DWV has scored a great success with the booklet „Wasserstoff-Führer“ (Hydrogen Guide, in German). It describes the 21 most important demonstration projects on hydrogen and fuel cells in Germany. It seems that many people missed such a concise overview of the activities in Germany. The booklet can be obtained from DWV for 5 DM.

The California Fuel Cell Project opened its new headquarter on 1. November in the state capital of Sacramento. A hitherto unparalleled combination of the vehicles of seven manufacturers was on display, namely of all except Toyota. The membership of General Motors and Toyota makes the California project now a stage for all great manufactures. It is now even more important for the progress of the field than it was before. A whole of 18 companies and authorities work together.

DaimlerChrysler showed the Necar 4 Advanced running on compressed instead of liquefied hydrogen. The new cell makes 75 kW. General Motors had brought the HydroGen 1 on the  basis of the Opel Zafira to California. Volkswagen showed under the name Bora HyMotion a car with a liquid hydrogen tank of 50 l. It gives a range of 350 km to the car. The cell makes 75 kW, and the car runs a top speed of 140 km/h.

Hydrogen Burner Technology, Pacific Gas and Electric, Proton Energy Systems, and Stuart Energy Systems have joined the project. Their particular interest is the installation of a hydrogen infrastructure in California; each company will build at least one hydrogen filling station.

General Motors has apparently changed its strategy on the way to the car of tomorrow. The company will not develop new types for fuel cells, but rather integrate them into the existing cars and other vehicles in order to have a reasonable market share by 2010.

Byron McCormick, Co-director of the Global Alternative Propulsion Center, said that GM has a new gasoline reformer prototype with a new catalyst system which permits efficiencies of more than 80 %. He said that the reformer has only half the weight of the previous one and starts up in less than three minutes. Before this took up to a quarter of an hour. The reformer and a fuel cell (25 kW) will be presented before the end of this year.

(Detroit News, 17. November 2000; vwd, 16. November 2000)

A city bus running on hydrogen was developed in the frame of a development project of the EU and was presented to the public for the first time at the end of October. It will operate in normal service at DeLijn. This is the greatest Belgian bus operator. It is propelled  by a combustion engine running on hydrogen. The latter will be provided from a new cryogenic liquid tank developed Messer Griesheim which is on the roof. The tank is 5 m long, but only 40 cm in diameter and accommodates 350 l LH₂, giving the bus a range of 300 km.

Energiekontor AG, Bremerhaven (Germany), plans to build a filling station for hydrogen city buses. The company said that current plans are that the first of them could start operation in early 2002. Electricity from wind power will be the primary energy. Energiekontor AG thinks the offshore wind plants which are now planned would be enough to provide clean energy via hydrogen to Europe's road traffic.

(die tageszeitung, 4. December 2000)

Experts from Switzerland and other countries met on 23. and 24. November at the Paul-Scherrer-Institut in Villigen under the motto „Energy technologies for a sustainable future“. According to Hans Rudolf Zulliger, president of the national energy research commission, we should ask ourselves whether our needs can be satisfied with less energy. Many appear to persist in the traditional ways to think — or how else could it be explained that hydrogen cars are only considered as marketable if they perform like conventional ones in terms of range, comfort, and general behavior? The attending members of car manufacturers (BMW, DaimlerChrysler, VW) said that beginning in 2010 or 2015 the production of cheap oil would no longer satisfy the global demand.

(Neue Zuercher Zeitung, 6. December 2000)

Will sand substitute oil and hydrogen? This idea could come to the mind after reading a paper in the German news magazine Stern 46/00 about silicon as energy carrier. A look into the periodic system of elements shows that silicon is chemically similar to carbon; unlike this it can react exothermically with nitrogen. And it is one of the most abundant elements on earth. We find it in sand in the form of a chemical compound. From this, however, it must be generated by use of energy. So we may have a new energy carrier, but certainly not a new primary energy. Not settled is where to bring all the sand and the other reaction products.

As last link in the NECAR chain DaimlerChrysler presented the NECAR 5 on 7. November 2000 in Berlin in the presence of Federal Chancellor Schroeder. This is the first car with a methanol reformer which provides the same space in the passenger and the luggage compartment as the conventional type. Fuel cell and reformer have put off about 30 % weight, while the power output has increased by 50 %.

The Federal Chancellor was fascinated by the technology which, as he said, "will probably revolutionize car traffic". The fuel cell will also play an important role in stationary decentralized applications.

Research director Voehringer and project head Panik said that by 2002 the first buses and by 2004 the first cars would be handed over to the customer. Until then about 1GEuro will have been invested. The first cars would be only a small series of not more than 1000, Panik said. In 2010, however, sales of 100.000 per year could be expected.

DaimlerChrysler and Ballard want to introduce the direct methanol fuel cell in the car. This device incorporates the cracking of the methanol molecule in the electrochemical processes in the membrane. The first vehicle equipped with it was presented during an "Innovation Symposium“ on 8. and 9. November near Stuttgart: it is a „Go-Cart“. The cell makes 3 kW, the car runs a top speed of 35 km/h and has a range of 15 km per tank filling. Larger systems are already in the laboratory stage or planned. The companies say that the direct methanol fuel cell could be used in ten years. They consider the connections to stationary and portable applications with great interest.

(Press releases by DaimlerChrysler and Ballard of 9. November 2000)

Daimler will work with Mitsubishi in the development of fuel cell systems in Japan. The joint project will probably exceed the billion limit in terms of costs. A serial product could exist in four or five years. The intention is to test fuel call vehicles under everyday conditions in Japan. The first car will run on methanol. At the same time other fuels for the fuel cell are investigated in the joint project.

(Handelsblatt of 7. November 2000; Edmonton Journal, 28. November 2000)

Numerous research institutes in the south west German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg have formed the "Fuel Cell Research Alliance Baden-Wuerttemberg (FABZ)". The objective is to improve the equipment of the partners under common aspects. Apparatus and manpower will also be exchanged among the partners. Members are ZSW (Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg) in Stuttgart and Ulm, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Freiburg i. Br.), the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR) with its Institute for Technical Thermodynamics (Stuttgart), the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (Stuttgart) and the universities at Karlsruhe, Stuttgart and Ulm with several institutes each.

Prime minister Erwin Teufel visited the DaimlerChrysler project house fuel cell on 8. November and referred to the demonstration projects under way in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Fuel cell propulsion for buses will be tested for two years in three buses in Stuttgart. ”We are still well away from cost competitiveness in comparison to established technologies. But what I have seen today lets me hope that the astonishing development speed can be kept. The technology offers enormous possibilities, and we are going to make use of them together with the industry”, Teufel said.

Siemens-Westinghouse will build a solid oxide fuel cell plant with 1 MW output on the ground of EnBW power plant at Marbach / Neckar. It will cost around 25 MEuro and provide the companies in the energy and technology park Marbach with energy from 2002 on.

Two other systems of this kind are at hand. One will start operation in March 2002 at RWE Power AG in the Meteorit technology park in Essen (Germany). The other will be installed at Edison Spa in Sinetta Marengo, near Alessandria in northern Italy. It will start running in October 2002. The characteristic feature of both is a micro turbine in series which enhances the electrical efficiency from 45 % to 60 %. Both make about 300 kW_el, of which 250 come from the cell and 50 from the turbine.

(Siemens-Westinghouse press release of 6. December 2000)

The French gas utility Gaz de France has installed an H Power co-generation unit on fuel cell basis for a home for one or more families in a test house and started a test period of five months. The house is located in the research and development center of Gaz de France.

(H Power press release of 28. November 2000)

H Power and SGL Carbon have agreed that SGL will develop optimized and cheap graphite components for the H Power fuel cells. Moulding instead of machining them is expected to lead to cost advantages of up to 90 %. A similar step was done by Energy Ventures Inc. and TDM LLC (Flanders, New Jersey) with a joint development program for direct methanol fuel cells.

(H Power press release of 23. October 2000; Energy Ventures press release of 8. December)

„Ecology is economy plus future“ is the motto of the major Swiss bank UBS. The Environment Report 1999 demonstrates that investments with an ecological objective can bring acceptable earnings. In 1997 the Environment Fund UBS (Lux) Equity Fund - Eco Performance was started and gained a plus of 87,4 % since then. The fund invests in shares of companies which make responsible provisions on the basis of far-reaching strategy and in a socially balances way. One of these companies is Ballard.

(vwd, 31. October 2000)

New estimates on the sea level rise due to global warming sound even more alarming than the previous ones. The heat already introduced in the ocean water will keep contributing to the latter's thermal expansion for centuries to come. Any rise of the global mean temperature by more than 2,7 °C could trigger the melting of the Greenland ice cap; almost all models predict higher values. This alone would rise the sea level by 7 m. Something similar could happen with the West Antarctic ice shield, contributing 3 m on top. A rise by 10 m would inundate an area greater than the USA, today inhabited by more than 1 billion people and comprising a lot of the most valuable farm land. Great parts of the Netherlands, Denmark and also northern Germany would disappear from the map.

(New Scientist, 25. November 2000)

The island state Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean will base its economy on renewable energies until 2020. Most important will be geothermal heat, but also wind and solar power. Hydrogen will play an important role as energy carrier. The government expects important economical advantages. Today almost all income from exports must be used to import oil. And the energy supply of the numerous small islands is difficult.

Refocus Nov./Dec. 2000; http://www.hydrogenpacific.com)

Interim results of TES („Transport Energy Strategy“) were presented on the VDA Technical Congress in September. TES is an initiative by car producers and utilities as well as the Federal government. In January TES had come to a closer selection of natural gas, methanol, and hydrogen as alternative fuels. „The partners think that hydrogen has a great potential for introduction and offers the best prospects to meet the strategic objectives. ... Until end of next year the Task Force will make a strategic proposal about the introduction of hydrogen. ... The Task Force will additionally develop the following plans:

• Installation of a hydrogen infrastructure for traffic

• A conversion program agreed upon by car industry and energy economy

• Detailed schedules for the implementation

• Necessary boundary conditions (state, society, economy)

• Expansion of the initiative to Europe."

(Hyweb, 5. December 2000)

Until 2010 the Federal government intends to avoid 23 Mt CO₂ emissions by expanding co-generation, as was announced on 28. November by Volker Jung, energy expert of the SPD group in the federal parliament. The energy expert of the Greens, Michaele Hustedt, added that the expansion of co-generation would be impossible unless a system of certificate trading would be introduces. Such trading will involve the fuel cell and thus promote the market introduction of this technology.

The recycling center SVZ at Schwarze Pumpe (Brandenburg, Germany) will convert meat and bone meal and fat to methanol. The company has already offered its services to the ministries of agriculture in several German states. 1 t of animal fat results in about the same amount of methanol. The only leftover is a glassy mass which could be deposited or used for building. The company announced on 4. November that during the next years „several 100.000 t of meat and bone meal could be processed“.