What more should be done to spur development of fuel cells?
The U.S. government should take three steps to help commercialize fuel cells: 1. Major increases are needed in research and development budgets of the Departments of Energy and Transportation, and elsewhere. 2. The federal government should also take the lead to purchase early power units and vehicles. 3. The government should continue and expand the program to help “buy down” the cost of early units installed around the country. To put costs into perspective, we pay more than $5 billion for imported oil each month. A small fraction of that amount could fully commercialize fuel cells within five years and create tens of thousands of jobs.
