By Susan Roth
Democrat and Chronicle
(February 7, 2003) — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to do the president one better on fuel cell technology.
Last week in his State of the Union address, President Bush proposed spending $1.2 billion over five years to develop the alternative energy technology.
During a speech Thursday in Washington, Bush called the initiative “a new national commitment to take hydrogen fuel cell cars from the laboratory to the showroom.”
Later Thursday afternoon, the New York Democrat jumped on the fuel cell bandwagon along with Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., a longtime advocate of alternative energy ideas.
Clinton is working with Dorgan on legislation they expect to introduce next week that would provide $6.5 billion over 10 years to develop fuel cells.
The Rochester area is a leader in developing the new technology.
“Our bill helps the president’s idea have legs,” Clinton said.
“This would be good for the environment and good for the economy, and spe-cifically, it would be very good for the economy of upstate New York. We want it on a faster track. We want to see results sooner than under the president’s plan,” she said.
Dorgan and Clinton offered few details of the bill, but Dorgan said he planned to offer $2.3 billion for research and development, $2 billion to find ways to store and transport hydrogen fuel cells, $700 million in tax incentives and additional money to encourage a market for fuel cells.
The technology is considered environmentally friendly because only water vapor is released when hydrogen is used to power fuel cells.
Both the Bush plan and the Dorgan-Clinton bill could be a boost for fuel-cell research and development in the Rochester area, where General Motors is working on the technology at a plant in Honeoye Falls and Delphi Corp. is doing research at its technical center in Henrietta.
Rochester Institute of Technology also is creating an advanced fuel-cell research laboratory.
Also, in Albany, a company called Plug Power is conducting hydrogen energy research.
Clinton said New York fuel cell efforts could “hugely” benefit through competitive research grants, tax credits and other kinds of funding if the bill becomes law.
The lawmakers have no Republican co-sponsors yet, but they believe it will be a bipartisan effort because of Bush’s focus on the issue.
Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who attended Bush’s speech with Dorgan, set a hearing on the issue for March 6 with auto industry representatives and Energy Department scientists.
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