VANCOUVER

The road to Canada’s first “Hydrogen Highway” leads through Calgary.

Specifically, the road leads to Dynetek Industries Ltd., which will receive $1.5 million in federal funding to develop a new valve for use in hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles that will use the highway, to be created for the 2010 Olympics.

Prime Minister Paul Martin announced Ottawa’s share of the $3-million Dynetek project after touring the trade show at the GLOBE 2004 environment business conference here.

File photo by David Lazarowych, Business Edge
Dynetek president Robb Thompson with fuel-storage tanks.

“The Hydrogen Highway will take us from the fossil fuel economy we live in now to the new hydrogen economy,” Martin said. “Canada’s going to show the world that hydrogen fuel cell-transportation is more than a great idea. It’s practical, efficient and within reach.”

Martin, accompanied by Environment Minister David Anderson, announced a total of $6 million in various federal funding initiatives for the new Hydrogen Highway project.

It is aimed at creating the infrastructure, including hydrogen fuelling stations, that will enable visitors to travel between the Vancouver International Airport and Whistler during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Dynetek’s role will be to develop a 10,000-pounds-per-square-inch (psi) hydrogen valve for use in storing hydrogen fuel in pressurized cylinders onboard vehicles.

Developing affordable technology that provides sufficient and safe hydrogen fuel storage onboard vehicles is one of the obstacles to commercializing fuel cell-powered vehicles.

The new 10,000-psi valve, which represents the next generation in hydrogen valve technology, will increasing vehicle operating range and reduce fuel-storage costs.

By August 2005, Dynetek will redesign, evaluate and test a current 5,000-psi valve to fit a 10,000-psi hydrogen fuelling system that has been developed by Fueling Technologies Inc. in Ontario.

Natural Resources Canada, through its Canadian Transportation Fuel Cell Alliance, will contribute $1.5 million to the high-pressure valve project. Dynetek will match the federal funding.

Robb Thompson, president and CEO of Dynetek, said the company was grateful for the financial support and the recognition of the “significant technological contribution” the new valve would make to the hydrogen economy.

“Our primary goal has always been to design a consistent product which has low manufacturing cost and robust operating performance,” he said.

Canada is positioning itself to capitalize on an estimated global market for hydrogen technologies that is predicted to reach $46 billion by 2011, according to some experts.

But Jim Fulton, executive director of the David Suzuki Foundation, warns that the environmental group will oppose using hydrogen if it involves obtaining the fuel from hydrocarbons through processes that create new greenhouse gas emissions.

The Suzuki Foundation will erect a figurative roadblock on the Hydrogen Highway if the hydrogen is produced from methanol, natural gas, propane, oil or gasoline, as B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has suggested, Fulton said in an interview.

“We don’t support a dirty Hydrogen Highway for the Olympics,” Fulton said. “Then you’ve got upstream carbon dioxide and climate change problems, instead of out of the tailpipe.”

The hydrogen fuel should be produced from renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power, which Canadian companies say will be cost-competitive with hydrocarbon-based processes prior to 2010, he said.

Albertans should also be cautious about their government’s strategy to produce hydrogen fuel from oilsands byproducts or coalbed methane, Fulton said.

“If I was a landowner or a land-renter or someone who loved the environment in Alberta, I’d be really worried,” he added. The intensive drilling required to produce coalbed methane “leaves farms and parks looking like a porcupine. There are pipes just coming out all over the place.”

The Canadian Society for Unconventional Gas, which represents the country’s fledgling coalbed methane industry, has insisted the valuable resource in Alberta and B.C. can be developed while still protecting the environment.

As part of the Hydrogen Highway initiative, seven initial hydrogen fuelling stations in B.C. are planned. They include sites at the Vancouver airport, Powertech Labs in Surrey, the National Research Council’s Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation, the Finnings Lands/Athletic Village, Sacré-Davey in North Vancouver, the Whistler Village, and the University of Victoria/BC Transit.

However, Martin announced $96,000 in funding for preliminary engineering work on only one of the fuelling stations. Sacré-Davey Engineering in North Vancouver will receive the money to look at harnessing a waste hydrogen stream for transportation fuel.

Ottawa will also provide $2 million toward a four-year, $7.5-million demonstration project to test fuel cell vehicles in B.C.’s lower mainland, and separate funding of $1.1 million for related work on the Vancouver-to-Whistler Hydrogen Highway.