Free Republic

The government would offer a series of cash prizes for innovations in hydrogen energy under a bill the House passed Wednesday. The bill (HR 632), by Daniel Lipinski, D-Ill., would be intended to bring clean-burning hydrogen-powered vehicles closer to reality. It passed by a 408-8 vote. “The future possibilities of this energy source are enormous,” Lipinski said. The government-sponsored competition, which would be called the “H-Prize,” is modeled after the programs of the Ansari X Prize Foundation, which gives multimillion-dollar awards to teams that achieve specific scientific and engineering goals. Lipinski pointed out that such prizes continue a tradition dating...

WASHINGTON - Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for millions of dollars in prizes, including a grand prize potentially worth $50 million, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Legislation creating the “H Prize,” modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize that resulted last year in the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space twice, passed the House Wednesday on a 416-6 vote. A companion bill is to be introduced in the Senate this week.

“Yes my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable.... When the deposits of coal are exhausted we shall heat and warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the future.” –Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island (1874-5) Nearly everyone in American politics believes we face an energy crisis, and nearly everyone believes we need a technological solution that will make America “energy independent.” Americans are,...