CAN HYDROGEN SAVE THE WORLD?
By Michael Arkin
What sparks a filmmaker’s passion? In the case of John Michael Parkan, director of the new documentary At War with the Dinosaurs, it began at a cocktail party in 2004. “I was at a fundraiser and was having a one-on-one conversation with General Wesley Clark, who was toying with the idea of making a run for The White House. We were talking about fossil fuels and how to get off of them. While we were talking about renewables, wind, and solar, a guy came up to us, interrupted the conversation and simply said, ‘You know, the internal combustion engine can run on things other than petroleum’ and just walked away. The general and I just looked at each other and said, ‘What was that about?’”
The encounter, reminiscent of the famous ‘Plastics’ moment in The Graduate, was the spark that got Mr. Parkan thinking about possible replacements for fossil fuels. As he dug into the research, he soon realized that biofuels and other forms of energy that burn are “nonsense.” Things like corn-based ethanol. “When we do that, the price of tortillas in Mexico goes from 1 cent to two cents and that’s a lot of money when you’re living on a dollar a day. It’s a bad idea to substitute your food source for a fuel source.”
It was then that Parkan, whose career includes stints at Paramount Pictures and The Motion Picture Corporation of America, decided to make a documentary. In his quest, he stumbled upon something he knew nothing about — fuel cells. Within days, he was on a plane headed to Hawaii to attend the Fuel Cell Seminar. “I didn’t even bring a camera with me but wound up conducting verbal interviews with Ballard Power (the leading provider of clean energy cells), the Department of Energy and Siemens (a leader in power generation and distribution).” Realizing that these groups were onto something, the next morning he ran out and bought an HD camera and started conducting on-camera interviews.
Once back in Los Angeles, he made plans to attend the National Hydrogen Association convention where he heard Lawrence Burns, General Motors’ Corporate Vice President Research & Development, make an impassioned speech about the future of hydrogen fuel cells. In his presentation, Mr. Burns said, “The potential societal and customer benefits are clear and compelling. Fuel cell technology promises to deliver family-sized automobiles that are fun to drive, safe, that look great, refill fast, go far between fill-ups and are emissions and petroleum free. Most importantly, it promises to do this while keeping automobiles affordable to own and operate. No other technology offers this exciting potential.”
Although he’s not what one typically thinks of when talking about muses, it’s safe to say that Mr. Burns was Parkan’s. “When Larry Burns got up in front of everyone and basically begged for 40 fueling stations, I knew I had a film,” he told me. His documentary, evocative of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in the way it explores the trajectory and potential of hydrogen as a climate change solution, begins with Burns’ quote: ‘One of the most serious business issues facing General Motors today is our products near total dependence on petroleum as a source of energy’.
With that mindset, it’s not surprising that in 2008 GM launched Project Driveway. Described by GM Heritage Center as “The first meaningful market test of fuel cell vehicles anywhere.” The program put the keys of 119 hydrogen fuel-cell Chevrolet Equinoxes in the hands of ordinary drivers in California, the New York metropolitan area and Washington DC. According to Mr. Parkan, “They had 50,000 people raising their hands to participate, but they couldn’t get the program off the ground because there weren’t enough fueling stations.”
One would think that the fueling stations, which employ the most predominant element in the universe, would be as ubiquitous as hydrogen itself. They might have been if former California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dream of a ‘Hydrogen Highway’ had become a reality. But as aptly put by Todd Woodyin The Atlantic, the plan to place 200 stations (approximately one every 20 miles) on the state’s major highways by the year 2010 “Crashed and burned along with the state’s economy in 2008.” The long-anticipated roll out of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles was caught in a classic chicken or the egg conundrum. After all, what good is having a fuel cell vehicle if you can’t get the fuel?
Schwarzenegger’s vision was thought to have been rescued from the trash bin of history when, in 2014, the California Energy Commission (CEC) awarded $50 million to eight companies to build 28 hydrogen filling stations. Added to the 9 existing stations and 17 that were under construction at the time, it would have brought the number of California’s stations to 54, but according to the CEC’s December 2019 Annual Assessment of Time and Cost to Attain 100 Hydrogen Refueling Stations in California, there are only 43 stations that are open to the public with another 20 that have been funded and under development. Parkan notes, “There are actually only 42 operating stations. As California goes, so goes the country, as the country goes, so goes the world.”
So, why the feet-dragging on getting the necessary infrastructure in place? Parkan maintains that “The CEC has been hostile for decades towards hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. They feel like battery operated vehicles have won.”
He may be right. Given the climate change tipping point we, as a species, find ourselves at, it’s hard to comprehend the government’s reticence to back the expansion of hydrogen fuel cell technology. Yet, when Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu stepped down in 2013, The Washington Post did a report card on his tenure that never even mentioned hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Parkan is passionate about the omission. “What Chu did was kneecap the entire industry. He didn’t just cut the program, he zeroed it out and he did it more than once. That sent a clear signal to the entire world that we were not going for hydrogen fuel cells.”
Considering President Trump’s record on environmental issues (earlier this month he opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling), it’s not surprising that there has been no forward movement under his administration. The Department of Energy has kept the level of hydrogen fuel cell funding about the same. “What we really need,” maintains Parkan, “is the federal government to get involved in building out the station infrastructure. If you get that, people will come.”
There may not be much time left. As reported on Resiliance.org, Australia’s top climate scientist, Will Steffen, says, “We’re already deep into the trajectory towards the collapse” of civilization, which now may be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated. Given the slow development and adaption of alternative fuel sources, including hydrogen, Steffen says, “It would take 30 years at best to transition to net zero emissions, but when it comes to tipping points like Arctic Sea ice, we may have already run out of time.”
If the prospect of the end of civilization doesn’t spark you to do something, perhaps you should start by watching At War with the Dinosaurs, available now on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and Google. Then, write to your senators (which you can do directly from the film’s website) and most important of all, vote on November 3rd.
