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Hydrogen Cars May Not Be the Answer

Posted on: Saturday, 19 July 2003, 06:00 CDT

Expert says improvements to gas-powered cars would do same for less money

HealthDayNews -- While hydrogen-fueled vehicles are being touted as a way to reduce pollution, greenhouse gases and oil dependency, a University of Berkeley energy expert says that may not be the best answer.

In a paper in the July 18 issue of Science, Alex Farrell, an assistant professor of energy and resources, says politicians and the public need to consider simpler, cheaper options such as increasing the efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles.

"Hydrogen cars are a poor short-term strategy, and it's not even clear that they are a good idea in the long term. Because the prospects for hydrogen cars are so uncertain, we need to think carefully before we invest all this money and all this public effort in one area," Farrell says in a news release.

"There are three reasons you might think hydrogen would be a good thing to use as a transportation fuel -- it can reduce air pollution, slow global climate change and reduce dependency on oil imports -- but for each one there is something you could do that would probably work better, work faster and be cheaper," Farrell says.

He and David Keith of Carnegie Mellon University compared the costs of developing hydrogen-powered vehicles to the costs of other methods that could be used to achieve the same environmental and economic objectives.

They found improvements to current cars and current environmental rules are more than 100 times cheaper than hydrogen cars at reducing air pollution. They also concluded that for the next several decades, the most cost-effective method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dependency on oil imports would be to increase the fuel efficiency of gasoline-powered cars.

"You could get a significant reduction in petroleum consumption pretty inexpensively by raising the fuel economy standard or raising fuel prices, or both, which is probably the cheapest strategy. This would actually have no net cost or possibly even a negative cost -- buying less fuel would save more money than the price of high-efficiency cars," Farrell says.

He notes there are already technologies available to improve fuel efficiency. But there is a lack of economic incentives for car makers to use that technology or for drivers to buy more fuel-efficient cars.

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Air Pollution information

Carnegie Mellon University

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