February 10, 2003	Monday	Zul Hijjah 8,1423

LOS ANGELES: President Bush appeared on national television on Thursday in a carefully crafted speech extolling the virtues of hydrogen fuel cells as the solution to America’s energy problems.

The comments followed his State of the Union address last week, when he promised 1.7 billion dollars over five years for research into the potentially eco-friendly energy system.

Far from welcoming the initiative, many environmental activists claim that the president’s plan is little more than a cynical ploy to mask continued support for the administration’s oil and car industry buddies.

There is little argument about the potential of fuel-cell technology to revolutionize not only transportation but the whole cycle of energy production, with the promise of making oil obsolete as an energy source. Cars would have electric engines powered by fuel cells, homes would have fuel cells in their back yards, mobile gadgets would ditch their batteries in favour of miniature fuel cells that would last much longer.

Fuel cells are not a pie-in-the-sky scientific fantasy — they are a proven technology that has been an integral part of space shuttles since the early 1980s, providing both the energy to run the shuttles’ systems and the water that the astronauts drink. The challenge now is to make their cost comparable with other energy sources and to set up a nationwide distribution system that would make the hydrogen-run units safe, effective and convenient.

Fuel cells work by mixing hydrogen and oxygen to produce a chemical reaction that generates energy.

While this process is genuinely pollution free, producing nothing but electricity and pure water, considerable energy is actually needed to provide the hydrogen. Though it is present in abundance in nature, it usually is mixed with other elements and requires a significant amount of energy to separate it.

Nevertheless even assuming conventional energy sources were used to produce the hydrogen, experts estimate that fuel cells would still be some 50 per cent more efficient than conventional energy sources.

Thus, on the surface, Bush’s promise of 1.7 billion dollars over 5 years to research fuel cells seems positive. But critics say that the initiative is little more than a public-relations ploy that is too little too late.

They argue that the administration should be launching a new Manhattan Project to develop alternative energy sources, similar to the huge scientific effort ordered by President Franklin Roosevelt to build the atomic bomb in World War II.

The urgency is not just an environmental imperative dictated by the growing danger of global warming from “greenhouse” gases released by the burning of fossil fuels. As Bush pointed out in his speech on Thursday, the US relies on imports for 50 per cent of its oil needs — “a danger to our national security and economic security”.

Yet he does not seem to accord the matter any degree of urgency. “By 2040 we will save 11 million barrels of oil a day,” Bush said. “Wouldn’t that be a great legacy to leave to the next generation?”

Popularizing fuel cells is a huge undertaking — not least creating a national distribution system for the highly combustible hydrogen on which the entire project relies.

So, critics ask, why is the president devoting just 1.7 billion dollars to solving the problem, especially since 1.45 billion dollars was already promised under programmes initiated by former president Bill Clinton?

“It’s better than nothing, but it’s also kind of a drop in the bucket,” says Mark Bunger, senior auto-industry analyst for Forrester Research. “The number — that’s about what it would cost an automaker to develop one new car, like a Ford Taurus.”

“It’s definitely not enough money,” says David Friedman, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “If the government was really serious about getting hydrogen out there as soon as possible, there would be at least another zero, if not two zeroes, at the end of their figure.”

The Sierra Club, one of the country’s leading environmental watchdog groups, is also critical.

It has battled Bush administration plans to increase logging in national forests, drill for oil in national preserves and ease air pollution regulations. Sierra argues that Bush’s fuel-cell policy is merely a ploy to relieve pressure to enact regulations that would force carmakers to immediately increase the average fuel consumption of their products.

“He promises fuel cell cars at some point in the future as a shield against adopting existing technology that could make cars cleaner and more efficient,” says Sierra Club official Dan Becker.—dpa