North Dakota Legislator Wants To Spend $250,000 Manufacturing Demand For Hydrogen Fuel
This is what you call “putting the cart before the horse.”
BISMARCK - A bill heard Thursday by the House Natural Resources Committee could bring affordable hydrogen vehicles a step closer, according to the bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. David Monson, R-Osnabrock.
The bill would provide $250,000 for grants to help develop up to five stations where anyone running a hydrogen-powered vehicle could fuel up.
Monson said while hydrogen-powered vehicles aren’t common, there are buses in Winnipeg and Minneapolis that run on hydrogen. Providing a place for them to fuel might make it so that they could travel from city to city.
He also said companies that produce hydrogen powered vehicles have told him they’re “ready to go online to produce these if they had places for them to fuel.”
I realize that this situation must seem like a chicken-and-the-egg thing. After all, why would you build a hydrogen car if there is no place to get fuel for it? And why would you buy one if there’s no place to get fuel for it? I am neither smart enough nor informed enough to know how to solve those problems. But here’s the thing: Neither are the people supporting spending a quarter of a million dollars of our tax dollars on subsidizing hydrogen fuel stations just in case a hydrogen car might wander through North Dakota and need fuel.
Which is exactly why these sort of things shouldn’t be funded with tax dollars. Because what happens if hydrogen fuel never catches on? What happens if it isn’t the “fuel of the future” as so many of these energy alternatives claim to be? We taxpayers end up getting screwed.
I say let the market sort this out. When the cost of the fuel we currently use rises to a point where alternatives such as hydrogen begin to look attractive the market will ensure that there is enough capital to develop fuel stations to meet that new demand.
The thing is, that might not happen any time soon. And the powers-that-be in government always feel like they must do something to steer us to some bright future they have in mind for us. Or, more accurately, a bright future some well-paid, high-power lobbyist put in the minds of politicians to benefit his clients.
