California approves $18.7M to expand hydrogen fueling network

The California Energy Commission on Wednesday agreed to spend about $18.7 million to install hydrogen fueling stations as part of a larger plan to see 1.5 million clean power vehicles on the road by 2025.

The commission approved four grants to businesses to install the stations and a contract to an air quality district to review and upgrade existing, publicly accessible stations.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are the next-generation vehicles that could really help the state reduce its greenhouse emissions, but only if several major obstacles are out of the way. One of them is the need for a fueling network to make it easy for consumers to take long drives ans fuel up, even if they only take those trips once in a while. As we have seen with the efforts to market electric cars, range anxiety is a big concern.

California has a so-called “Zero Emission Vehicle Action Plan” that aims to speed up the availability of zero-emission cars and the public acceptance of them. The goal is to get 1.5 million of those cars on the road by 2025. Cars that run only on batteries or on a combination of batteries and gasoline also will qualify.

As I pointed out in a post two weeks ago, hydrogen cars will remain a novelty for a long time. Major carmakers certainly are investing R&D money to engineer prototypes. Honda does sell a fuel cell car, the FCX. Fuel cell cars will be expensive when they first hit the market, of course. Toyota has talked about rolling out models that will likely cost just under $100,000 initially. Although California has been promoting fuel cell car development — it once had a goal to build a chain of hydrogen fueling stations along major highways by 2010 — the state currently has just nine hydrogen stations that are open to the public, reported Reuters.

Here is a rundown of the funding that the commission approved Wednesday:

1. Linde will receive a $4.5 million grant to install three hydrogen fueling stations in the northern California cities of Mountain View, Cupertino and Foster City.

2. Air Products and Chemicals is set to get a roughly $3 million grant to build two hydrogen fueling stations and automate the trailer loading operation at the Southern California Fill System.

3. Hydrogen Frontier has won a $3 million grant o a hydrogen fueling station in Chino, located in Southern California.

4. Air Liquide Industrial U.S. will get a $1.5 million grant to build a hydrogen fueling station in Anaheim.

5. The South Coast Air Quality Management District has gotten a $6.7 million contract to “test, upgrade and evaluate” hydrogen fuel stations that are currently accessible by the public in the state.