Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
vehicles includes reducing the cost of commercial-scale manufacturing of fuel
cells by nearly fourfold, storing enough hydrogen on board a fuel-cell vehicle to
enable a 300-mile driving range, and increasing the durability of fuel cells by
more than threefold to match the 150,000 mile life-span of gasoline vehicles.
DOE also conducts R and D on stationary and portable fuel cells which could be
used, for example, to replace batteries on fork lifts and diesel generators used for
back-up power. We recommended that DOE update its overarching R and D plan
to reflect the technologies it reasonably expects to provide to industry by 2015 to
accurately reflect progress made by the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, the challenges it
faces, and its anticipated R and D funding needs. I would also note that
developing the supporting infrastructure to deploy the technologies nationally will
likely take decades, tens of billions of dollars in investments, and continued R and
D well beyond the 2015 target date.
DOE's fiscal year 2009 budget request would reduce funding for the
Hydrogen Fuel Initiative by 17 percent from $283.5 million in fiscal year 2008 to
$236 million in fiscal year 2009. The budget also proposes to increase the
proportion of longer-term R and D by increasing the funding for basic research.
Although the Hydrogen Program Manager told us that funding is sufficient to
meet target dates for critical technologies, other target dates for supporting
technologies—such as hydrogen production from renewable sources—would be
pushed back.
Wind technologies
. DOE is assessing its long-term vision of generating 20
percent of the nation's electricity using wind energy by 2030. Its current R and D
efforts, however, are focused on more immediate expansion of the wind industry,
particularly on utility-scale wind turbines. More specifically, DOE has focused its
R and D efforts on improving the cost, performance, and reliability of large scale,
land-based wind turbines, including both high- and low-wind technologies;
developing small and mid-size turbines for distributed energy applications, such
as for residential or remote agricultural uses; and gathering information on more
efficient uses of the electricity grid and on barriers to deploying wind technology
and providing that information to key national, state, and local decision-makers to
assist with market expansion of wind technologies.[11] For example, one of
DOE's targets is to increase the number of distributed wind turbines deployed in
the United States from 2,400 in 2007 to 12,000 in 2015. Although wind energy
has grown in recent years, from about 1,800 megawatts in 1996 to over 16,800
megawatts in 2007, the wind industry still faces investors' concerns about high
up-front capital costs, including connecting the wind farms to the power
transmission grid.
