Environmentalists warn fuel-cell halo may tarnish
Reuters News Service"What we found out is that fuel cells can be clean and fuel cells can be dirty," said David Hocking, a spokesman for the David Suzuki Foundation, which collaborated on the study with the Pembina Institute for Appropriate Development.
The prospect of the fuel cell technology has caught the fancy of investors since the beginning of the year, pushing up the stock of companies such as Ballard Power Systems Inc. , Plug Power Inc. and Avista Corp. , which are developing fuel-cell technologies. Vancouver-based Ballard may be at the most advanced stage and is working on programmes with Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG.
Commercial production of fuel-cell-powered cars is still at least two years away, and the issue of how hydrogen will be supplied to the vehicles has yet to be resolved by the fuel cell makers and the energy and auto industries.
The environmentalists compared several methods proposed to derive hydrogen from fossil fuel sources, and concluded the best method for the environment used centralized reformation plants to produce hydrogen from natural gas.
Cars would then fill up their fuel tanks with hydrogen much as they now do with gasoline.
Using gasoline to supply hydrogen through conversion systems included in the cars would do little to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions already produced by automobiles, the report warned.
"If we power these vehicles with dirty hydrogen, we will entrench the role of vehicles as the biggest and fast-growing contributor to global warming," said Rob Macintosh, of the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based research group.
The study, which looked at publicly available information, said that it would be ideal to have the hydrogen derived from renewable resources, but that this was not an immediately practical option.
The environmental groups said fuel cell makers have a long-term financial interest in ensuring that fuel cell-powered products are as environmentally friendly as consumers believe they will be.