Islands of hope in hydrogen: clean hydrogen energy is just around the corner… if governments have the guts to take on the oil barons - Get it Right!

New Internationalist, Dec, 2002 by Seth Dunn

Enter California's zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) programme. Since the 19705 the state capital, Los Angeles, commonly recorded smog levels high enough to cause a significant health risk on more than 100 days of the year. So in 1990 the California Air Resources Board (ARB) established the ZEV programme requiring 10-per-cent of new vehicles produced for sale in 2003 to be zero emission. From the outset, the 13 largest US automakers have lobbied hard and fast against the mandate, with DaimlerChrysler and General Motors' latest charge through the courts resulting in an injunction temporarily stopping the law. Under this kind of pressure initial targets have been wound back, with the required number of new zero-emission vehicles on the market dropping to 2-per-cent by 2003 and then rising to 16-per-cent by 2016.

Nevertheless, the mandate has already achieved significant results by forcing both automakers and oil companies to research no- and low-emission energy options--something they are unlikely to have done voluntarily. Four other US states have followed California's example--Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont--which together account for more than a fifth of the entire US car market. At the end of the day, it's this course that seems the most efficient way to stop corporations from producing goods that kill people and the environment... simply tell big business that they can no longer do it.

Chris Richards

Seth Dunn is a Senior Fellow with the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental think-tank based in Washington DC. This article is adapted from Hydrogen Futures: Toward a Sustainable Energy System, Worldwatch Paper 157, August 2001.