Some people have pondered if the recent California budget cuts would affect the Hydrogen Highway program in the Golden State. The answer according to the California Hydrogen Highway Network (CaH2Net) is no.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has announced their plans to award grants to four new hydrogen refueling stations. The stations will offer compressed hydrogen gas at both 5,000 psi and 10,000 psi.
The hydrogen refueling stations will be easily accessible and offer convenient hours of operation. Another requirement by CARB is that the hydrogen fueling stations be located near freeway on/off ramps to support the current and future fuel cell vehicles in major metropolitan areas of California.
The four locations chosen for the fueling stations include one in San Francisco and three in the general Los Angeles area. The hydrogen fueling station in northern California will be at the San Francisco Airport off highway 101, across from a natural gas refueling station.
The three hydrogen fueling stations in southern California will be in Los Angeles, Harbor City and Newport Beach. In October 2007 I had talked about how California State University, Los Angeles was dropping their program to build a hydrogen fueling station on campus. Well, now UCLA has picked up the slack and decided to build a station on their campus.
Another hydrogen fueling station will be located at an existing Chevron station on Pacific Coast Highway in Harbor City. And the third hydrogen fueling station will be located on Jamboree Road in Newport Beach at an existing Shell station, not too far from an existing H2 fueling station at UC Irvine, CA.
Even though there have been deep budget cuts lately in California, the Hydrogen Highway marches on and continues to expand in population centers where the most hydrogen cars and buses are already located.