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Clean Fuels Foundation chairman discounts hydrogen’s potential
29th November 2007
The former CIA director and now chairman of the Advisory Board of the Clean Fuels Foundation James Woolsey, said this week: “Hydrogen and fuel cells are not the way to go. The decision by the Bush administration and the State of California to follow the hydrogen highway is the single worst decision in the past few years.”
Woolsey, in London as guest speaker at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders annual dinner on 27 November, added: “Someone may find a way to make hydrogen cheaply available but that is still some time away. Our estimates put building a hydrogen infrastructure at one trillion dollars. In the meantime you have to bring down the cost of a fuel cell vehicle by a factor of about 40 or 50 to make it affordable. Joining the hydrogen highway for families is a poor idea. For large fleets with a single filling facility it might work.”
Woolsey believes in opening up oil to competition as an alternative. “The key is to do to oil what refrigeration did to salt at the end of the 19th century. Refrigeration, with the aid of electricity, did away with salt as a means of preserving food. No one fights with their neighbour over salt mines anymore.”
Woolsey sees an immediate future for ‘plug-in’ hybrid electric vehicles – using both electric motor and conventional petrol or diesel engines.
He added that 78% of cars in the U.S. travel less than 40 miles a day – within the range of an electric motor. Such hybrid vehicles would reduce considerably the reliance on oil on a daily basis while having the flexibility go travel longer distance when required.
By using off-peak, overnight charging there would not be a need to increase the output of America’s electric grid significantly.
“The important thing is that there should not be a single solution or decision by governments. There should be a portfolio of ideas.”
SMMT president Graham Smith added that from a European perspective there was no silver bullet solution to CO2 emissions: “There will be continued evolution of existing petrol and diesel technology but a multi-path approach to alternative fuels is the only way to make progress.”
- Icelandic New Energy made its hydrogen filling station, the world's first when it opened to serve buses four years ago, available for use by 10 hydrogen-fuelled Toyota Priuses, three operated by Hertz, yesterday. New Energy, a company backed by the government, academics and private companies, aims to have up to 40 hydrogen cars on the roads by the end of 2009.
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