available, and passive safety is also improving greatly.
Some conclusions regarding policy were drawn, as well:
In order to achieve improvements in air quality, energy supply and safety, it is urgent to act now.
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Benefits will only be achieved when these advanced technologies achieve significant market share.
Progress will be faster by quickly disseminating and implementing the advanced technologies already available while working on future technologies. This has to happen in all countries, especially in emerging countries to enable them to develop their transportation systems.
Different solutions will be developed in different parts of the world depending on energy resources, transportation requirements and existing infrastructures.
Safer and cleaner vehicles go hand-in-hand.
Cleaner fuels are on the critical path for many emerging countries in order to enable the introduction of advanced technologies.
Joint action between industries and governments is critical to achieve progress towards sustainable mobility.
Moving towards greater global regulatory harmonization is required to speed up the adoption of cleaner, safer and more sustainable technologies.
Michelin looks forward to hosting the next Challenge Bibendum (June 2006) in order to measure additional progress. Until then, Michelin remains committed to improving mobility and reducing as much as possible the impact of its activities and products on the environment.
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(Footnote 1 return)
Another concept, the battery electric vehicle (BEV), offers an all-electric drive-train with all on-board energy stored in batteries, which would be recharged from stationary sources when the vehicle is not in operation. I have not included this among the competitors because battery technology has not advanced rapidly enough for it to compete in highway markets. In contrast, BEV have proven quite successful in the personal transportation niche.
(Footnote 2 return)
Alternatively framed: ''Which comes first, the vehicle or the fuel?''
(Footnote 3 return)
I do not include on-board reforming of fossil feedstocks, like gasoline, among these. These systems offer little gain beyond that achievable with the HEV, and most industrial proponents appear to have abandoned the idea.
(Footnote 4 return)
See the Appendix: The Process of Innovation and Implications for the Hydrogen Transition for a more complete discussion.
(Footnote 5 return)
BMW was the founding OEM and most significant supporter of the ICAR.
(Footnote 6 return)
This Appendix draws heavily upon a previous statement prepared for the 9 February, 2005 hearing of the House Science Committee.
(Footnote 7 return)
Consider, for example, Zap!, a company founded 10 years ago in response to the zero-emissions vehicle market emerging in California. A description can be found at: http://www.zapworld.com/index.asp