[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 56 (Tuesday, April 8, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4969-S4970]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. HARKIN:
  S. 821. A bill to accelerate the commercialization and widespread use 
of hydrogen energy and fuel cell technologies, and for other purposes; 
to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, imagine a world with cars that spew out no 
smog, no toxic emissions, and no greenhouse gases. The only thing that 
would come out of the tailpipe would be water pure enough to drink.
  Imagine a world in which we don't import a drop of Mideast oil, 
because clean, domestic, renewable energy sources meet all of our 
needs.
  Imagine a world in which we don't need to worry about a terrorist 
strike on our large nuclear power plants, or a storm causing a blackout 
over a large region, because we get all of our electricity from small 
distributed generators on farms and in buildings throughout the 
country.
  Sound too good to be true? The technology to do this, using hydrogen 
energy and fuel cells, is out of the labs and being tested on our 
streets and in our buildings today. For those of us who have been 
working for many years to bring this vision into reality, that is very 
exciting. But we still need a major effort to bring the costs down and 
commercialize the technology.
  And there is remarkable bipartisan agreement on the need for 
government action. A couple years ago we were fighting for scraps of 
funding. Now the President has proposed $1.7 billion over 5 years 
toward getting hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road. The Senate 
energy bill last year, before it died in conference, included tax 
incentives for stationary fuel cells, fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen 
vehicles, hydrogen fueling infrastructure, and hydrogen fuel.
  But we are still too timid to bring about the fundamental shift to 
the hydrogen economy. The Department of Energy is working toward a go-
no go decision by the car companies by 2015, and mass production of 
vehicles by 2020. But the car companies themselves have been talking 
about commercial vehicles by 2010.
  We need a bolder, more comprehensive plan. That's why I am 
introducing the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Energy Act of 2003. This bill 
addresses three critical requirements to bringing hydrogen energy and 
fuel cells into commerce, and start gaining their environmental and 
security benefits, as soon as technically feasible.
  First we need a technological push. We need better fuel cell stack 
components to reduce costs and improve longevity. We need lighter, more 
efficient ways to store hydrogen on-board vehicles. In the long term, 
we need cheaper ways of converting renewable energy to hydrogen fuel.
  This bill reauthorizes the Matsunaga Act, which established the 
Federal hydrogen energy research program. It updates the language and 
sets clearer priorities. It expands the authorization to cover fuel 
cell research and development as well, to reflect the technical and 
bureaucratic reality that research on fuel cells--the most efficient, 
flexible, and cleanest way to use hydrogen energy--has become 
inextricably linked to research on hydrogen energy. It supports work on 
domestic and international codes and standards, to work through a major 
regulatory barrier to working with combustible hydrogen and to making 
all the infrastructure pieces fit together. It includes a specific 
mandate to do public education on hydrogen and fuel cells and to do 
university training in critical skills needed in the industry. And it 
increases funding levels over the next few years to accelerate progress 
in pre-commercial technologies.

  Second, and perhaps most important right now, we need a near-term 
demand pull. As long as the fuel cells and hydrogen appliances are made 
by hand, they will remain very expensive. But it's also expensive to 
build the factories to build them more cheaply. We need support to get 
industry over that initial cost hump.
  The first step is large demonstration programs that serve a dual 
purpose: they provide a realistic test of how the laboratory 
technologies work in the real world, and they provide funding for pre-
commercial prototypes of the technologies, including starting to build 
a hydrogen fueling infrastructure.
  The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Energy Act authorizes several new, large 
demonstration programs:
  The main demostration program would provide over $1 billion over 7 
years for demonstrations of the full range of fuel cell applications 
and associated hydrogen infrastructure. These demonstrations would 
include fleets of fuel cell passenger vehicles, fuel cell buses and 
farm vehicles, stationary fuel cells in houses and commercial 
buildings, and portable fuel cells such as auxiliary power units in 
trucks.
  A second, closely related program, would provide hydrogen fueling 
infrastructure over major transportation corridors and entire regions, 
and then demonstrate hydrogen-powered vehicles that are not tethered to 
a single pump. Early demonstrations, at least, would likely use 
vehicles that burn hydrogen; these are similar to gas-electric hybrids 
that you can buy today, but run on hydrogen rather than gasoline. These 
vehicles provide most of the benefits of fuel cell vehicles at a 
fraction of the current cost. They are not as good as fuel cell 
vehicles in the long term, they are less efficient, less flexible, and 
produce a little pollution, but would move us a long way toward the 
goal and would provide a good large-scale test of a hydrogen fueling 
system.
  A third program would demonstrate hydrogen and fuel cell technologies 
in foreign countries. Hydrogen energy could have an early application 
in places where a competing fossil fuel infrastructure is not already 
well-developed. And assisting this application is in our national 
interest in order to promote global development without causing global 
warming and other harmful environmental effects, and to increase the 
global market for American hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.
  The last program would focus on emerging technologies for production 
of hydrogen from renewable resources. Two approaches show particular 
promise for clean, efficient production of hydrogen at this time. 
Biorefineries make hydrogen and other products from biomass. And in 
``electrofarming'' the hydrogen is produced and used on the same farm. 
The hydrogen might be made by growing and reforming biomass, from wind 
energy, or from farm waste; it could be used in farm vehicles and 
equipment and for heat and electricity in farm buildings.
  All these demonstration programs would be conducted using competitive 
merit review of funding proposals from a wide variety of companies and 
organizations, and they would require cost-sharing from awardees.
  Third, we need to show there will be a market for commercial hydrogen 
and fuel cell technologies in the long term. The Federal Government can 
do this by buying early commercial products and by providing incentives 
to others to do so, in recognition of their public benefits.
  The bill includes Federal purchase requirements for both zero 
emission vehicles and stationary fuel cells. The vehicle requirements 
are similar to Federal fleet requirements for purchase of alternative 
fuel vehicles. They would require zero emission vehicles, most likely 
hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, to make up an increasing percentage of 
Federal fleet vehicle purchases up to 75 percent. Alternative fuel 
vehicles with very low emissions, such as hydrogen hybrid vehicles, 
would get partial credit. For stationary fuel cells, the bill

[[Page S4970]]

would require modifying energy efficiency regulations for Federal 
buildings to presume use of fuel cells to power new Federal buildings 
and to encourage their use in older buildings.
  The bill also provides a broad array of tax incentives for stationary 
and portable fuel cells, hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen 
fueling infrastructure, and hydrogen fuel. These incentives are similar 
to those that have been proposed in the CLEAR Act on alternative fuel 
vehicles, in previous bills on stationary fuel cells, and in last 
year's energy bill. However, this bill makes some important changes. It 
makes all the tax credits tradable so that government agencies and non-
profit organizations can use them as well as consumers and private 
companies. It increases the credit for hydrogen fueling infrastructure 
to recognize the cost of making the hydrogen on-site, not just pumping 
it. It adds an additional incentive for hydrogen from renewable 
resources to encourage a transition to a sustainable hydrogen system. 
And most importantly, it extends the tax credits so the industry will 
know the incentives will be there when they are needed--when real 
commercial products are available.
  Finally, the bill ensures effective coordination and oversight of the 
expanded Federal hydrogen and fuel cell energy activities, with a new 
interagency task force to coordinate activities, a revamped technical 
advisory panel, and periodic outside review by the National Academies.
  These measures will require a significant Federal investment in our 
energy future. But with these measures we can use hydrogen and fuel 
cell technologies to turn into reality a vision of cars that don't 
pollute, of power that won't go out, and of feeling less dependent on 
an area of the world where we are fighting the second war in recent 
years. It is time to take these steps now.
                                 ______