Editorial: Energy for tomorrow, and today

Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2003 | 9:21 a.m.

President Bush, a Texas oil man who supports drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, surprised a lot of people when he announced in his State of the Union address support for hydrogen-powered automobiles. He said his budget will contain $1.2 billion for research into this technology, which he envisioned as enabling the United States to vastly reduce oil imports from the Middle East within 20 years.

We support the president's nudge toward moving the country out of the oil age and into the hydrogen age. Unlike oil, a finite resource that causes environmental hazards as it's drawn from the ground, poses toxic danger as it is transported and creates air pollution when it is burned, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and can be supplied safely and burned cleanly. Hydrogen fuel cells, which have been powering spacecraft since the 1960s, have been adapted for use in automobiles, although they are now prohibitively expensive. The Department of Energy, in beginning a five-year demonstration project, opened a hydrogen station in Las Vegas last November. It supplies fuel for local-government vehicles re-engineered to run on hydrogen and natural gas. A few years ago a hydrogen-powered pickup truck was driven cross-country to Washington, D.C., where members of Congress were invited to breathe from its exhaust pipe. At the same time, the production of hydrogen -- us! ing a method involving solar energy -- was projected as a major industry for Nevada.

With federal dollars steadily augmenting private research into hydrogen energy and assisting with the conversion to a new distribution system, the price of fuel cells could drop and demand could slowly build. It's a vision that needs to be included in the federal energy policy. Bush was right to look into the future and see hydrogen. For the present, however, he needs to look around and support an interim policy.

The Bush administration should reverse its opposition to higher fuel economy standards in current cars and trucks. And its energy policy should encourage the emerging technology of hybrid vehicles, which burn cleaner and use less fuel with the help of a second, electric motor. Bush's vision of a hydrogen future is welcome, but we shouldn't have to view it for the next 15 years through smog-shrouded skies.