CHAPTER TWELVE

HYDROGEN SOLUTION

In the beginning, all was dark and formless.¹

But suddenly, within an infinitesimal fraction of a second, a span so inestimable that it defies imagination, a time slice quantified by awed experts as 10−⁴³, or “a one, preceded by forty-two zeros and a decimal point,” an event inadequately if not raptly described as lasting vastly less than a “trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth” of a second—during this incomprehensible primordial moment, the mysterious preexisting quintessence of the universe exploded, inflating into the newly created dimensions of space and time. That was the beginning of things, the Big Bang, and it was very long ago, so long ago that when man humbly looks to the heavens and sees the distant stars above or even beholds the palm of his hand, he perceives a reality 13.7 billion years in the making.²

Hydrogen was the first of the universe’s elements to form after the Big Bang created all things. It is the most abundant atom in all of existence—about 98 percent of all matter. For longer than water will flow, longer than our sun will burn, and longer than any number of other life-sustaining attributes shall exist, there will be hydrogen—a power so mighty it can become the fiery furnace of the greatest bomb, and yet be the cool current of a nurturing river. Hydrogen is nature’s inner soul.

Simple yet potent, hydrogen is the most basic ingredient, just one proton controlling a single electron through a magical bond that even Edison admitted he could not fathom. When a sole electron is freed of its proton, an electrical current is generated that can power the smallest key-chain flashlight and the mightiest vehicle. Hydrogen drives buses on the cosmopolitan streets of Europe, propels great submarines beneath the sea for Germany, Greece, and South Korea, and powered man’s first flight to the moon. Today, hydrogen also fuels common passenger automobiles that fundamentally operate like any other—except for their clean, renewable fuel source.³

Hydrogen is the endgame, the final objective in man’s multimillen-nial quest to become energy independent without perishing in the process—that is, without dying either slowly as a result of poisonous side effects, or suddenly because of deadly military action. Hydrogen, when used as ordinary fuel, is gentle to the environment and nontoxic. In most instances, hydrogen produces little more than harmless water vapor as a byproduct.⁴ Nothing is cleaner.

Many in the world recognize that hydrogen is the answer to a planet cracking and choking under the rule of petroleum. That is why the United States, Iceland, and some two dozen other countries have each adopted or are creating a “Hydrogen Roadmap” to total energy independence. The list includes not only the key industrialized nations, such as Japan, Germany, and Canada, but also emerging industrial powerhouses such as China and India, who have realized that their mushrooming energy appetites cannot sensibly be satisfied by oil much longer.⁵

Iceland leads the European Union in aggressively converting to a so-called hydrogen economy, which will soon run its fisheries, automobiles, and ocean vessels on hydrogen greenly extracted from water by power provided by the country’s network of geothermal plants. With a national population of less than 300,000, and more than 180,000 private cars, Iceland enjoys the world’s highest per capita auto ownership. Iceland’s government has mandated that all cars convert to hydrogen fuel in the coming years. Hydrogen buses with a 125-mile range, manufactured by Mercedes-Benz, have been rolling through the streets of Reykjavik since 2003 and regularly fuel up at one of the world’s first commercial hydrogen filling stations. Iceland intends to convert its entire 2,5OO-ship fishing fleet to hydrogen fuel by 2015. This far northern nation’s Hydrogen Roadmap is supported by the European Union, which has contributed $3.1 million to the campaign’s initial automotive efforts.⁶

America has also adopted its own Hydrogen Roadmap. Hydrogen has been an alternative-energy focus in the United States for years. In 1989, the National Hydrogen Association (NHA) was founded by ten commercial and scientific hydrogen pioneers who believed hydrogen could cleanly power our transportation needs, heat our homes, run our appliances, and offer a global exit strategy from oil. On April 2, 2002, the NHA and the Department of Energy convened a strategic hydrogen workshop that in November 2002 produced the Department of Energy’s fifty-page “National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap.” In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, President George W. Bush launched the country’s first formal hydrogen-fuel initiative, which sought $228 million to develop the technology. The idea was to slowly make fuel cells competitive with gasoline vehicles by 2015. The Department of Energy’s road map, published just two months earlier, stated, “Probably the only time most consumers in the United States think about fuel. . . is when fuel prices rise to $2 per gallon of gasoline.”⁷

In 2005, gasoline broke $3 per gallon.⁸

Throughout the Department of Energy’s program literature, hydrogen is hailed as “the fuel of the future,” and even then only as a partial energy solution attainable after decades of incremental development. The government’s projected dates for substantially switching to a hydrogen economy coincide conveniently with the best projections for the end of abundant oil, that is, between 2025 and 2045.⁹ In other words, hydrogen is not scheduled to go into high gear until oil is close to depleting. Abrupt stoppages outside normal supply and demand, such as terrorism, petropo-litical blackmail, or natural disaster have not been calculated into the government’s timetable. Nor has the disruption by terrorism or natural disaster of the world’s overtaxed refinery capacity been calculated into the timetable; such a disruption would stop gasoline flowing whether or not crude is available, just as a rifle without bullets cannot function as a firearm. The basis for America’s visionary “decades-long” approach is rooted in the futuristic notion of hydrogen. Unfortunately, the very act of praising, hailing, and envisioning hydrogen as a “futuristic” technology only delays its rapid return and implementation. In truth, hydrogen is a 240-year-old story waiting to be revived.

In 1766, English physicist Henry Cavendish first identified hydrogen gas as a distinct substance. Among the first internal-combustion-engine attempts, albeit unsuccessful, was one in 1807 by Francois Isaac de Rivaz that was designed to burn hydrogen gas and oxygen. Several years later, an illuminating gas composed of 50 percent hydrogen began appearing atop streetlamp posts throughout England. The gas was so widely used to light up English streets and to cook with, it became known as town gas, so named because virtually every town in England used it before the lightbulb. The nineteenth-century hydrogen that England ubiquitously used was not the clean and green gas power advocated today. Town gas, derived from coal, was notoriously sooty and smelly. During the nineteenth century, town gas, also known as manufactured gas, continued proliferating throughout the world. It was widely used in the United States from the early 1800s, and such countries as New Zealand and Slovakia adopted it in the 1860s. Town gas remained a central power source in England, the United States, and elsewhere until well into the twentieth century. Today, many parts of China and neighboring Asian countries still use town gas.¹⁰

In 1839, a rudimentary hydrogen fuel cell, producing electrical current from hydrogen and oxygen in the presence of an electrolyte, was invented by Welsh physicist Sir William Grove. The Grove Fuel Cell Symposium now held annually in London to review the most advanced technology in the field is named for him.¹¹

Hydrogen gas provided lighter-than-air lift to the famous zeppelin Hindenburg, which exploded over Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. Although hydrogen was originally blamed for the explosion, later investigation revealed it was the flammable outer coating of the Hindenburg’s skin that first ignited—not the gas. The hydrogen explosion was secondary.¹²

The Nazis, bereft of good supplies of gasoline, extensively used hydrogen-treated coal to create synthetic fuel. In the last years of the Third Reich, Germany built about one thousand motor vehicles powered by hy-drogenated coal synfuels. Hydrogen was not the fuel, but was the gas required to industrially create the fuel. The process was extremely dirty and toxic, characteristics the Nazis gladly tolerated in exchange for the war benefits. By the September 1, 1939, invasion of Poland, more than 92 percent of Germany’s aviation fuel and most of its land-vehicle fuel—1.46 million metric tons annually—was synthesized by the coal-hydrogen process. Hitler’s fuel was mainly produced by fourteen massive hydrogenation plants jointly established by I. G. Farben and Standard Oil of New Jersey. Standard Oil collaborated with the Nazi regime extensively throughout the Hitler years.¹³

During the war, America tried to emulate the Nazi success. But Standard Oil refused to provide the U.S. military with the same desperately needed technology the company had bestowed upon the Nazis. In 1943, West Virginia congressman Jennings Randolph led a campaign to catch up to the Reich in spite of Standard Oil. How? By resurrecting the experimental hydrogenated-coal synthetic-fuel program begun by the Bureau of Mines two decades earlier near Pittsburgh during an earlier oil shortage. In November 1943, to dramatize the viability of synfuels, Randolph even flew to Washington, D.C., from West Virginia in a private airplane powered by coal-based synfuels.¹⁴

Shortly thereafter, on April 5, 1944, Congress passed the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act, authorizing $30 million for a five-year effort to “create synthetic liquid fuels from coal, oil shales, agricultural and forestry products, and other substances, in order to aid the prosecution of the war, to conserve and increase the oil resources of the Nation, and for other purposes.” Again, hydrogen was not the fuel but the gas required to industrially create the fuel. After the June 6, 1944, Normandy invasion, George S. Patton’s Third Army sped across Europe so quickly that he outdistanced Allied supply lines. To continue moving forward, Patton’s armored units drained captured German vehicle tanks of their coal-derived fuel and completed his drive into Germany—ironically on Hitler’s own coal-based synthetic fuel. Patton and Germany demonstrated that airplanes and the heaviest military vehicles, as well as the lightest personal cars, could be propelled by hydrogenated synfuels.¹⁵

But after the war, the value of America’s promising synfuels program was criticized and politically undermined by the oil industry. Big Oil’s scientific studies—disputed science for sure—showed the program to be “vastly too expensive.” In 1953, the Senate Appropriations Committee convened and immediately killed funding for all synfuels programs. A former member of the House, Estes Kefauver, the crusading senator who later chaired Congress’s famous investigation of organized crime, blamed oil industry pressure for the sudden demise of the synfuels program.¹⁶

However, hydrogen as a main fuel source was still considered viable by scientists. Arguably the first hydrogen-and-oxygen-fueled vehicle was an Allis-Chalmers tractor created in about 1958, as a demonstration project. Agricultural vehicles, with their generally low mileage requirements and heavy-strength uses are perfect candidates for hydrogen, electric, or other clean alternative fuels. But Allis-Chalmers ignored the tractor—a revolution in farm-equipment fuel did not occur.¹⁷

Hydrogen fuel powered the Apollo mission to the moon in the sixties and during the early seventies continued to boost mighty Saturn rockets into space. During those same two decades, battery and fuel-cell pioneer Karl Kordesch created the real foundations for the hydrogen vehicle revolution. The Austrian-born scientist was spirited out of Europe in 1953 by Operation Paperclip, the secret postwar program to recruit German scientists and technicians, including many propulsion experts. Kordesch was brought to Newark aboard a U.S. Navy vessel and then transferred to Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, where he worked on a variety of fuel cells and battery innovations for America. In 1967, Kordesch was part of a large team that helped convert a heavy GM Handivan into an Electrovan by installing a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell that generated 160 kilowatts, enough to easily operate the 7,500-pound vehicle up and down hills. GM ignored the Electrovan—a revolution in van fuel did not occur.¹⁸

Three years later in 1970, Kordesch lashed six gas cylinders to the roof of his four-passenger Austin A-40 and installed a fuel cell in the trunk, thus creating the world’s first hydrogen automobile that actually operated day-in, day-out. Kordesch drove that Austin A-40 as his personal car with a regular state license plate on public roads for thousands of miles during a three-year period, enjoying a 180-mile range. As of the summer of 2006, the vehicle is parked in Kordesch’s garage in Ohio, still in operating condition and ready to roll again if revived with fresh fuel cells. Kordesch’s breakthrough was ignored by the big automakers—a revolution in passenger cars did not occur.¹⁹

But in 1973, the Arab-imposed oil shock shook many alternative-fuel advocates into reconsidering hydrogen as a fuel for automobiles. But progress was slow because Big Oil and the Big Automakers preferred to wait out the oil crisis as long as possible. Nonetheless, over the next three decades, the impetus for hydrogen expanded. The National Hydrogen Association came together in 1989 to press for energy independence based on the most abundant element in the universe. Finally, in 1991, Mazda created the first working hydrogen car from a major automaker, albeit a Japanese firm. During the nineties, Mazda assembled several other working hydrogen vehicles. But Mazda’s beginning was not advanced—a revolution did not occur.²⁰

Finally, in the twenty-first century, America committed to standardizing on hydrogen as an energy source—a process declared so “futuristic” that it could only be seriously started within the coming several decades, and this along the tortuous, slow-speed routes of the Hydrogen Roadmap. But despite the pretty logos, interactive government Web sites, and grandiose announcements, the federal road map to a “hydrogen future” is in truth a mere resurrection of a “hydrogen past"—a past in search of a Manhattan Project to help it solve a present on the oil brink.

Hydrogen has been an energy source and industrial workhorse for more than two centuries. But the long-neglected issues of hydrogen have deepened into an onionskin of interlocking technical and manufacturing challenges. True, those challenges are easily oversimplified and reduced to catchy slogans. But they are not easily solved piecemeal in a real world.

“Hydrogen immediacy” for vehicles requires concerted, thoughtful planning and effort. Four key issues dominate: (1) creating the hydrogen that must then be converted to fuel; (2) using that hydrogen sensibly in a vehicle; (3) mass-producing the hydrogen vehicles; and (4) constructing the infrastructure to refuel the vehicles.

First: creating the fuel. To operate trucks and automobiles, hydrogen must be converted into fuel. True, hydrogen can be found abundantly in water, but it can also be found in coal, natural gas, and other substances. Separating out the hydrogen, or cracking it from the original matter, requires energy.

Three of the most discussed methods of creating ready hydrogen involve extracting it from water, natural gas, or coal. Electrolysis decomposes water—H₂0—into its components, which are oxygen and hydrogen; many argue that this process is inherently the cleanest and the most desirable. Natural gas, or methane gas, requires a reforming process, accomplished by employing high temperatures to separate the natural gas or methane molecule—CH₄—into its components, carbon and hydrogen; but that process releases carbon that unites with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, a climate-altering greenhouse gas. Coal is the least attractive option, requiring high-heat gasification, which for the foreseeable future remains an intrinsically dirty process, dependent upon a supply chain that exudes deadly by-products; it will take decades to perfect coal as a clean alternative from mine to manufacturer. However, electrolyzing water and reforming natural gas are well-entrenched, proven technologies that can broadly be implemented today.²¹

But either electrolyzing water or reforming natural gas requires electricity to power those machines. It always takes energy to make fuel. Where that electricity comes from and how that electricity is generated determines how cheap or costly it is to create the clean, renewable hydrogen fuel. Many believe electricity comes from a socket. It of course comes from a central generating utility feeding power into the grid. This is why hairdryers blow, newspaper presses print, and computer hard drives whir. Because the total chain must be considered when evaluating oil, coal, gas, or any other energy use, the source of the original electricity driving the production of hydrogen leads to what some in the field glibly call “black hydrogen” and “green hydrogen.”

Black hydrogen production is, or can be, powered by the electricity generated today by traditional polluting energy sources, such as ordinary coal-fired central electrical utilities. More than half the nation’s electrical power is still generated by coal, and much of the remainder is produced by greenhouse-gas-releasing natural gas or other environmentally harmful methods.²²

Green hydrogen is produced by electricity generated by such clean and renewable sources as wind, solar, thermal, hydro, and other methods. These well-established green sources are now enjoying a rapid resurgence. Leapfrogging progress is constantly being announced in the daily media. Costs and barriers continuously come down and efficiency continuously goes up.²³

An August 2005 study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory “verified that there are abundant solar and wind energy resources to meet hydrogen transportation fuel for the entire country.” Indeed, more than eight times our gasoline demand can be supplied by green hydrogen. “The gasoline consumption of the United States as a whole,” the National Renewable Energy Laboratory study asserted, “was 128 billion gallons of gasoline in 2000. The potential for hydrogen production from PV [photovoltaic] and wind for the entire country is 1,110 billion kilograms of hydrogen. As a kilogram of hydrogen is roughly equivalent to a gallon of gasoline in energy content, 8.6 times the year 2000 gasoline consumption in the United States can be met using hydrogen produced from PV and wind.”²⁴

The calculation that more than eight times America’s gasoline consumption could be supplied by domestic green solar-produced and wind-produced hydrogen was based on excluding all national-forest land and other protected or sensitive zones. About 60 percent of a kilogram of hydrogen cost is based on electricity expense—for capital for new equipment and actual generation. As renewable green electricity systems come online, that cost will dramatically flatten and could actually approach $1.60 per kilogram of hydrogen, this using 2004 technology and applying a cheap kilowatt supply.²⁵

How can green kilowatt costs be dramatically lowered? Local and state government ownership and control of green electricity generation facilities—which will come online only after taxpayer investment—could be a key factor in massively reducing electrical cost and increasing hydrogen production. Cities and states already own and control their own waterworks, sewage treatment, garbage pickup, airports, highways, transit systems, and ports. Historically, utility and transit systems in many cases became public property only after abandonment or economic misconduct by the original private companies. In many communities, electrical utilities are already community-owned cooperatives.

Petropolitical independence from oil is hastened by black hydrogen even as the environmental damage continues. So those who want to solve the economic and political hazards of the world’s oil addiction first and foremost encourage hydrogen in any hue—black or green. Black hydrogen, as of summer 2006, is abundantly available and can be processed through our normal electrical grid as a temporary “bridge technology” until windmills, solar, thermal, and like methods are deployed to provide the industrial-strength electricity needed to furnish green hydrogen. Hydrogen pioneer Kordesch stresses, “Everyone argues there is plenty of hydrogen everywhere, but the nagging question is still how you get it into the pipe.”²⁶ Whether powered by black or green sources, the “how” of creating hydrogen will affect cost for the foreseeable future, and that formula will change faster than any book can project.

Whether powered by renewable electricity or traditional hydrocarbons such as coal or natural gas, hydrogen must be extracted from something else in nature. Extracting it from natural gas is cheaper, many argue, because methane is easier to break into its components of carbon and hydrogen; that process, as of summer 2006, requires less electricity. Getting hydrogen from water requires much more electricity, as of summer 2006, so even though the water that contains hydrogen seems fundamentally free or inexpensive as it is in most industrialized regions, the additional electrical wattage increases the end cost. But all costs are dramatically changing almost daily. Even while this paragraph was being typed in summer 2006, General Electric announced a prototype machine to elec-trolyze water and extract the hydrogen for less than half the cost prevailing the day before. The new machine will do the job for about $3 per kilogram—down from $8 per kilogram. That new cost is about the same as the equivalent process needed to produce gasoline. GE cut its elec-trolyzer cost by more than half by using plastics and reducing other capital costs.²⁷

Once hydrogen is supplied, it leads to the second question: How will this gas be used by automobiles and trucks? Answer: either of two ways. Hydrogen internal combustion engines, called H-ICEs, burn hydrogen instead of gasoline; the car remains fundamentally the same, but a different fuel—hydrogen—is ignited in the cylinder. Better but more complicated is the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, which replaces the traditional motor with a complex device that converts the innate power of hydrogen into the electrical energy needed to make the vehicle move.²⁸

H-ICEs are relatively easy to make. Small modifications are made in the engine and fueling intake, and two or three steel gas cylinders are installed to supply hydrogen gas rather than traditional gasoline. H-ICEs have the advantage of starting in extremely cold weather. These hydrogen vehicles can be put into production immediately with no waiting. Ford has sold a small fleet of eight hotel-style H-ICE airport shuttle buses in Florida under a subsidized program. But the shuttle buses constitute a mere token project driven by taxpayer subsidy. As of summer 2006, Ford has not made plans for its so-called Model U passenger H-ICE vehicle, a concept car the company unveiled at a 2003 auto show. Ford sources stated it may be a decade before its Model U or anything like it is available to the public. Instead, company sources stated, Ford is concentrating on coal-intensive, petroleum-dependent ethanol cars, the flex-fuel vehicles. Asked why the company was helping to build an infrastructure and ramping up for problematic ethanol instead of implementing hydrogen internal combustion vehicles to use existing hydrogen supplies, a spokesman replied, “That is a good question. I don’t have an answer.”²⁹

General Motors is even more committed to ethanol than Ford. GM, which declined to accept questions on the subject, is helping erect a network of Midwest ethanol outlets as it ramps up production for large fuel-inefficient SUVs that can flexibly run on either traditional petroleum or an ethanol blend.³⁰ Both Ford and General Motors are constantly reevaluating their plans as they see foreign competitors racing toward the hydrogen launchpad. But the two financially devastated Detroit giants are so frantically busy salvaging their past at dusk, they cannot spare a moment to cope with the coming sunrise of a hydrogen future.

Many will not wait for Ford or GM to produce H-ICEs—the right now alternative. The California Highway Patrol retrofitted one of its own cars to burn hydrogen instead of gasoline as a test, and the vehicle is achieving perfect performance in real-world operation. Small companies are springing up around the country to do the same. Hence, scores of garage-tinkered H-ICEs are rolling onto American streets, fueled by industrial hydrogen sources. But these conversions, which require the vehicle-by-vehicle installation of heavy steel hydrogen tanks, are simply too costly at low volumes and too scattered to amount to anything more than symbolism and popular energy defiance.³¹ In many ways, they are cries for help.

Better than the H-ICE but far more complex is the fuel cell, which typically works by bringing the hydrogen in contact with two electrodes coated on one side with a thin catalyst layer. That thin catalyst layer divides the hydrogen into protons and electrons. Those “freed electrons” are the power that makes the automobile engine work and eventually turns the wheels. Hundreds of demonstration hydrogen cars and trucks are in operation around the world, scores of them in America as of 2006. Buses running in Amsterdam, Barcelona, London, Madrid, Oakland, Reykjavik, and other cities have already served more than four million passengers. Germany has deployed four stealthy hydrogen submarines, with more being ordered by Greece, Italy, and South Korea.³²

All hydrogen vehicles face one stumbling block: storage. Hydrogen is light and hard to handle. Pound per pound, hydrogen packs nearly three times the energy of gasoline—120 megajoules per kilogram for hydrogen against 44 megajoules per kilogram of gasoline. But on a volume basis, the numbers are inverted. Light and expansive hydrogen yields only 3 megajoules per liter at 5,000 pounds per square inch or 8 megajoules per liter as a liquid, even as gasoline delivers 32 megajoules per liter. Hence it takes a greater volume of hydrogen to deliver the same range and power as gasoline. Hydrogen must be compressed to deliver portable energy. More important, while gasoline can be stored in a cheap and compact gas tank, compressed hydrogen requires heavy steel cylinders, which add weight and a great deal of cost. Experts, such as Kordesch, say that a typical tank’s weight is composed of 2 percent hydrogen and 98 percent heavy steel. Volume production of hydrogen cars can bring the cost down, but the cylinder still adds a great deal of weight and expense.³³

Storage problems can be solved. Among the most discussed is cryogenics, that is, cooling the hydrogen down to a frigid liquid at -453 degrees Fahrenheit. That makes the hydrogen portable as a liquid. But the volatile liquid hydrogen actually boils furiously at room temperature and requires sophisticated and expensive controls to maintain its cold and then carefully convert it to gas. BMW, however, has tackled the problem and plans by 2009 to roll out a limited-production Series 7 hydrogen car that uses advanced cryogenic fuel tanks that will give its automobiles great range. The carmaker would help proliferate liquid-hydrogen-dispensing pumps at ordinary gas stations.³⁴

Another solution, says Kordesch, is to distribute fuel in the form of ordinary ammonia, which is among the most common chemicals on earth. Everyone has come into contact with ammonia, the household product commonly found in kitchen and toilet cleansers, and universally sold. Ammonia is 75 percent hydrogen and 25 percent nitrogen. Kordesch states that ammonia could be stored in any hydrogen car in a ‘Very cheap, simple plastic fuel container” and processed through an onboard automotive catalytic cracker to “crack” the molecule, releasing the hydrogen to a fuel cell. In its “uncracked state,” the fluid is safe enough to be classified as nonflammable by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Yet, ammonia powered the X-15 rocket plane, says Kordesch, who worked on the U.S. space program. It is potent. Demonstration ammonia-based fuel cells have already been assembled in Graz, Austria. China sells more ammonia than gasoline. America produces some twenty million tons annually. It can easily be distributed at any filling station, propane-dispensing outlet, or grocery store. The main problem is that in the event of a leak, the process releases one of the most malodorous of smells—that fertilizer reek would have to be chemically neutralized to be tolerable to consumers.³⁵

Other solutions talk of injecting hydrogen into exotic chemical compounds that act as carriers and are then filled into containers big and small made of advanced materials that can fuel everything from a cell phone to a semitruck. One of the most intriguing suggestions is embedding hydrogen into nanocarbon, that is, fibers woven from microscopic tubular structures a billionth of a meter in diameter. Nanocarbon is up to one hundred times stronger than steel—yet one-sixth its weight. Experts at thirty universities and U.S. Department of Energy laboratories are now devising new methods of storing hydrogen. Storage issues are now front and center, but they will soon be solved—perhaps quite basically at first, and certainly they will vastly improve with time.³⁶

The final challenge is one of infrastructure. Where do drivers fuel up their hydrogen automobiles? Except for a few heavily government-subsidized demonstration pumps, there are no hydrogen stations—no infrastructure. American automakers who go slow on hydrogen loudly justify their phlegmatic approach with a ready-made answer: “We cannot make cars that cannot be refueled.” These companies claim that hydrogen is just not being distributed the way gasoline is, that is, in pipelines, railroad cars, and large tanker trucks. GM, typical of go-slow automakers, claims infrastructure will be in place by 2020. The hydrogen movement calls this the “chicken-egg” debate, meaning which comes first, the stations with hydrogen to dispense or the cars to use them? No cars can be built without stations, no stations without cars. Many oil companies are preparing to jump into the hydrogen distribution business—but not until future decades and even then only incrementally as oil runs critically short. Until then, the oil companies assert, progress on energy independence can only inch along.³⁷

To counter a sluggish industry response, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has become a hydrogen warrior and a real-life alternative-energy hero by committing his state to developing a “Hydrogen Highway.” Others have followed, including Florida and British Columbia. Schwarzenegger’s vision, which has become a cause célèbre for environmentalist and hydrogen advocates, mandates the establishment of some two-hundred commercial hydrogen filling stations, one every twenty miles along the freeways of California, and all within easy reach of every motorist. Schwarzenegger’s target date for completion is 2010.³⁸

“The goal of the California Hydrogen Highway Network initiative,” Schwarzenegger declared, “is to support and catalyze a rapid transition to a clean, hydrogen transportation economy in California, thereby reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and protecting our citizens from health harms related to vehicle emissions. We have an opportunity to deal with these problems by investing in California’s ability to innovate our way to a clean hydrogen future, thus bringing jobs, investment, and continued economic prosperity to California. We have an opportunity to prove to the world that a thriving environment and economy can coexist.”³⁹

Schwarzenegger’s vision requires an estimated investment of as much as $200 million and years of industrial effort almost from scratch.⁴⁰ However, the flamboyant governor and his allies in hydrogen advocacy are finding the effort an uphill battle precisely because of the chicken-egg argument that mandates inch-by-inch progress. However, the infrastructure argument is false, just the latest daily dose of a century of lies, and a pretext for hydrogen delay.

Hydrogen is the most abundant matter in the universe and is also massively distributed throughout the world and in the United States. More than 9 million tons of hydrogen are annually manufactured and distributed in the United States alone; each year, bulk hydrogen is distributed by some 10,000 shipments by rail, truck, and existing pipelines to more than 300 destinations. Among the major industrial companies supplying bulk hydrogen worldwide by the millions of tons are Air Liquide, which operates 130 subsidiaries in 65 countries; Air Products, which maintains 100 miles of hydrogen pipeline in America and distributes 190,000 kilograms of hydrogen daily to more than 20 American customers, including leading oil refineries, which depend upon it to make cleaner gasoline; BOC Group, which operates hydrogen plants worldwide; Linde, which works extensively in America and Europe; and Praxair, which maintains seven hydrogen pipelines worldwide, including a 310-mile hydrogen pipeline system along the U.S. Gulf Coast, which as of summer 2006 delivers 700 million cubic feet daily to more than 50 chemical plants, steel factories, metallurgical facilities, and oil refineries. Two Praxair plants completed in 2004 by themselves produce some 200 million cubic feet of hydrogen daily. The company also ships liquid hydrogen daily. Praxair sales for all gases, including hydrogen, exceed $7.6 billion annually.⁴¹

Linde has partnered with BMW to produce the cryogenic hydrogen fuel tank due out before 2010. Air Products and Praxair are both active in the National Hydrogen Association and the movement to create a hydrogen vehicle. At a March 2006 hydrogen conference in Long Beach, California, representatives of both Praxair and Air Products publicly scoffed at notions that the hydrogen highway was awaiting a supply network for hydrogen. “We have enough hydrogen right now to fuel more than a million hydrogen cars—and many more if we try,” said one Praxair senior manager. Praxair and Air Products officials agreed that the initial hydrogen highway already exists along their hundreds of miles of pipelines and along their active distribution routes. The first consumer hydrogen stations, executives say, would not need to be grandiose multimillion-dollar government-subsidized enterprises; they could be simple, low-cost stations adjacent to their pipelines and depots that would resemble any neighborhood gas station. From this initial highway along hundreds of arterial miles, growth could proceed in all directions, innervating the country with hydrogen access.⁴²

Portable electrolysis and reforming units, many just slightly larger than a man with new models constantly becoming more compact, are available to create hydrogen fuel anywhere, anytime. They can be planted in the middle of the Mojave Desert or at a downtown Boston gas station, where they can convert water or other carriers such as common ammonia into hydrogen fuel. Intelligent Energy’s Hestia hydrogen generator can produce pure hydrogen within one hour of a cold start-up, can be stacked to create large-scale operations, and can run on a range of alternative fuels including ammonia. Those compact hydrogen-fuel-producing facilities can be connected to Intelligent Energy’s electricity-generating hydrogen fuel cells. Militaries throughout the world are looking at remote hydrogen production and electricity generation because they must ensure fuel supplies.⁴³

In fact, the hydrogen highway is so ready to be opened to traffic that it already runs right into the sea. In 2004, the world’s first oceangoing, self-contained, renewably powered hydrogen-production platform sailed into action. Germany’s Hydrogen Challenger produces bulk hydrogen at sea using unlimited wind power to create its electricity. The Hydrogen Challenger literally maneuvers into the wind to achieve optimal power. Generally, the ship anchors off the windswept Niedersachsen coast. Its two deck-mounted, vertical-axis wind rotors and integrated generators subject water to electrolysis until the Challenger fills its belly with energy-rich hydrogen—1,194 cubic meters at a time. The ship then sails to any coastal transmission point or factory to dispense its load, or even to another hydrogen-powered vessel to refuel it just as petroleum fuel ships do now for oil and colliers did for the British navy in the early twentieth century.⁴⁴

In other words, the initial hydrogen highway already exists but is merely awaiting some on-ramps.

A telling exchange on the so-called absence of an infrastructure occurred with a Ford spokesman. Asked why the company was not proceeding on hydrogen cars, the spokesman repeated the well-worn explanation: “Because there is no hydrogen out there for anyone to refuel their car,” adding, “Where are the stations?" Asked whether Ford was not establishing from scratch a farm-belt-based ethanol infrastructure, helping to create stations or a pump network, this in timed tandem with ever-mounting flex-fuel car production, the spokesman answered, “Yes.” The spokesman was asked if it could be done for ethanol given the fuel’s adverse ecological effects, why could it not be done for climate-friendly hydrogen, especially in regions such as the Gulf Coast where hydrogen is voluminously distributed by pipeline. Ford’s spokesman paused, then replied, “That is a very good question. To be honest, there is no answer.”⁴⁵

The twentieth century has proved that good technology is impervious to a chicken-egg debate, which is in fact a canard. Roads required automobiles and automobiles required roads; they were built across the country until they connected every place with every other place. Light-bulbs required electricity and electricity companies needed lightbulb customers. Gasoline buyers required gas stations and gas stations required gasoline buyers; they were built. Leaded gasoline was phased out and unleaded gasoline was phased in; slender fuel apertures were installed in cars and station pumps converted to thin nozzles within a matter of years. Cellular phone users required towers and towers required users; they were built at an amazing rate, outpacing all prior network expansion. Then in the late nineties, cellular systems switched from analog to digital; towers sprouted first along the interstates from Washington to Baltimore and within a few years became omnipresent. DVDs required users with players and users required DVDs to play; the new format was adopted so quickly that VHS tapes became virtually obsolete within a matter of a few years.

Even now, Big Corn and Detroit carmakers are establishing a new network to produce and distribute petroleum-based ethanol, which requires ethanol-burning flex-fuel cars, which are being rolled off assembly lines at great speed.

But in spite of false futures and delayed futures, false pasts and recurring pasts, the long-postponed hydrogen revolution is under way. Petropo-litical independence, a U-turn from ecocide and the restoral of the freedom and productivity that energy in general and automobiles in particular promised is all at hand. Deliverance will not come from Ford. It will not come from Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, or any other division of General Motors. It will come first, fastest, and most reliably from one company: American Honda.

The Honda solution will rewrite everything the public knows about automobile travel. No more gasoline. No more gas stations.

Honda, as of summer 2006, is at the tip of the hydrogen spear with its smooth-driving Hydrogen FCX. The Honda FCX drives exactly like any other car, stem to steering wheel, providing the automotive excellence and performance that Honda customers have learned to love—but this vehicle runs on clean hydrogen fuel. Honda is developing the fuel cell engine on its own dime, almost devoid of government subsidies. The company’s FCX fleet, as of summer of 2006, is composed of more than thirty vehicles, each handmade in Japan at about $1 million per copy. These vehicles are leased for daily use by municipalities in both warm and cold climes in Japan, California, Nevada, and New York. In summer 2005, a California family was chosen to drive the first regular consumer FCX. Jon and Sandy Spallino of Redondo Beach, California, are paying for a two-year lease with their own money and driving under normal conditions. The 2006 FCX has all the appearances of a Spartan economy car.⁴⁶

But production of a sleek, stunning, and compelling next-generation FCX was accelerated to commence before 2010. Jammed with advanced biometrics that recognize the driver as he or she approaches the door and adjusts the seat, steering wheel, dash icons, and pedals; outfitted with a new hydrogen absorption material that carries enough hydrogen for a 350-range; styled with enough rich verve to appeal to any enthusiast, the coming Honda FCX is not designed to be a stripped-down green alternative but literally the next-generation, must-drive, hot and handsome vehicle.⁴⁷

More than a car, the Honda FCX comes with its own home-based hydrogen energy station that obsoletes gas stations and gasoline—and even cuts the tether to utility bills. About the size of a common home air-conditioning unit, the Honda Home Energy Station will be driven by natural gas, not electricity, and will create enough hydrogen daily to fill one or more FCX vehicles and heat and power an individual home. Honda’s Home Energy Station is no pipe dream. Plug Power, an upstate-New York fuel-cell maker with more than six hundred installations worldwide, supplied Honda home power stations for several years before March 16, 2006, when they jointly announced the smallest model yet and most ambitious phase of their partnership—the FCX program. Honda’s Home Energy Station will soon be configured to run on solar, either from panels or perhaps from nanosolar materials embedded in its sleek case or other nearby home surfaces. An estimated twenty square yards of nanosolar wrapped around a pole or a building surface could independently power Honda’s Home Energy Station. A Plug Power source confirmed that the company’s home station can be mass produced for the price of an air conditioner, opening the way to scalable untethered energy. Honda controls the license on Plug Power’s home station technology.⁴⁸

Beyond nanosolar is bacterial hydrogen. Scientists at Berlin’s Technical University, Penn State, and elsewhere have been able to extract hydrogen from wastewater, biomass, and even dung using a variety of common algae. The algae receive a tiny electrical jolt, as little as a quarter volt, one-tenth the power needed for normal electrolysis. They produce bacteria that extract the hydrogen, which is then fed to a fuel cell. Right now, the amount of hydrogen power is still small. Craig Venter, the scientist behind the Human Genome Project, has created a new business venture called Synthetic Genomics expressly to create new microorganisms that will abundantly create hydrogen. Joining him is a dream team of research leaders and scientists, including Aristides Patrinos, former director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research; Hamilton Smith, an expert in DNA manipulation, who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for his work on restriction enzymes, a fundamental tool in recombinant DNA technology and techniques; and Juan Enriquez, founding director of Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project. If Synthetic Genomics and numerous other scientific projects are successful, energy will be extracted from refuse and wastewater, which itself will then be cleansed.⁴⁹

Plug Power and Honda are embarking upon what the energy industry calls distributed generation, that is, decentralized energy, energy detached from a central generating utility such as a coal-fired or nuclear plant. Decentralization has occurred in much technology and has in many ways defined the advanced nature of any society. Telephones migrated from switchboards to home land lines to tiny cellular phones. Dramatic productions went from central theaters to movie houses to home television, and now the biggest Hollywood blockbuster can be viewed on laptops or even mobile phones. Computers evolved from room-sized devices to mainframes, and within less than two decades evolved almost beyond imagination to personal computers and then to handheld cheap personal digital assistants or PDAs. The earliest nineteenth-century battery itself was an effort to go wireless. Air-conditioning is generated remotely, not centrally.

There is little sense in digging a hole thousands of miles away to be empowered by petroleum to run down to the market for a gallon of milk, or digging a hole hundreds of miles away to be empowered by coal or natural gas to turn on the lights. A nagging question arises: Why are we driving to the 7-Eleven via Saudi Arabia? Distributed generation of energy is a phenomenon long delayed. Distributed generation is the be-all and end-all of energy. But the idea is not modern. Thomas Edison advocated the same idea in 1912—home energy stations for every home and farm—and he even built his own working mansion based on the self-generated power.

Honda’s new FCX system finally gives the gift of total individual energy self-sufficiency, independent from the violent winds of Mideast petro-politics, the battering winds of Gulf hurricanes, or the escalating winds of monopolistic energy costs. It is the culminating intersection of centuries of energy history. FCX and many emulators who will follow will not cause wars—they will avoid them. Honda’s approach is to supply not a grumbling alternative but a glittering success story that will succeed on its own inbred merits of design and functionality, as well as its absolute necessity as an answer to the petropolitical, human health, and ecocidal crises arising out of a century of internal combustion.

In its fast-tracked campaign, Honda rejected coal- and oil-based ethanol, as did many foreign carmakers who examined the prospect. Foreign carmakers without a vested interest in gas-guzzling SUVs or 51-cent per-gallon subsidies quickly realized that ethanol was just substituting one oil-based system for another. Ethanol, they concluded, was just what it asserts it is: a gasoline additive or extender. Creating an ethanol diversion would only drag out the rule of King Oil and delay the day of true distributed-energy independence.⁵⁰

Honda also rejected the notion of the standard battery-powered or grid-charged electrical car that is the dream of many alternative-fuel advocates who want off oil today and not tomorrow. Toyota’s Prius electric-gasoline hybrid is so hotly in demand that green-motivated motorists pay thousands above sticker price just to drive one. The Prius smartly generates its electricity from the generator in tandem with braking. But it is in fact a petroleum car with better mileage by virtue of its reliance on electrical systems. A rebellious movement of Prius evangelists now modify their Prius vehicles as plug-ins, trying to get them closer to the Holy Grail of a purely electrical car. Toyota, however, bristles at those who tinker with their Priuses and assures that a purely electrical car is not even being considered.⁵¹

Electric cars were subverted a century ago when internal combustion overtook the roads. In the seventies, after the first Arab oil shock, electric cars were reintroduced by GM, Honda, and other major carmakers. But those highly successful cars were all systematically destroyed as GM, Honda, and other car companies invoked their lease rights, repossessed the beloved vehicles from their fiercely loyal drivers, and then sent the cars to metal crushers. The inexplicable campaign of repossession and destruction of electric cars by their makers has spawned an entire movement of protesters who curse the day they were forced to give up their leased electric cars.⁵²

But in fact, the new Honda FCX is the first of a new generation of twenty-first-century electric cars. The FCX is driven by electrons, not internal combustion. But those electrons are not created by a heavy industrial battery dating back to the nineteenth century, they are created by a hydrogen fuel cell like the one that boosted a man to the moon. The untethered electricity that powers the FCX and its adjacent household does not require coal, and one day will not even utilize natural gas, which pumps about two-thirds the level of greenhouse gases released by petroleum.

Honda is not alone in pursuing hydrogen cars. Most major automakers—both here and abroad—are dabbling in the field. GM and Ford have both built demonstration hydrogen cars heavily subsidized by Department of Energy grants. But it is the foreign carmakers, essentially disqualified from taxpayer moneys, that have done the most to race to the hydrogen highway on-ramp. At the March 2006 National Hydrogen Association annual conference in Long Beach, the automakers strutted their best efforts. This writer test-drove many of them in ordinary Long Beach city traffic and then along that city’s famous Grand Prix track. The taxpayer-subsidized Ford vehicle certainly proved the technology moved but to many lacked finesse. The taxpayer-subsidized GM passenger car combined a confusing mix of supposedly modern dash controls but rendered a noticeably unsmooth, almost jolting ride. GM also previewed a taxpayer-subsidized heavy-duty pickup truck, developed for the military, which was as loud and shaky as a World War I-era Model T The Mercedes-Benz vehicle was cramped and noisy inside because of the engine. The Audi offered an excellent ride and almost rocketlike acceleration that would make it desirable to any car enthusiast. All these vehicles were years away from production, and most seemed not ready for prime time.⁵³

But the Honda FCX offered every comfort and quality of a regular Honda, drove seamlessly, smoothly, and handled like the best vehicles the company makes. Except for the decal on the side, there was no way to know the car was powered by a hydrogen-fuel-cell stack. It was a machine that anyone would desire and never detect a compromise.⁵⁴

Steve Ellis, manager of fuel-cell marketing for American Honda, discussed the engineering accomplishment and the company’s vision. Seated in a quiet corner of an emptied section of the Long Beach convention hall, Ellis looked up and recalled that day on September 11, 2001: “As soon as I saw those two airplanes fly into the World Trade Center, I knew we had to get busy.”⁵⁵ But his answer is not a half measure, a diversion, or a compromise product. Ellis and Honda want to deliver a car that will not only solve the energy problem, but will also be a product to be proud of and one that will make real money, justifying the substantial investment Honda is making.

BMW is chasing Honda at high speed. Its Series 7 promises to deliver a BMW-quality vehicle based on cryogenics and liquid hydrogen, expected to go into production not long after the FCX goes into production, about 2009 or 2010. However, BMW’s path does not, as of summer 2006, include the distributed generation or home fueling that Honda is scheduled to deliver.⁵⁶

Toyota is quieter about its hydrogen plans but has actively been engaged in hydrogen development since the late eighties. The company inaugurated fuel-cell research in the early nineties and by 1996 constructed a demonstration car with a hydrogen-absorbing alloy tank. The next year, the company developed a system that extracted hydrogen from methane via an on-board reformer. In March 2001 in Tokyo, Toyota unveiled its advanced FCHV-3. Toyota has been adding functionality every year and has expanded into hydrogen-powered city buses. “Honda leads for now,” a Toyota source stated. “For now. But one day soon, we will lead.” The company official blasted Department of Energy subsidies to develop demonstration hydrogen cars that were limited to “American companies,” and therefore excluded Toyota, Honda, and BMW. “All the foreign car companies have been excluded,” he protested.⁵⁷

Ironically, the American companies will not be leading the parade onto the hydrogen highway. That will be Honda, which will have to look over its shoulder continuously as it is chased by BMW, Audi, Toyota, and other foreign carmakers. When any of the companies roll out their production models in 2009 or 2010, those cars will not be available at showrooms, but to select commercial and governmental customers, such as municipalities, the military, or major corporate or government fleet owners. It will be another year or two for the production volume to bring the costs down to consumer levels.

Anticipating the years-long rollout, Honda already has in place a bridge technology that uses compressed natural gas. Honda’s CNG car, which has been available since 2005, operates on the same natural gas commonly supplied to kitchens and backyard grills. The heavy CNG tanks take up most of the trunk, leaving only enough space for a few briefcases. That makes the CNG a personal city car or a fleet car. But it delivers the first measure of petropolitical independence because it uses no gasoline. Moreover, Honda’s CNG, like the FCX, comes with its own home filling station. The CNG home-fueling device, called Phill, is purchased either directly from Honda in some states, or elsewhere from the fueling-machine manufacturer. It can be installed as easily as a gas grill.⁵⁸

Honda’s CNG and its slender home-fueling machine were to be rolled out with great fanfare in April 2005 because it represented a revolutionary option to oil-based automobiles and tethering to gas stations. But on the day the breakthrough was to be announced, a confused young Georgia woman, Jennifer Wilbanks, disappeared en route to her wedding. At first, authorities thought Wilbanks was kidnapped. Soon it emerged that Wilbanks was a just an overstressed woman who had cracked under wedding jitters and simply run away. In a nonstop media circus, television, radio, and many newspapers focused on what became known as “the runaway bride.” Every other news development seemed to pale by comparison. Hence, Honda’s breakthrough could not break through to the American public. Nonetheless, the CNG, which employs a Honda Civic body, drives with as much pep and versatility as any other Honda Civic. Any individual or fleet searching for an immediate solution to gasoline can purchase one.⁵⁹

Compressed natural gas, which enjoys the industry-inspired moniker “clean natural gas,” is actually not clean. True it is less hazardous to health than oil and coal in many key aspects. But according to the natural gas industry’s own figures, its hydrocarbon-based product is still a significant source of greenhouse gases and a contributor to global warming. True, natural gas’s mercury and sulfur dioxide emissions are nil compared to oil and coal. But natural gas releases almost 10 percent as much particulate pollution as oil combustion, and about a fifth as much nitrous oxide as oil or coal. At the same time, natural gas actually releases more carbon monoxide than oil burning, and 117,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per billion Btu of energy, compared to 164,000 for oil and 208,000 for coal. Hence, driving Honda’s CNG or riding as a passenger in one of the growing fleet of CNG city buses emblazoned with “clean natural gas,” and rolling through American cities does significantly advance petropolitical independence and reduces emissions harmful to health. But using natural gas only slows the slide toward climate change. Natural gas remains a major source of global warming.⁶⁰

A hierarchy of threats and crises confronts a world under the rule of petroliferous internal combustion. The disastrous effects of global warming may already be irreversible, or there may still be time to halt the process. That is being debated by experts and pundits. But the disastrous effects of another Hurricane Katrina or a choking terrorist attack on the oil infrastructure, or petropolitical blackmail from countries such as Iran or a new regime in Saudi Arabia, may be upon the world in the twinkling of an eye. During such a disruption, oil could quickly become scarce or unaf-fordable. The Strategic Oil Reserve, which maintains a ninety-day emergency supply of crude, still requires refineries to turn the petroleum into oil and lubricating products. If extreme weather, industrial accident, or terror disables America’s fragile refining ability, the dramatic effects could spring to life within hours. During the brief refinery disruptions of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, gasoline prices at the pump skyrocketed at some gas stations, as often as three times in a day for the very same oil reposing in their tanks.⁶¹ These near-term threats impart towering immediacy to breaking free of the oil addiction, and all the alternatives within reach are advocated by those who sense the danger.

In the absence of a government-launched Manhattan Project, the public must turn first not to the White House or the statehouse, but to the largest fleet owners in the country. Those fleets can impact the automobile market and the internal combustion threat with the ink on a purchase order. For-hire carriers in 2004 operated 675,000 trucks; the top ten include such companies as UPS, Federal Express, and Yellow Roadway. UPS alone deploys some eighty thousand brown trucks daily as it makes thirteen million deliveries every twenty-four hours. Only about a thousand of UPS’s massive fleet ran on CNG as of summer 2006. Within Federal Express’s 70,000-vehicle fleet, the company operates 30,000 medium-duty trucks, of which less than a hundred are hybrid diesel, as of summer 2006.⁶²

Some six million additional vehicles are owned by private commercial fleets such as Sysco, Wal-Mart, Halliburton, and Frito-Lay. Wal-Mart alone operates 3,300 trucks that in 2005 drove 455 million miles to make nine hundred thousand deliveries. Verizon operated 70,000 trucks and cars in 2004. Waste Management operated about 28,000 vehicles in 2004. Krispy Kreme doughnuts operated 750 vehicles in 2004. City, state, and federal agencies, as well as universities, comprise just a fraction of America’s 38,000 private fleets.⁶³

Fleets—governmental, commercial, and private—have a compelling purchasing power no automaker can ignore. If fleet managers issued a hierarchy of purchasing that mandated hydrogen cars first, fully electric cars second, and CNG cars third, the race would be on among all truck and heavy-duty vehicle manufacturers from GM to Mercedes to be the first to fill those orders. Volume purchasing will multiply and accelerate the technology, bring down costs, and migrate it swiftly from commercial fleets to average consumer.

Therefore, the public and environmentally conscious companies can choose to ship green, shop green, drink green, and even communicate green. For example, in choosing an overnight shipper, will it be Federal Express or UPS? In buying soda, will it be Coke or Pepsi? Corporate policies, such as nondiscrimination, labor fairness, environmental damage, and other conduct are already determining factors for many in choosing where to place their business. Therefore, there is more power in one petition to UPS and Federal Express than to all members of Congress combined.

Ironically, the federal government itself maintains America’s single largest fleet by far—some 600,000 vehicles. Environmental groups have consistently sued the federal government to compel it to follow its own alternative-fuel guidelines. The Energy Policy Act, passed after the first Gulf War, mandates all federal agencies to reduce oil dependence by ensuring that some 75 percent of new vehicle purchases use alternative fuels. The law has been totally ignored. A steady cascade of court rulings has rejected government requests for delays. Government purchases alone could spur the rapid adoption of any category of alternative-fuel vehicle—hydrogen or otherwise.⁶⁴

Governments and regimes since the time of the pharaohs, since the days of medieval England, since the advent of the Industrial Age, since the rise of the battery, since the demise of the electric car, since the triumph of petroleum, have declined to exercise a public policy that exercises sane stewardship over energy and those who control it.

Distributed generation can be more than passing power from central control to individuals to run mere hairdryers and televisions. Power can also flow to individuals determined to run their world and their lives in such a way that will preserve their lives and their world, preserve their way of life and their prosperity. Internal combustion has slowly been burning through the human, economic, and environmental resources of civilization. But the fuel is finite.

Many believe the notion that man inherits the earth. Not so, he only holds it as a precious legacy for succeeding generations. That inheritance must not be squandered or reduced to rubble because of the war, industrial epidemic, or ecocidal damage arising from the intoxicating but toxic fumes of internal combustion.