California’s Hydrogen Highway project has had some set-backs as of late. This project is an initiative sponsored by the State of California to install hydrogen refueling stations at 100 service stations throughout California. The idea is to provide a way for a hydrogen car driver (and municipal busses in the mean time) to drive from southern to northern California without concern for running out of hydrogen. Most notably has been a pull-back from PG&E from developing several fueling stations. From the San Jose Merc article:
“Things have changed,” said Jill Egbert, manager of PG&E’s Clean Air Transportation division. “We feel hydrogen is a long-term solution, but there is no one technology that will be the silver bullet to meet transportation needs. From a resource standpoint, we feel a more pressing need to see how electric vehicles will affect our grid.”
While this is certainly a bit of a disappointment to lose PG&E’s support, it’s not terribly surprising. PG&E has been doing a lot of development on Vehicle to Grid technologies for PHEVs. In the short term, that sounds like a really productive use of their time and attention. PHEVs have gotten a great push in the last two years – certainly more than hydrogen – and could represent a great near-term opportunity for them.
But I disagree that hydrogen is necessarily a long-term development. While there are clearly difficulties with hydrogen, one of the big ones is the lack of retail infrastructure. The hydrogen highway is a great way for a government entity to partner with the private sector to provide this platform. It makes investments by GM and Honda – both with prototype fuel cell models – more worthwhile.
This isn’t the end of the world for this project. I’m a big fan of hydrogen – albeit it’s more hope than technology that is driving my sentiment. I think it would be a great option for fueling cars and other parts of our powered world. While hydrogen can’t be produced and managed very well, it can be done. With a small number of hydrogen cars on the road, we might have just enough to get started in the coming year. We can spend the next 50 years developing the rest of the infrastructure that’s needed. Afterall, we didn’t really have any streets when the car was invented. So I don’t think we have to wait for all the planets to align in order to get started.
