Santa Clara County, Calif., official wants fuel-cell powered community
San Jose Mercury News, Calif. --Sep. 13
Sep. 13--Imagine a community powered solely by its own recycled energy. Fuel cells, instead of electricity, would produce enough watts to light your house, heat your kids' school, produce clean water for your clinic and generate enough hydrogen to power the senior center shuttle.
At Tuesday's board of supervisors meeting, Beall will introduce a plan that
would put Santa Clara County on the map for its efforts to create the first such
community in California -- and possibly the nation -- to be powered solely by
fuel cell energy.
The technology already is being used in cars, and a growing number of cities
and counties on the East Coast are testing it in restaurants, fire stations and
government buildings. A Toronto university has even used it in a dormitory.
For buildings and other infrastructure, the idea is to replace the
traditional heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system with fuel cell
technology. Natural gas -- and potentially solar or wind power in the future --
would be converted into hydrogen for the fuel cells, which would react like
batteries to emit electrical charges that would produce electricity, heat, water
and hydrogen.
Theoretically, all of the fuel cell byproducts would be used to power
buildings and low-emission vehicles.
In Santa Clara County, Beall says his proposal is all in the spirit of
creating more tech jobs, helping control the number of asthma cases by tackling
the region's air pollution problem and guarding against California's high energy
costs.
"If we can support emerging technologies, especially ones that have
potential to create jobs, I think that's a good thing," Beall said.
Beyond creating jobs, Beall expects that cleaner energy alternatives would
substantially cut the county's more than $15 million annual energy bill, Beall
said.
At the board meeting, Beall plans to ask his colleagues to consider using
county buildings, the future Fair Oaks Senior Housing project in Sunnyvale,
sewage treatment plants and the Office of Emergency Services as potential
testing grounds for fuel cell technology. He also wants the county to find grant
money to acquire a fleet of vehicles powered by fuel cells.
Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center in
Irvine, said Beall's idea isn't that far from reality. In fact, around the world
for the past decade, businesses such as hotels and hospitals have used fuel
cells for electricity. But using the byproducts, such as hydrogen, to fuel cars
is potentially a decade or more away, Samuelsen said.
"But it is not at all implausible," said Samuelsen, who added that
fuel cell technology is "an almost necessary technology" because of
the limitations of other technologies such as combustion.
Beall's proposal goes beyond the smaller-scale fuel cell experiments
happening in places such as Los Angeles, which recently installed a fuel cell
system in its Department of Power & Water, and in Chico, where Sierra Nevada
Brewing installed a fuel cell system to power its beer-making machines.
"We haven't heard of anyone targeting fuel cells in quite this
way," said Tim Lipman, assistant researcher for the Institute of
Transportation Studies at the University of California-Berkeley.
The California Stationary Fuel Cell Collaborative, composed of government
officials, industry leaders and academics, also has a plan to get the technology
in state buildings. But budget woes have stalled those efforts, said Lipman, who
is a member of the group.
One of the downsides of fuel cell technology is that it's expensive, Lipman
said. For instance, fuel cell cars cost about $1 million each to manufacture,
according to automobile industry experts.
"Fuel cell technology tends to be more expensive than other ways, but it
is clean and efficient," Lipman said. "If you're willing to be
patient, ultimately, you will save money." Grant funding Beall says he
won't need taxpayer dollars to fund his initiative.
Instead, he says, Santa Clara County is primed to take advantage of federal,
state and private grants from sources including the U.S. Department of Energy
and the San Jose-based Steven and Michele Kirsch Foundation to fund fuel cell
initiatives.
Beyond the high costs, opponents say current fuel cell systems rely on
natural gas -- or fossil fuels -- which emit greenhouse gases.
Beall acknowledges fuel cell technology isn't completely benign, but it's a
transition to a more sustainable fuel cell system that uses solar or wind power
to function.
County officials greeted the idea with a mix of skepticism and enthusiasm.
Supervisor Pete McHugh, chairman of the board of supervisors, said Tuesday's
meeting is a good starting point for talking about the technology and potential
uses in Santa Clara County.
"Hopefully, it is a wave of the future," McHugh said. "We
should try to be in the lead and take advantage of technologies. It still may be
a little early, but that's what a demonstration would help us discover."
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