Two projects will examine the environmental effects of hydrogen use in transportation and stationary applications, focusing on the impacts of various hydrogen production pathways and use on the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere, long-term stability of the ozone layer, and climatic changes. These projects, subject to negotiations of scope and funding, support a recommendation to DOE from the recent National Research Council (NRC) report, Review of the Research Program of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, to identify and examine possible long-term ecological and environmental effects of the large-scale use and production of hydrogen from various sources.

Selected organizations are:

    * Tetra Tech (Lafayette, CA) for up to $600,000; partners include Stanford University and Potomac Hudson Engineering
    * University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Champaign, IL) for up to $600,000; partners include Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Queens University

In a third project, DOE will provide up to $387,000 over two years to the University of Missouri-Rolla to identify and analyze lessons learned from experiences with alternative fuels for stationary power generation, as well as opportunities for using polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells in stationary applications. This effort, also subject to negotiations of scope and funding, supports a recommendation to DOE from the National Academy of Sciences report, The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs, to "sponsor an independent study of lessons learned with respect to?market acceptance of previous alternative fuel technologies."

All three projects directly support President Bush's Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI), which aims to increase our energy security and reduce reliance on imported oil by changing the way we power our cars, homes, and businesses. The AEI accelerates research on near-term transportation technologies including advanced batteries for hybrid vehicles and cellulosic ethanol, and reinforces the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, which aims to make hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and fueling stations available to consumers in the longer term. It also supports research to reduce the costs of advanced electricity production technologies in the stationary sector such as clean coal, nuclear energy, solar photovoltaics, and wind energy.