Hydrogen Vehicles & Saving Energy

For now… the hydrogen economy… goes over like a lead zeppelin.

This is the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Six years ago, President George W. Bush declared the beginning of the hydrogen economy. He proposed 1.2 billion dollars to develop hydrogen power cars. Now – the Energy Department wants to cut funding for the development of hydrogen powered vehicles. Mark Brush has been looking into this, so Mark – what’s going on here?

Stephen Chu is Obama’s new Energy Secretary. And he’s has decided that cars powered by hydrogen are a long way off. Too long for the government to put so much money into a hydrogen fuel cell program. Chu says they’d rather spend money on things like plug-in cars and cars powered by biofuels. Things that can hit the road now instead of 20 years from now.
And as you can imagine – people working on hydrogen powered vehicles aren’t too happy. I talked with Patrick Serfass. He’s with the National Hydrogen Association.

“I’d say the hydrogen industry is perplexed. I think the administration has a lot of smart people in it. But I think the proposal to eliminate the hydrogen vehicle program is a mistake.”

Serfass and his group are trying to get Congress to put money back into the budget for hydrogen research.


O.k. – thanks Markus
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This is The Environment Report.

INTRO: President Obama's economic stimulus package is pouring billions into energy-efficiency programs. As Amy Standen reports, it’s shining a new spotlight on some of the simpler ways we can all reduce our energy use.
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Why do we tend to overemphasize expensive solutions, like solar panels, and underemphasize the cheap ones – like simply using less energy?

James Sweeney directs the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at Stanford University, and he says maybe the problem is that energy efficiency is a little… boring.

SWEENEY It’s very boring.

But if your eyes start to glaze over at the mere mention of the word “efficiency,” consider the compact fluorescent light bulb.

SWEENEY the easiest thing everyone can do is change their lighting.

If everyone in the U.S. traded in their old incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents, we’d cut electricity use by about two percent. Which, maybe, doesn’t sound so impressive until you consider the fact that ALL the solar and ALL the wind power combined in the entire country amounts to point four percent of our total energy use. That’s zero point four.

SWEENEY The cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use in the first place.

That fact has not been lost on the Obama Administration, which is pouring five billion stimulus dollars into Weatherization Assistance Program, to help low-income families weatherproof their homes. To qualify, a family of four must make less than $44 thousand dollars a year.

AMBI: take 25 and go to el paso road… (continue under track)

That stimulus cash funds local non-profits like Community Resource Project, in Sacramento, California. Since January, Community Resource’s budget has tripled. They’re buying new trucks, hiring at all levels, and going to more and more homes.

AMBI: knock knock

Like this one, a five-bedroom stucco ranch house in a newer suburban development outside of Sacramento.

AMBI: (squeak – door opens) Hello, how are you doing?

At the door is TinaMarie Dunn. She says the house just doesn’t work right.

DUNN When the heat is on, downstairs is hot, downstairs is cold. When the air’s on, the upstairs is cold, the downstairs is hot.

Community Resource’s Dana Gonzalez walks into the kitchen, and pauses to take a look around.

STANDEN: So when you walked in, what was the first thing you saw? GONZALEZ It’s funny You see this door shoe and you see…[[continue under track: actually the bottom rubber is gone]]

He points to a two-inch gap under the front door.

GONZALEZ And if you put your hand here, you can actually feel the air. Anytime they kick on their heat and cool, that’s definitely affecting their house, and in the long run, affects their bill. (continue, fade down under track, “so things like this…”)

Community Resource will spend about $1500 here, aiming to cut monthly utility bills by as much as 20 percent, with simple adjustments, like weather stripping the doors, and installing CFL lightbulbs.

There’s some concern that the huge cash infusion into efficiency projects is a recipe for fraud and mismanagement. Department of Energy officials have called for extra vigilance, but, they say, the benefits, both environmental and economic, far outweigh the risks.


For the Environment Report, I’m Amy Standen.