All aboard the GO hydrogen express
Now that the provincial Liberals have secured another four years in office, it's fair to ask whether Premier Dalton McGuinty's recent talk of locally manufactured, hydrogen-powered GO trains was just election rhetoric or a serious, forward-looking strategy to nurture innovation and create jobs.
By
Tyler HamiltonEnergy and Technology Columnist
Sun., Oct. 21, 2007
Now that the provincial Liberals have secured another four years in office, it's fair to ask whether Premier Dalton McGuinty's recent talk of locally manufactured, hydrogen-powered GO trains was just election rhetoric or a serious, forward-looking strategy to nurture innovation and create jobs.
McGuinty revealed last month that his government was in early-stage talks with Bombardier to design and develop an emission-free commuter train propelled by hydrogen-powered fuel cells and used by GO Transit.
"It's our goal to get a prototype on the rails here in Ontario within three years of the project launch," McGuinty announced during a visit to a Bombardier manufacturing plant in Thunder Bay.
The idea, while ambitious, carries a certain attraction. Job creation. Export potential. There's also the vision of clean trains being showcased to the world as they run through Canada's largest city.
But for every wide-eyed person in the room who got giddy at the thought of building a hydrogen economy in southern Ontario, there were also skeptics in the crowd who dismissed such a vision as political theatre.
After all, we've been here before with promises of hydrogen-powered cars (see "The Hype" below).
We don't have affordable, mass-produced hydrogen cars on the road today, but from an industrial perspective hydrogen is a $282 billion global market. The world relies heavily on hydrogen for fertilizer production, fuel upgrading, food processing and a number of other applications where demand for the zero-emission gas is growing. [...]