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Safety Codes and Standards Receives a
Boost in Funds
by Steve Hester
National Hydrogen Association
The budget proposed by the President for FY 2005 for Hydrogen
Codes and Standards and Safety activities shows a significant
increase.
For hydrogen, the proposed funding is about $150 million, and
for fuel cells, the proposed funding is $77 million. Specifically,
the safety and codes and standards activities have a proposed
funding of $18 million, a number that is approximately three
times the FY04 appropriations.
In FY05, there is also the requirement to formulate and fund
hydrogen-related efforts as part of an inter-agency project
involving DOE, EPA, NIST and DOT. The details will be published
when the project is signed-off by the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB).
Separately, DOT has requested funding to perform crash test
studies on a sample of the fuel cell-powered cars being operated
as part of the California Fuel Cell Partnership.
Of course the budget could still face the problem in FY05 of
Congressionally-mandated projects (as had to be dealt with in
this year’s FY04 budget). Though there can and may be mandated
reappropriations for portions of the hydrogen budget, the hydrogen
community can expect that the $18 million budget for hydrogen
related codes and standards efforts will be maintained. This
optimism is related to a report by the National Academies’
National Research Council (NRC), released on February 4 that
identified the importance of codes and standards for hydrogen
and fuel cells. The full NRC report is available at http://books.nap.edu/books/0309091632/html/index.html
but is quoted below for the areas that specifically mention
codes and standards:
Infrastructure
A nationwide, high-quality, safe, and efficient hydrogen infrastructure
will be required in order for hydrogen to be used widely in
the consumer sector. While it will be many years before hydrogen
use is significant enough to justify an integrated national
infrastructure—as much as two decades in the scenario posited
by the committee— regional infrastructures could evolve
sooner. The relationship between hydrogen production, delivery,
and dispensing is very complex, even for regional infrastructures,
as it depends on many variables associated with logistics systems
and on many public and private entities. Codes and standards
for infrastructure development could be a significant deterrent
to hydrogen advancement if not established well ahead of the
hydrogen market.
Similarly, since resilience to terrorist attack has become a
major performance criterion for any infrastructure system, the
design of future hydrogen infrastructure systems may need to
consider protection against such risks.
Recommendation ES-3b
The DOE should accelerate work on codes and standards and
on permitting, addressing head-on the difficulties of working
across existing and emerging hydrogen standards in cities, counties,
states, and the nation.
For detailed information about the President’s proposed
budget for DOE for FY05, go to the following web site: http://www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/05budget/index.htm
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