Vancouver, Canada -- An international hydrogen fuel initiative has made a “lot of progress” since it was launched in 2003 with member countries defining technical challenges and funding collaborative projects, a U.S. Energy Department (DOE) official says.

The International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy (IPHE), as the initiative is known, is designed to accelerate development of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies to a point that they power cars, trucks, homes and businesses without producing pollution or greenhouse gases.  The partnership refers to this goal as moving toward a “hydrogen economy.”

International workshops held in 2005 helped member countries understand the scope of the technical challenges, such as developing two types of fuel cells and developing codes and standards associated with hydrogen production, storage and distribution, according to Graham Pugh, a senior advisor in DOE's office of energy efficiency and renewable energy.  Pugh also serves as the executive director of the IPHE secretariat.

In the near future, the partnership plans to determine and address research gaps, he said.

Building on its members’ expertise, the IPHE coordinates efficient and cost-effective research, development and the demonstration of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies to support their early adoption and commercialization. The European Commission and 16 countries -- Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- are members of the IPHE.

Pugh said IPHE is making progress by endorsing international projects funded by at least two members. The first 10 projects, approved at an IPHE meeting in Kyoto in September 2005, include fuel cell development, hydrogen production using solar energy, hydrogen safety and clean urban transport.

These projects will be monitored and their progress measured against specific benchmarks, Pugh said.

He said a transition to a hydrogen economy amounts to a fundamental change in how energy is delivered and consumed and as such requires much more than overcoming technical barriers.

That is why the IPHE, at its March 28-29 meeting in Vancouver, is focusing on problems such as different policy frameworks, regional differences and barriers to implementation, Pugh said. The members hope that once the technical barriers are overcome, a new focus will help countries make informed decisions based on best practices to encourage development of the hydrogen economy by the private sector, he said.

Pugh said that the IPHE views private firms that work on hydrogen and fuel cell technologies as among its stakeholders.

“Our work should enable them to be successful in deploying these technologies,” he said.

The Bush administration holds regular briefings on IPHE developments for about 20 industry associations, Pugh said.

He said members of those associations are mostly small, innovative companies that often do not have great financial resources.

“So the question before us is how to get big companies, particularly in the energy and transportation sectors, to invest more in advanced technologies to support some of the smaller companies that are innovating,” Pugh said.

This question was the topic of his presentation at the March 28-31 Globe conference on the business of the environment in Vancouver, which coincided with the IPHE meeting.

The Vancouver area hosts a large cluster of small, hydrogen-related enterprises.