Apparently using his magic crystal ball, Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu has decided that fuel-cell vehicles will not pan out in the next 10 to 20 years and will eliminate government funding for research programs in this field. At the same time, he is ramping up the funding for the FutureGen power plant (it helps to have friends in high places, I guess).

While there are problems with the efficiencies of current fuel cells (somewhere around 50% as efficient as internal combustion gasoline engines), advancements are being made and breakthroughs are possible. Fuel cells do suffer from the fact that the infrastructure hasn’t been deployed – there are very few hydrogen refueling centers around the country. So why cut the program? Well, I think J. Byron McCormick who used to sit on the DoE’s Hydrogen Advisory Committee (and formely the head of GM’s fuel-cell program) can fill us in. In a statement after resigning from said committee, he said, “And as I thought about the decision [to cut the budget for fuel cell programs], how it was worded, and the fact that the budget was zeroed, I didn’t feel I could in any way appear to be supportive. … And quite honestly, I didn’t want to put my energy into debating people who … have never touched real hardware, tried to build businesses in this area or dealt with real customers using real products.”

This, of course, is not new news to the Gormogons. This is the concern we share over nationalized healthcare – where a similar comment in the future could read, “I didn’t want to put my energy into debating people who … have never diagnosed a real patient, tried to save someone’s life on the operating table, tried to tell someone that their relative was dying or dealt with the immediate needs of real people with real medical problems.”

Programs like the fuel cell research are exactly the kinds of programs that should be used for “stimulus” activities. “Shovel ready” (if they do exist) projects that the Obama/Pelosi Stimulus Bill targeted (along with the pet projects that were left in) don’t provide the kind of long term growth of industries and new markets that fuel cells or other innovations could. One only has to spend some time on the fancy websites like Gov. O’Malley’s (D-MD) StateStat site and look carefully. The “stimulus” money measuring stick is in the number of jobs “supported” not “created”.

Someday people will come around and listen to the themes presented here: nuclear power now, innovation, and smaller government (particularly federal) to reduce wasteful overhead on progress.

Note: the picture is of a hydrogen powered fuel cell RC car.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.