[Winona] Fuel Cells Now

[Dan Nerhaugen]

Morning, Glen and All.   Not only *could* we start converting to a fuel cell-driven economy today -- the conversion is well under way.   Major automakers have been mass-producing fuel cell vehicles for a couple years now. I see more and more of them (especially Toyota Echo's) every time I'm on the road.   Some of the biggest investors in fuel cell technology are the large American automakers.   On the electrical generating front, a company by the name of H-Power was slated to begin installing, late last year, the residential fuel cell generators it is now producing by the thousands. These are 10 kW units, cost about $10,000 each, but are expected to fall in price to $4,000 or less in a few years.   Whether H-Power succeeds or fails remains to be seen, but the technology is here to stay. Almost none of the automakers who went head-to-head with Henry Ford in the early days survived in the business, but the basic technology seems to have done okay.   The process of a society-wide conversion from hydrocarbons to hydrogen could take 50 years or more if we're lazy about it.   Or we could get it done by the end of the decade if we wanted to.   Vice President Cheney was right when he said, essentially, that conservation measures won't even *begin* to address our energy needs, and that we need to start building generating plants at breakneck speed.   Amen, with one key qualification:   If the American consumer insisted that lots more of those generating plants were fuel cell units, and that lots fewer were coal-powered relics, then we'd make the changeover sooner rather than later.   What's needed is plenty of high-profile promotion and education concerning the technologies, and I don't see much -- if any -- of that sort of thing taking place today.   Most Americans have no idea what fuel cells are, much less that they are currently generating power everywhere and could produce many magnitudes more, virtually at once.   Wouldn't it be nice if President Bush were to make a proclamation -- comparable to Kennedy's "we will go to the Moon in this decade" -- to the effect that we will convert to a hydrogen-based economy by 2012.   -Dan Nerhaugen