President Bush Wednesday's Tour of Nation First Hydrogen Fueling Station

Washington DC May 25, 2005; AIADA reported ”...You know, hydrogen is the wave of the future. And this country is going to have to use technology to diversify away from hydrocarbons,” the President opened. “We’re too dependent on foreign sources of energy today, and one way to diversify away from hydrocarbons is to use hydrogen, the byproduct of which will be water and not exhausts which pollute the air...So I’m excited to be part of a technological revolution that’s going to change the country. It won’t happen overnight. It’s going to take a fair amount of research and development to make sure hydrogen is attractive and reasonable -- is able to be manufactured at reasonable price, distributed in a wide way for consumer satisfaction.”

Bush mentioned the $1.2 billion the government is currently investing in hydrogen research and development. “Part of the reason we’re spending money is to see if we can’t encourage technology to enable the industry to extract hydrocarbon at more reasonable -- I mean, hydrogen at more reasonable price,” he insisted. “A couple of bottlenecks, it seems like to me -- and you can help me out here. One, obviously, is the manufacturing of vehicles that use hydrogen. Secondly, it is the ability to produce hydrogen. It requires energy to produce hydrogen, and therefore, trying to use our research dollars to figure out how best to do that in efficient ways. And, finally, to make sure that the infrastructure is such that consumers can buy hydrogen in a convenient way.”

He continued... “This is a 10-year project, as I -- when I announced it to the United States Congress. The key is, is that we’re now putting things in place today, making investments today, encouraging development of alternative sources of energy today, that will help transform our energy mix for tomorrow so that ten years from now, hopefully, we can look back and say, thankfully, Congress finally acted, and President Bush led, so that we’re able to diversify away from oil and gas.” As part of his message Wednesday, the President stressed the need for Congress to get an energy bill to his desk. “Part of the hydrogen initiative and part of the diversification away from hydrocarbons is a part of an energy bill. And Congress has been talking too long about the energy bill,” said the President. “For the sake of energy independence, they’ve got to get me a bill.”