Funding For Automotive Fuel Cells Cut

rgarbacz writes "The US will stop funding research on automotive fuel cells and redirect the work towards stationary plants, because of slow progress on the research. Developing those cells and coming up with a way to transport the hydrogen is a big challenge, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in releasing energy-related details of the administration's budget for the year beginning Oct. 1. Dr. Chu said the government preferred to focus on projects that would bear fruit more quickly. The industry and the National Hydrogen Association criticized the decision and declared their intention to fight for funding. Dr. Chu also announced that funding for a coal gasification pilot project, cut by the Bush administration, will be reinstated. The Obama administration will also drop spending for research on the exploration of oil and gas deposits because the industry itself has ample resources for that, Dr. Chu said."

Comments

You mean redirect the funds.

[nurb432]

Its a new team in town, with a different set of friends that need to be 'greased'.

Its just typical ( shortsighted ) politics at work here. Nothing new.

Re:You mean redirect the funds.

[sys.stdout.write]

Funding is not unlimited; you make the decision about what to fund by doing a cost-benefit analysis using current estimates. This is exactly what they did, and they arrived upon the conclusion that plug-in hybrids and electric cars are current the most effective use of research monies.

You may disagree with the conclusion, but don't write it off as simply shortsighted politics.

Re:You mean redirect the funds.

[mollog]

President Obama lives by the saying "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

Hydrogen power sounds good on paper, but we need something that works soon.

Quoting Patton: A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

We, as a country, have limited resources. We have a lot that needs to get fixed. Let's be smart about it.

Re:You mean redirect the funds.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand government's primary job is to fund research positive outcome of which is not so obvious in the present. It is government's job to take risks and invest in longer term research which potentially may have bigger pay outs 20-30 years later.

The problem with this idea is that most governments can't keep policy stable enough for a decade to fund the kind of long term research and projects you're talking about. Every decade you get a president or two, a few "new" Senates and Houses, 20 budget meetings and hundreds of eager beavers trying to make their mark while slashing at someone else's budgets to do so. This is not an environment that breeds any kind of stability at all.

What the government is really good at funding is the middle-term research. Things that take maybe 10 years, maximum. The best example of this is probably the Apollo project and the life cycle of power plant construction in the US (from planning to construction generally takes about 5-8 years, nuclear power plants and large hydro plants run longer, but the need is more clear and so they're generally not terminated as soon).

There are outliers (like the Space Shuttle program which somehow miraculously lasted for nearly 30 years without its funding being cut to nothing, and programs that got cut almost as fast as they got funding like many of the stem cell programs that Clinton funded and Bush destroyed), but the pattern is very easy to see. Short term: venture capital. Medium term: the government. Long term: Wall Street and a prayer to $DEITY (you may have to build a whole conglomerate around the core idea just to get it to stick, see drug companies). This country forgot how to think in the long term a century ago.

Re:You mean redirect the funds.

[californication]

Wow, paying the unsubsidized market rate for a commodity is getting raped?

Anyways, you'll only get raped if you have a gas guzzler. If you have at least a half-decent fuel efficient car, you'll be just fine. If you drive an alternative fuel vehicle, you won't even feel a thing.

Having the customer pay the full, unsubsidized price for gas may actually create real competition in the vehicle fuel market. If people had a choice between gas or an alternative fuel, then the gas companies would have no choice but to keep their prices competitive to that alternative fuel, wouldn't they?

Or worse yet, people may actually get used to driving less and taking public transit as part of their daily commute instead!

Real problem with auto fuel cells, the hydrogen.

[caladine]

I thought the real problem was creating the hydrogen in the first place. Not to mention the problem of compressing it to a point that it had a reasonable amount of energy per unit of volume.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression that current methods of producing hydrogen for fuel cells was only slightly more intelligent than producing ethanol from corn.

Re:Brilliant

[Rei]

It's had the lion's share of research funding for the past decade, and despite that, has been lapped on pretty much every front by EVs.

It's electric vehicles' turn.

Good

[geekoid]

Hydrogen doesn't have the density we need and it's difficult to move.
Batteries. Focus on batteries, industrial solar thermal, and Nuclear.

That can solve are energy needs.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[rackserverdeals]

That makes sense. The oil industry is already established and making tons in profits. They should be able to fund their own development.

Emerging technologies on the other hand sometimes need a boost.

Lighting plants with plant power

[Bruce Perens]

row craploads of algae in the desert, and use our extra power to run arc lamps to provide light at night to extend the photoperiod and thus speed up the growth cycle.

Instead of doing this, why don't we grow rats, and have cats eat them. Then we harvest some of the cats, and kill the others to feed to the rats.