The Seattle Times, Business & Technology: Monday, September 27, 2004

Inventing a lean green machine
By Kristi Heim
Seattle Times business reporter

Eric Leonhardt knows how many cows there are in Whatcom County (66,000). But it's not the cows that interest him; it's the manure Leonhardt, director of the Vehicle Research Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham, looks at cow pies and sees miles of pollution-free driving.

He wants to transform manure into "biogas," methane that fuels a hybrid vehicle running on compressed natural gas.

Throughout the region, steady progress is being made toward using alternatives like natural gas, hydrogen fuel cells and biodiesel to power the next generation of vehicles. The alternatives provide potentially low-cost, environmentally friendly domestic sources of energy to reduce dependence on oil.

Hydrogen fuel-cell technology is being led by companies including Ballard Power Systems of British Columbia. Ballard is conducting field trials of 110 buses and cars around the world powered with fuel-cell engines, including two passenger cars leased to the mayors of Los Angeles and Tokyo.

"We absolutely believe that fuel cells will replace the internal-combustion engine in transportation," said Michael Rosenberg, Ballard Power Systems' treasurer. He estimated that fuel-cell powered cars are about a decade behind gas-electric hybrid cars in entering in the mass market.

To boost the effort, Canada and California are building a network of hydrogen fuel stations called Hydrogen Highways, and are considering ways to link their systems by including Washington and Oregon. Canada's network would run between Vancouver and Whistler in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics.