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Copyright @ 2005 Environmental Law Institute@, Washington, DC. reprinted with permission from ELRo, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
1-2005
Table of Contents
I. Introduction ........................ 10003
II. Using Hydrogen as a Fuel............. 10004
III. Overview of Hydrogen Technology ...... 10004
A. Production ........................ 10005
B. Delivery of Hydrogen ................10006
1. Pipelines........................ 10007
2. Road, Rail, and Waterway Options ..... .10007
C. Storage of Hydrogen.................10007
IV. Overview of Fuel Cell Technology ....... 10009
V. The Bush Administration's Hydrogen Fuel
Program .......................... 10012
VI. Issues of Concern................... 10014
A. Safety............................ 10014
B. Cost............................. 10014
C. Consumer Acceptance ................ 10015
D. Competing Fuels and Technologies ...... 10016
E. Ability to Reduce Dependence on Foreign
Oil.............................. 10016
F Environmental Impacts of a Hydrogen-Based
Economy.......................... 10016
1. Potential Climate Effects ............ 10017
2. Stationary Source Impacts ........... 10018
3. Disposal and Recycling ............. 10020
VII. Conclusion ....................... 10020
I. Introduction
Air pollution emissions that prevent many areas ofthe coun-
try from achieving the Clean Air Act's (CAA's) national am-
bient air quality standards (NAAQS)' could be reduced if
cleaner sources of energy were utilized. Clean energy sup-
plied by domestic sources also could provide benefits to the
Arnold Reitze Jr. is the J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environ-
mental Law and Director of the Environmental Law Program at the
George Washington University Law School, and of counsel to
McGlinchey Stafford PLLC. Jennifer Heaven received an LL.M. from the
George Washington University Law School, and a J.D. from the Univer-
sity of Alabama. The authors wish to thank Prof. Debra Jacobson for her
valuable comments and to acknowledge the assistance of Ms. Winnie Her-
cules, legal secretary, and Ms. Germaine Leahy, head of reference, at the
George Washington law library.
1. 42 U.S.C. §§7401-7671q, §7409, ELR STAT. CAA §§101-618, 40
C.F.R. pt. 50.
35 ELR 10003
overall environment,2 the economy and to national security.
President George W. Bush announced in his 2003 State of
the Union Address that his Administration believes hydro-
gen fuel should help provide for the future energy needs of
the United States.3 The Administration and the U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy (DOE) have declared their goal is to use hy-
drogen in vehicles by 20154 and to implement a hydrogen
economy, with the necessary infrastructure to make, trans-
port, store, and use hydrogen as a fuel for fuel cell vehicles
by 2020. This will be a substantial challenge because in
2002, there were 518,919 alternative vehicles in use in the
United States, but none used hydrogen.6
Hydrogen usually serves as an energy carrier that is de-
rived from some other primary fuel. The existing infrastruc-
ture for petroleum-based fuels is unlikely to accommodate
hydrogen fuel; a new infrastructure will take many years to
build, and the effort will be expensive and politically diffi-
cult to accomplish. Without the necessary infrastructure, in-
vestors will be wary about supporting this technology.
Moreover, the transport and storage of hydrogen is poten-
tially dangerous; containment methods are prone to leak and
present safety risks.
There are only limited cost-effective ways to use hydro-
gen to power automobiles or stationary internal combustion
engines. The major focus of recent research has been on us-
ing hydrogen in a fuel cell, rather than using it as fuel in an
internal combustion engine, but fuel cells have cost, con-
sumer acceptance, durability, and other problems to over-
come, as discussed below. At this time, it is not known how
long it will take to overcome these obstacles in order to
make the use of hydrogen fuel a reasonable choice. As Ex-
2. The release of air pollutants such as sulfur dioxides (SO2), nitric ox-
ides and nitrogen oxides (NOx) and heavy metals, for example, are
significant sources of water pollution.
3. The 2003 State of the Union Address: Complete Transcript of Presi-
dent Bush's Speech to Congress and the Nation (Jan. 28, 2003),
available at http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2003/012803-sotu.
asp (last visited Apr. 7, 2004).
4. U.S. DOE, DRAFT, MULTI-YEAR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND
DEMONSTRATION PLAN, EXECUTIVE SUMMARY iii (2003), avail-
able athttp://www.eere.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/mypp/pdfs/exec
summary.pdf (last visited Apr. 9, 2004) [hereinafter MULTI-YEAR
RESEARCH PLAN].
5. HYDROGEN ECONOMY FACT SHEET: U.S.-EU SUMMIT, COOPERA-
TION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A HYDROGEN ECONOMY (2003),
available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/06/
20030625-6.html (last visited May 11, 2004).
6. STACY C. DAVIS & SUSAN W. DIEGEL, TRANSPORTATION ENERGY
DATA BOOK: ED. 23, at 6-3, tbl. 6.1 (2003) [hereinafter DAVIS &
DIEGEL]. See also tbls. 6.2, 6.3.
ELR
NEWS&ANALYSIS
ARTICLES
The Hydrogen Economy and Its Potential Impacts
by Arnold W. Reitze Jr. and Jennifer B. Heaven](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/elrna35&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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