I have been asked to draw the connection between the Hydrogen Economy, which I believe is inevitable, and the generation of electricity from nuclear energy, which is the only viable source of the abundant energy the Hydrogen Economy will require.

First - A general observation. If I am anything, I am an environmentalist. I think it is an important sign of the times that many environmentalist, after much soul searching and technical inquiry, have come to support a renewed growth phase for nuclear power generation.

Much of the focused thinking concerning the degradation of our environment began a quarter of a century ago; Silent Spring, The Limits to Growth, Gaia, Ozone Holes and the Energy Crisis of 1973-4 to name only a few. For me, it was the energy crisis in 1973 which resulted in being called to Washington DC to join a team to look at the possibility of an Energy Self-Sufficiency Budget for the United States. Six months later I came away from that experience with the certain knowledge that the automotive Internal Combustion Engine and its dependence on fossil fuels would have to end if planet earth and its inhabitants were to survive as a living organism.

It took me another eight years to learn two fundamental truths about the automobile. One, the developed world has a deep socio-economic dependence on personal transportation, or in other words we have enduring love affairs with our cars and woe betide the person or event that interferes with our adoration and needs. And two, the hold that the internal combustion engine has on society is that it allows the scaling of power and energy separately. Again to choose other words, engines and gas tanks are separate from each other which lets us choose just how we wish our cars to perform: whereas batteries and other suggested devices dictate limits to our desires for speed, size or distance traveled.

The Fuel Cell Engine, the energy conversion device that makes the Hydricity Economy possible, has the same freedoms of scaling as the Internal Combustion Engine without the detrimental effects of pollution. It is poised to be our next enduring love.

To start again at the beginning, common as electricity was during the last century, no good storage mechanism for electricity had been developed. But, when the fuel cell entered the power/price envelope of the internal combustion engine, hydrogen became viable as the storage mechanism for electricity. I believe Hydrogen and Electricity will become so indistinguishable from each other that they will be referred to as a joint currency called HYDRICITYTM.

The future, I believe, will not be a linear extrapolation of existing trends and ideas; rather the advent of the Hydrogen Economy will lead to merging and mixing transportation needs with distributive power concepts. Transportation and power technologies are about to advance hand in hand.

Economic progress, as we know it, correlates very well with per capita energy consumption. So do all other forms of social progress. For society to continue its progress in medicine, social responsibility, science, education and quality of life, we must assure that there is an ever increasing supply of energy per capita. With human populations still on the rise, progress will not be sustained if we attempt to further reduce, or even stabilize, our energy production by reducing the emissions of the current energy source mix. We must increase our supply of energy, not reduce it.

Broadening our thinking to a world perspective we note that only 12% of the world population has access to some form of motor power transportation. There are currently 6 billion people on earth with a population of 10 billion expected later this century. Most of these people have, or will have shortly, access to global communications through television satellite links. All of these people are becoming aware of the standard of living of the citizens of developed countries. In more prosaic terms, every one of the 'have-nots' will see just what the 'haves' have. They will even get a distorted picture in the worst of all possible directions - they will see "American Sitcoms" as if they represented the way the average American lives. To quote from public testimony from General Motors, "Most of these people are young, globally aware, web-connected, and residing in economies with escalating demands for personal transportation".

Air pollution takes many adverse forms on earth, but the worst one to my mind is the foul atmosphere that we inflict on inhabitants of the inner city. This has been widely ignored in the environmental debates, where the arguments are directed to cleaning up the upper atmosphere, ozone holes and depletion, and warming trends that could inundate the coast. I acknowledge that the atmospheric conditions are meta-stable and we could tip over the events that would produce catastrophic changes such as shutting down the Gulf Stream. However, the real down home truth is that burning fossil fuels is killing people today and this is not some probabilistic fear about the future. Millions of people through out the world are being sickened and killed by bad air.

One does not have to resort to data and statistics to recognize that if 12% of us can cause such havoc to earth's atmosphere then the other 88% will spell out a dooms-day for planet earth if they follow our examples of energy source and use.

The developed world has begun to introduce this new energy system, the Hydrogen Economy, which has the potential to truly mitigate or even, one day, virtually eliminate the effects of urban pollution.

The advent of the hydrogen fuel cell has changed the power dynamic because it solves the electricity storage problem. Instead of having to use the electricity immediately, we can transform it into hydrogen, which can be used later in a fuel cell. In other words, with the fuel cell we can now afford to generate hydrogen from electricity during off-peak times, then store the hydrogen and feed it back through a fuel cell to produce electricity at peak need times.

As an aside, if California used its off-peak generating capacity to produce hydrogen to power automobiles, the off-peak capacity, currently unused, would fuel one-third of the 25 million automobiles in the state of California today.

Transforming the transportation sector this way opens up the doors to other exciting possibilities because the automobile is a natural link to distribute power. One can actually conceptualize the automobile as a stationary power plant on wheels.

Perhaps not the first generation of fuel cell vehicles, but certainly the second or third generation of vehicle will be regenerative fuel cell vehicles and have Vehicle to Grid capability.

Today's technology allows us to receive and store hydrogen on board a fuel cell car. It also allows us to generate our own hydrogen on board the car if the car is plugged into the electric grid. A car with this ability to refuel itself is called a 'Regenerative Fuel Cell Vehicle'. If we also provide a data and an electronic connection when we plug in to refuel, then the car can be turned on by the building or home to which it is connected. In this way the car can provide electricity to the grid. The implications of this configuration are enormous, when you consider that 85% of the vehicles are parked even during rush hour.

Using California for example, simply because I have data on that piece of real estate, there are approximately 25 million automobiles on the road today in California. If each automobile generates 50 kilowatts, then a single vehicle can generate enough power for 5 to 10 homes. Most automotive manufacturers plan on from 50 to 100 kilowatt engines for their average automobile. One hundred fuel cell vehicles can generate over 5 MW - more than enough to power a 50-story office tower. One million vehicles, or 4% of the cars registered in California represents California's total stationary generating capacity.

One can let their mind run wild with this amount of distributive generating capacity on the roads and byways of the world. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that most of the power generating capacity of a developed nation will be in its rolling motor vehicle stock. The advent of the fuel cell makes this huge power generating capacity available for daily use.

I have painted a picture with very broad brush strokes and such broad treatment leaves many questions in the minds of thinking people. To day I will address only one of these many questions.

The question goes something like this - 'You have said that hydrogen is just a currency, that it is not a primary energy source; you have said that Kyoto is a conservation strategy that you disparage, that the world must increase its use of energy not reduce it; where does all this energy come from that makes all the hydrogen your Hydricity Economy needs?' The answer in a word is NUCLEAR.

If carbon based energy sources must be set aside, or at least have their emissions sequestered, and I believe they must, then the only remaining large energy source at this stage of our technical development is nuclear. Within the scope of today's technology, nuclear fission is the only viable, clean source of large quantities of energy. Nuclear generated electric power satisfies the Hydrogen Economy, does not pollute our atmosphere, and mitigates against global warming.

Thank You