Kelly Bullis: An alternative to EV cars: Hydrogen

Your 9-year-old son thinks he is Superman and plans to jump off the roof of your garage. Do you let him do it, knowing that he will most likely break his legs or worse, or do you stop him?

I’ve been watching the madness of politicians pushing EV cars as the future alternative to fossil fuel cars. Many problems that seem quite insurmountable. The huge gorilla in the room? Our electric grid cannot handle it. There seems to be no real chance that we can increase the electricity production, power transmission and local grid capacity to handle everybody charging their EV cars.

An alternative that is readily available? Water! Water is made of two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen. There are many methods of extracting the hydrogen molecules, which have been around since World War II. All that is needed is a concentrated investment in building a large hydrogen production infrastructure. Is America doing this? NO! Other countries are though. Germany, South Korea, Japan to name a few. Why isn’t the United States doing this? Simple. Our leaders are just plain short-sighted and ignorant. Like our son who thinks he is Superman, they are collectively leading us to the roof of the garage and getting us to jump. When can we inject some common sense into the discussions around how to convert away from fossil fuels?

There are some really great ideas out there being matured. The world’s largest car manufacturer, Toyota, has invested heavily in hydrogen car engines. They are making and selling cars now that run on hydrogen, which produce ZERO emissions! All that is needed for the world to buy massive numbers of Toyota (and other manufacturers) hydrogen engine driven cars is a hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure.

What if one of the hot topics to discuss in this election cycle were focused on how to incentivize the creation of a hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure. We give subsidies to all kinds of industries to help them get started.

What if the fossil fuel industry woke up and realized that they were about to go the way of the railroads? (Railroads back at the beginning of the 1900s were on top of the world. They wrongly defined themselves as being in the “railroad business” instead of realizing they were in the business of transporting people and things. They could have easily stepped into trucking, automobile production, etc., but they stubbornly stuck to railroads and missed the jump. Now railroads are sadly a small shell of what they used to be.)

How do we wake up the fossil fuel industry to turn their massive resources into converting them into hydrogen? What prods, tax breaks, etc., can the U.S. government offer to get their attention? These are the challenges I would like to see discussed in this current election cycle.

Have you heard? Job 5:27 says, “Behold, this we have searched out; It is true. Hear it, and know for yourself.”

Kelly Bullis is a Certified Public Accountant in Carson City. Contact him at 775-882-4459. On the web at BullisAndCo.com. Also on Facebook.