Public Policy

I am proud to join Congressmen Dent, Inglis, and Larson as a co-chair of the Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Caucus. I want to the thank the Hydrogen Advisory Council and private industry, particularly Ballard Power Systems and the Nuclear Energy Institute for helping with this inaugural Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Caucus event.

I want to especially thank my good friends from the University of Maryland for being here today. Professor Brian Eichorn will talk about the hydrogen economy later in the program.

With the price of oil hovering around $60 a barrel, now is the time to take the bull by the horns, wean the U.S. off of foreign oil and push towards a cleaner, more efficient hydrogen economy. This bipartisan caucus will be on the forefront of transforming the U.S. energy economy from oil to hydrogen based.

The key to growing the hydrogen economy is finding clean methods of producing hydrogen. Hydrogen is found everywhere on Earth, yet it rarely exists free floating in nature. For use in a fuel cell, hydrogen has to be extracted from water or from fossil fuels. Half of the hydrogen produced in the world today is derived from natural gas (a source that has skyrocketed in price) via a steam reforming process.

There is, however, another way to produce hydrogen—without using fossil fuels. Renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and nuclear can be harnessed to produce hydrogen in a process called electrolysis, the splitting of water—H20—into hydrogen and oxygen. At this point, the process is fairly inefficient.

The House energy bill includes two amendments I coauthored with my dear friend, Congressman John Shimkus (R-Ill.), to jumpstart the hydrogen economy and wean the U.S. off of foreign oil.

Specifically, these amendments put the hydrogen economy on a fast track by creating federally supported, collaborative demonstration projects between the private sector, major universities (including historically black colleges) and laboratories. The amendments would establish 15 demonstration projects throughout the country to demonstrate the commercial production of hydrogen from nuclear, wind and solar energy sources.

These steps are the foundation to drive the hydrogen economy to commercial viability and secure the nation’s energy supplies.

In addition to making advancements in the area of hydrogen production, we also need to develop the infrastructure to support and distribute the production of hydrogen.

It is my pleasure to introduce my colleague, Congressman Charles Dent of Pennsylvania, who will focus on the energy infrastructure needed to develop a hydrogen economy.