Fuel of the future

Monday, Nov. 18, 2002 | 10:16 a.m.

Clean, cheap energy has been an elusive goal. But a federally supported project in Las Vegas may bring that goal closer to reality.

Local and federal officials, along with corporate partners, cut the ribbon Friday on a hydrogen energy station that they called the first in the world.

What makes this project a first is that it brings together three types of hydrogen-based energy: a fuel cell that provides electricity to the power grid, and pumps that can provide both pure hydrogen and a mix of hydrogen and natural gas, which can be used to fuel specialized nonpolluting vehicles.

The $10.8 million, five-year demonstration project was funded by the Energy Department and private-sector partners, particularly Pennsylvania-based Air Products and Chemicals Inc. The excitement centered on the fact that hydrogen, when powering modern fuel cell technology, produces as waste only nontoxic carbon dioxide and water vapor.

Local officials said the energy station near Buffalo Drive and Cheyenne Avenue is an important step toward cleaning up the air and providing the infrastructure for what is touted as the clean fuel of the future.

"Las Vegas is always at the cutting edge," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said at the Friday ribbon-cutting. "We are at the cutting edge of the planet as far as this particular energy source.

"I always thought that Las Vegas would never have anything friendly to say to the Department of Energy," Goodman said, a reference to the department's support of burying radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain. But the city will be happy to accept federal dollars supporting alternative energy, he said.

Assistant Energy Secretary David Garman echoed the mayor's remarks.

"This situation is more than a glimpse of the future," Garman said. "It is really a bridge to that future."

Residents are not likely to see whole fleets of hydrogen-only vehicles on the roads overnight or the entire city powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

Dan Hyde, vehicle services manager for the city's fleet of about 1,200 cars, trucks and equipment, said because this is a demonstration project, it is starting small.

The power plant produces enough power for about 30 homes. The city has only one pickup truck that runs on a mix of hydrogen and natural gas and no hydrogen-only vehicles.

But more new, cleaner vehicles are likely to come, Hyde said.

The truck will be monitored to see if its performance and emissions match expectations, he said.

"We'll convert them one at a time as the technology proves itself," he said.

The mixed hydrogen-natural gas fueled vehicles are a stepping stone to the even cleaner hydrogen fuel cell vehicles likely to come, Hyde said.

"Everything has to be in stages. Ultimately we'd like to see the entire fleet operate with it."

Ford Motors technical analyst David Domke was one of those at Friday's ceremony who looks to the promise of pure hydrogen. Domke showed a 3-year-old prototype fuel-cell car -- a $2 million test project.

Domke said the vehicular future will be in hydrogen. Although many people remember hydrogen as the gas that burned when the German zeppelin Hindenberg exploded in 1937, in fact the gas is less volatile than gasoline, he said.

Pumping hydrogen into cars means less dependence on imported foreign oil and zero pollution emissions into the air, he said. The big hurdles for widespread use of the gas are infrastructure -- there are fewer than a dozen hydrogen pumps for vehicles in the country now -- and the cost for the vehicles, which are now individually produced.

That will change as first government fleets, then companies and finally individuals begin buying hydrogen-powered cars, Domke said. He believes that eventually the use of hydrogen will be nearly universal.

When that day comes, "we will be independent of oil," he said.