Hydrogen Power.

In discussing President Bush's two initiatives in an interview published in The Financial Times last September, Energy Secretary Abraham talked about changing "the (Kyoto) game" and outlined the $1.7 billion programme for the hydrogen-powered FreedomCar (or hydrocars) and Fuel. He underlined his former position as Michigan's senator thus representing the big three carmakers of Detroit . Now, he said, he was acting as go-between for the global carmakers and fuel companies.

The $1.7 billion programme, Abraham said, undermined the argument that President Bush and close aides were the captive of oil interests. He made the following point: "The hydrogen initiative is from a president who is from the state of Big Oil, and it is being implemented by an Energy Secretary from a state associated with conventional internal combustion engines".

Abraham started his argument with the Kyoto treaty imposing emission standards for Green House Gases (GHG). He said: "In order to reduce your GHG emission (under Koyoto) you have to make impossible choices. Choices about downsizing your economy". That, he said, was something many nations, especially developing nations, will not do. "I also doubt", he said of a Koyoto premise, "the countries who have abundant supplies of fossil fuels will not use them".

The US energy secretary discussed the hydrogen and FutureGen initiatives with the German political leadership and the media in Berlin last September (see the coal section in Gas Market Trends). That was when Germany was struck by a heatwave and huge power blackouts plunged millions of Europeans into darkness. The power failure left almost all Italy's 57m inhabitants without electricity (see Downstream Trends).

Abraham said later that the US market, a major part of its north-east having had an alarming power failure together with a part of Canada last August (see Part 4 in the next week's Review), will be the first in the world to prove the viability of the hydrogen fuel cell-which emit only water.

Presenting the two US initiatives to an international conference which he hosted in November, Abraham challenged the notion that economic growth and the quest for profits have caused the environmental problems. Rather, he said, they offered solutions the environmental challenges.