Legislature backs hydrogen development

The House and Senate agreed on two things earlier this month when they passed Joint Resolution 26 – first that Montana is in desperate need of an economic driver, and second that hydrogen may be the best way to lube the state’s rusting financial transmission.

By MARTIN J. KIDSTON, IR Staff Writer

While the state’s monetary woes aren’t good news for anyone, the joint resolution was big news for Paul Williamson, dean of Missoula’s College of Technology.

In February, Williamson stood before the Federal Relations, Energy and Telecommunications Committee, asking members to support HB377, which would have allowed the state to issue $30 million in bonds to create the Hydrogen Futures Park.

While the bill ultimately failed, Williamson reaped a smaller victory with the passage of JR26, which says the state will support "all necessary steps to move Montana into a hydrogen-based economy."

"This whole thing is going to happen whether Montana gets involved or not," Williamson said. "It would be a shame for us to lose out on all that money because we didn’t have our ducks in a row."

How willing the state is to make that move forward will be seen over the upcoming months. Williamson said a hydrogen summit will be held this May in Miles City to discuss a proposed future generations project — a billion-dollar effort to turn coal into hydrogen and conduct cutting-edge research on carbon sequestration.

Williamson said the state’s congressional delegation is behind the endeavor, and representatives of the governor’s office and Brookhaven Labs will be on hand at the Miles City summit.

"We’ve gotten support and coal sponsorship from all over the state," Williamson said. "We’ve got one of the leading scientists coming from Brookhaven Labs to talk about coal gasification and carbon sequestration."

Williamson said Montana will be competing for funding with "states better off than we are," meaning innovative ideas better come from the summit. He also said that while the hydrogen summit is slated for Miles City, it did not necessarily mean the future generations project would be located there.

"We don’t know where it’s going to be yet," Williamson said. "But we want to get it into the eastern part of the state. We cannot move forward here in Montana without working collaboratively statewide."

But that collaboration got underway with the passage of JR26, which, among other things, suggests that the stability of the U.S. and its economic security is threatened by its dependence on foreign energy.

The resolution also says that billions of dollars are being spent by business, industry, states and the federal government to move the nation toward a hydrogen economy. Montana, the resolution said, could use its natural resources to produce trillions of cubic feet of pollution-free hydrogen.

Leaders of Montana’s universities and various state scientists have been touting hydrogen as a future cash cow for the state. The energy, which emits no pollution, can be generated from resources in high abundance in Montana, such as coal and natural gas.

In his February State of the Union address, President Bush proposed spending $1.2 billion in funding to advance the development of hydrogen fuel, and research at schools like Montana State University is on the cutting edge of making hydrogen fuel cells a real possibility.

With this in mind, Williamson has been driving to create the Hydrogen Futures Park in Missoula, which, among other tasks, would serve as a funnel for Montana hydrogen development by trolling for businesses and technologies and creating the workforce needed to support hydrogen technology.

"We want to move forward – we want to set up an office of hydrogen and economic development," Williamson said. "We’ve got the vision and the ball rolling forward now and that’s important."

Montana, Williamson said, is the first state where both the House and Senate have passed a hydrogen resolution. With JR26 in place, Williamson said his top goal remains to attract new business and industry to the state. It’s a plan that may soon pay off, he said.

"I’ve got two companies that want to come to Montana," Williamson said. "One wants to make synthetic gas from coal, creating an interim step toward a hydrogen fuel market."

The other, he said, is a natural gas company that wants to make hydrogen from Montana’s natural gas sources.

"We’ve got some other things out on the line now," he said. "We’ve got our lines in the water."

Williamson said that Todd Kaston, an economic development leader in Miles City, and Darrel Hammon, president of Miles Community College, will play big roles in the future generations project.

"A lot of leadership is going to have to come from (eastern Montana)," said Williamson. "But I think we’ll all be winners."

Reporter Martin Kidston can be reached at 447-4086, or [email protected].