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S.C. native leading California down the Hydrogen Highway
(Herald-Journal (Spartanburg, SC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) May 7--Shannon Baxter-Clemmons knows hydrogen.
As California's assistant secretary for hydrogen and alternative fuel policy, she's watched the ebb and flow of successes and failures in her state's attempt to enter a hydrogen economy. Much of that is centered on an initiative spearheaded by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which would create 100 hydrogen fueling stations on highly traveled roads by 2010 -- and require $53.5 million from the state, not counting federal and private investment.
But Baxter-Clemmons, a Charleston-area native who received her doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, doesn't talk the way you might think a hydrogen expert would.
She speaks about the subject in ways everyone can understand. She talks about looking forward, and being image-conscious, and the importance of partnerships. She can do a quick Schwarzenegger impersonation, laugh, and will then tell you what a great boss he is -- that he's "a guy who's got big ideas and believes in big action."
The California Hydrogen Highway network, as it evolves, will be a model for other regions in the country that are trying similar projects. A hydrogen corridor from Washington, D.C., to New York is being discussed, for instance. One in the southeast is, too, which was part of the focus of this year's FuelCellSouth conference in Columbia.
Baxter-Clemmons "brought a summary of lessons learned in California" to the conference, said John Van Zee, the University of South Carolina's Fuel Cell Program director.
After a brief presentation at FuelCellSouth -- in which she quoted Strom Thurmond, in saying "I don't think it's a question of age, as much as it's a question of what kind of shape you're in," and applied that to the burgeoning hydrogen economy -- Baxter-Clemmons answered a few quick questions about this sometimes nebulous subject.
Are hydrogen highways going to happen in the next five or 10 years, or will the industry pretty much wait and see what happens in California?
Five years may be a little too soon, just because there really are limited resources. Right now, fairly quickly they're coming out with new improvements in the cars, they're coming out -- especially the hydrogen stations -- with new technologies, improved technologies, so the industry is not going to want to place 10 of the exact same station just to make every state happy.... Then they'd have to put in 10 more for the next generation.
So, five years is too short. Maybe in 10 years we'd start to see that sort of thing. It'd be beautiful to come from the East Coast and West Coast and then we'd just meet, like the railroad did.
But ... there are a lot of ground-level issues, like insurance. Right now, most of the stations in California are self-insured. So, you have to have deep-pocket companies to put those in. It leaves the little guys out a little bit, or the government has to insure it. With the vehicles, I think you can get insurance, but they're charging $500 a month for a lease price, which clearly is not the value of the vehicle -- that's just the price they're putting on it.
So, there's resources and timing. But, you have to lay that groundwork -- insurance, the permitting, codes and standards. All of that has to be done. And if we could get that down in the whole U.S., and work out some of the kinks in places like California on light-duty vehicles and stations, and maybe South Carolina would work on this Grand Challenge in Columbia, and they work out the kinks in stationary fuel cells, developing that into the blueprint of the building... Then we can exchange ideas, and progress more rapidly down the line.
How do you get people excited about hydrogen? It's not like basketball.
People don't clamor for it.
I think it's the excitement of what can be. People who breathe bad air, particularly in California, if you tell them, 'I can give you a car, and you can fuel it just as easily as the car you have now, and it's going to put out no emissions,' people get excited about that sort of thing.
...General Motors has a prototype vehicle, and because you don't have that drive train down the center of the vehicle, the front seat can move from the right to the left to the center, so you can drive from the center of the front seat. So, it's a safety improvement. They also have a platform, everything's on the platform: the fuel cell, the hydrogen, all of the working components. So, what you can do, theoretically, is use the skateboard and put a shell on it. You can have a family vehicle on the weekend, pop the shell off, and put something a little lighter and (more) sporty for during the week.
...There's another possibility, where you may have a vehicle where you have extra fuel cell capacity. So, you drive it out to a remote area, a golf course maybe, and you can plug anything you need into that fuel cell. So, you have that capacity to use electric tools in a remote area.
Those are the types of things that get people excited.
Plus, who's not excited about stopping sending our money to the Middle East? When I think about how every day we just hand them money -- and they don't even like us, most of them, I understand -- it puts a little kink in your stomach.
California, New York and Washington, D.C. -- these places seem to be more accepting of new ideas. You don't always associate that attitude with the South...
People in the South tend to love their tradition. They also love their cars and love their power. (Laughs.) If you can hand them something that's transparent, and they can live their life the way the want to, and you can cut other things out that they might not care for, they might go for it.
I don't think my parents got on the Information Superhighway until the last five years. (Laughs.) And they're very excited about the idea of hydrogen cars, and fuel cells at their house -- something dependable -- because they lived through (Hurricane) Hugo. And so they said, 'If we had our own fuel cell, we would have done much better.' Those are the types of things that are going to get folks down here excited.
And maybe they're not poisoned, tainted by some of the technologies that weren't so successful. California has invested heavily in new technology, which has laid a firm groundwork for knowing how to move into new technologies. But here, folks haven't been tainted with 'Well, that didn't work. Now we're going to move into hydrogen.'
So, I think it will work.
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