Whatever happened to Schwarzenegger’s “California Hydrogen Highway”?
In October 2004, then California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rolled up to a pioneering fueling station at Los Angeles International Airport in a hydrogen-powered metallic blue Hummer loaned to him by General Motors Corp.
The “California Hydrogen Highway,” Schwarzenegger’s vision to ensure that every Californian would have access to a hydrogen fueling station by the end of 2010, called for the state to spend more than $50 million to help deploy up to 100 hydrogen fuel stations that would serve 2,000 fuel cell vehicles. “We got 200 stakeholders around a table, literally, and mapped out who could get stations where,” said Terry Tamminen, a top adviser to Schwarzenegger.
But nearly nine years later, California has just nine hydrogen stations open for the public, and only about 200 fuel cell cars that can use them.
A “greener” America? Who says that hydrogen fuel-cell technology is necessarily greener than conventional transport fuel? It takes a lot of energy to produce the hydrogen and distribute it; that energy is likely to be “dirty”.
Effective methane cars might be a real improvement over petroleum burners based on actual pollution — carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, other stuff that can do real harm. Methane cars would also produce less CO2, as I understand, but they’d produce more water vapor and water vapor is actually the most significant greenhouse component.
Link is to chicagotribune, not reuters.