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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (368870)	3/11/2003 3:17:02 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Just for perspective, others doubt that time table: Fuel-cell car hopes played down A 20-year plan to make hydrogen fuel cells a green alternative to conventional car engines is likely to fail, says a report. The research, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, says that diesel and petrol hybrid vehicles will still be the best option at this point, despite "aggressive research" on hydrogen fuel. The report undermines President George W Bush's recently announced $1.2bn drive to develop commercially viable fuel cell "freedom cars" by 2020. Children born now, he said, might take their first drive in such vehicles. Clean hope Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles are seen as one possible way to dramatically cut the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions. The hydrogen used in the cells is extracted from natural gas, or petrol, or water and a simple chemical reaction between this and oxygen produces energy. The only by-product of this is water. However, producing the fuel itself would involve substantial carbon dioxide emissions, and the MIT report concludes that these, coupled with the extra "green" costs of fuel distribution, would cancel out these advantages. The MIT team believes it might be a better option to try to improve the efficiency of existing diesel and petrol cars by supplementing them with electric motors - so-called hybrid engines. A massive investment in hybrid diesel research could mean that these engines would prove twice as efficient and half as polluting as a hydrogen fuel-cell car, says the report. Even a hybrid petrol-engined car could prove greener than one powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. Professor Malcolm Weiss, from MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, said: "Ignoring the emissions and energy use involved in making and delivering the fuel and manufacturing the vehicle gives a misleading impression." Drop in the ocean Dr Peter Wells, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University, UK, said that there was a consensus that hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles would not be viable quickly. He said that the "titanic problem" facing the US was that even if one million fuel-cell vehicles were on the road in 2020, their benefits would be dwarfed by 200 million conventional cars. Manufacturers showed no signs of moving away from polluting vehicles such as "light trucks", he said. He added: "There are things that the US Government could be doing now to reduce this problem, not waiting 20 years for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles." The MIT report, however, does say that in the longer term, there is no alternative to hydrogen so far. Professor John Heywood, one of the authors, said: "If auto systems with significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions are required in say 30 to 50 years, hydrogen is the only major fuel option identified to date." news.bbc.co.uk