Comments Janet Wilson has made

Governator, Terry Tamminen, Shell Oil and car potentates did the hydrogen race thing today in LA today-Check out last graf of whole long transcript for Arnold's answer on continued public funding:

Transcript of Governor Schwarzenegger Joining Annual Hydrogen Road Tour to Highlight Advances in Fuel-Cell Technology

Time:               9 a.m.

Date:               Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Event:              Press Conference, Shell Station, 11576 Santa Monica Blvd, West Los Angeles, CA

ANTHONY EGGERT:

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the sixth stop on the 2009 Hydrogen Road Tour. My name is Anthony Eggert and I am the senior policy advisor to the chair of the California Air Resources Board. The Air Resources Board is excited to be a partner in this unprecedented trip. This nine-day tour, from border to border, through three states and two countries, will give thousands of people a first-hand experience with fuel-cell vehicles. During the drive we will demonstrate that hydrogen fuel cell cars can give people the performance they expect, including long range, fast acceleration and rapid refueling, all in a quiet and comfortable ride, everything a family could want for a nice West Coast vacation.

We are very pleased to have the following speakers with us today, including Duncan Macleod, vice president of Shell Hydrogen; Los Angeles City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl; Eamonn Percy, president and chief operating officer of Powertech; and Stephen Ellis, manager for fuel cell marketing, America Honda. And I also see we've been joined here by Terry Tamminen, special advisor to the Governor on the environment. Welcome, Terry. One of the actually key architects of the Hydrogen Highway as well.

And we are especially honored to have with us the California governor here today to say a few words about California's commitment to a clean energy future. Please welcome Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Applause)

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:

Well, thank you very much, Anthony, for the nice introduction. And I also want to say thank you to Councilman Rosendahl for being here today. He made it on time, exactly, thank you very much, although he got stuck in traffic. Then Duncan Macleod from Shell Hydrogen, we want to thank him also and also for their great partnership, because we are right here at their fueling station. And what a spectacular fueling station, a great model for the rest of the country and the rest of the world, so thank you very much for your great efforts.

And then Eamonn Percy with Powertech, we want to thank him also very much for the great effort and for the great partnership. And Stephen Ellis with Honda. And of course I just got the Clarity, which is a wonderful hydrogen vehicle. I love that car. As a matter of fact, we're all fighting over who is driving it; my daughters want to drive it all the time and take it away from me. But anyway, so it's nice to have a little fight like that.

But anyway, it's nice to celebrate with all of you here today and look at the fantastic cars that the Hydrogen Road Tour has brought to us. They're right here behind us. They're all operating on hydrogen or fuel cells and they are all producing water rather than pollution. And this is exactly what was our vision a few years ago. I remember when we came into office Terry and talked about that -- there's Terry Tamminen right over here, who has been my advisor for many, many years when it comes to environmental issues and he has been a terrific leader and helping me a lot. And we talked about that just years ago, about this vision and now it's becoming a reality. It's really great to see that.

California set out to prove to the nation and to the world that hydrogen vehicles can use now the roads and the highways. They are safe, they are affordable and they're viable. And that's why we launched the landmark Hydrogen Highway, because years ago they always talked about we don’t want to produce hydrogen vehicles because there are no fueling stations around.

So I said, "Well, let's get started with hydrogen fueling stations." And we started building the first one, the second one and now in the meantime we have 26 fueling stations all over the state of California. And we put hundreds of fuel-cell vehicles and buses on the roads to be tested by government and by businesses; they have traveled more than 2.5 million miles on California roads. And the state of California has also invested $24 million since I have come into office, invested in our hydrogen future and that has been matched by $300 million a year in funding from the auto industry, so they have been really terrific partners on this.

And now we are on the cusp of a new phase and the new phase I'm talking about is that automakers from around the world are now choosing California as the place to roll out their fuel cell vehicles to our consumers. Southern California will be the home of the single largest fleet of hydrogen cars in the world -- the single largest.

And we will create the hydrogen communities, hydrogen communities in Santa Monica and Irvine, Torrance and in Newport Beach. And this is only the beginning. By 2011 automakers will have 700 fuel-cell vehicles in the state of California and by 2014, 4,300 fuel-cell vehicles and by the year 2017, 50,000 vehicles, so this is really amazing. And, of course, when you look at the total amount of cars that we have in California, it's maybe just a small portion. But remember, every marathon starts with that first step. So the automakers have invested as much as $1 billion each to get fuel-cell vehicles here, to the stage where they are today, so we are very proud of them and the great effort that they have made.

And we, of course, want to have California be the place where it all happens and it is happening right here. Our goal is clean air for California, clean air for our children and for our grandchildren. We, of course, not only celebrate hydrogen-fueled vehicles, we also celebrate electric cars, battery cars, biofuel cars and all of this. We don't want to choose the winners; I think the market will decide that.

But last month another great thing happened and that is that our Air Resources Board passed the Low Carbon Fuel Standard here in California. This is the world's first such standard. It will ensure that the cleanest fuels, including hydrogen, will always have a strong market in California.

And the reason why this is very important is because so many times on the federal level they make decisions based on where the oil price is. And as we know, today we heard again that the oil price went up 11 cents a gallon. So that means that sometimes the federal government, when the oil price goes up, then they go in the direction of renewable energy and alternative fuel vehicles and all of those things. Then, when the oil price goes down, they abandon all those policies.

Well, we don't do that here in California. We stay put. We march forward. We only march in one direction and that is forward. We lead the way. As a matter of fact, we lead the way so much so that even the Obama administration has looked at California and said, whoa, those guys have something going there. Let's copy that. So last week President Obama announced a National Emission Standard patterned after California. So I think it is something that we can all be really proud of and showed great leadership. (Applause)

And we're not going to slow down. By 2010 we will have seven new hydrogen fueling stations here in California, accessible to the public. We will invest another $40 million in the next two years here in California on hydrogen fueling stations. As a matter of fact, we just talked about Shell that we're going to build hydrogen fueling stations all the way up to Vancouver and all the way up to the Olympics, that we'll have them ready. And also, all the way up to Alaska. We're going to go and move forward and build and build and build those hydrogen fueling stations.

California keeps pushing and thanks to your public-private partnership and thanks to the car manufacturers and thanks to the energy companies, that the era of pollution-free transportation is now around the corner. And so California will prove that we are not only the Golden State but we are also the greenest state and the cleanest state.

Thank you very much. And now I would like to have our next speaker come out here and this is Councilman Rosendahl, to say -- OK, fine, you're absolutely right. Duncan Macleod, please come out here and say a few words. (Applause)

DUNCAN MACLEOD:

Thank you. My name is Duncan Macleod and I'm responsible for Shell's global hydrogen business. And first of all, thank you, Governor Schwarzenegger, for your inspiring and optimistic words on the future of hydrogen transportation in California. I'd also like to thank Mayor Villaraigosa and Councilmember Bill Rosendahl and their respective staff for their continuing support, both during and after the construction of this station.

As you may know, we are meeting at the first integrated -- which means gasoline and hydrogen -- station in California. This site is the first piece of a cluster that Shell is developing for hydrogen fuel cell vehicle drivers in the Los Angeles area and, on a broader scale, it forms part of the California Hydrogen Highway that the Governor launched five years ago.

The highway is an excellent example of how this state understands the critical need for public-private partnership along all stages of the journey. This is something that Shell supports all over the world, working with governments, the automotive industry, NGOs, academia and customers, to make hydrogen a practical, safe and accessible fuel. That's why Shell is a founding member of the California Fuel Cell Partnership, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary with this Road Tour that we are part of today. Just as important, we're looking at the next 10 years and beyond that, because making hydrogen transportation a reality for significant numbers of drivers is a long-term project.

The California Air Resources Board under Mary Nichols is also an important partner and I'd like to thank them for their support for another station in our cluster that we're just starting in Newport Beach, which will be open early next year and like this one will be an integrated gasoline and hydrogen station.

Now, hydrogen stations don't make any sense unless we have vehicles to fuel in them, so we continue to work closely with several of the car companies that design and build hydrogen vehicles. We share plans; we align locations and timeframes. These partnerships are key for us and I'm very happy today to see the FCVs from GM, Daimler, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and others, Volkswagen, I'm sorry. They've all stopped here to fuel as part of this Road Tour.

So thank you, everybody, for coming to this station today. We just completed recently our 1100th fueling since we opened last year. (Applause) And we look forward to continuing to work together with both the public and the private sectors to provide hydrogen, a clear path to make a difference in the future as it joins biofuels, electricity and other options in the low carbon mix.

Thank you very much, everybody and I'd like to introduce Councilmember Bill Rosendahl. Thank you. (Applause)

COUNCILMEMBER ROSENDAHL:

Good morning, good morning, good morning and welcome to the 11th Council District of the great city of Los Angeles, better known as the Coastal District. And especially I want to welcome our governor, who lives in this district, I might add and with his presence here we've got at least 10 cameras and the rest of the world here. And that's the point of it, is to show the world that we're moving forward. California once again is on the cutting edge of the new technology. We have to get away from gasoline if we want to live in the world in the future with the climate.

Governor Schwarzenegger has been a true champion of our hydrogen future. I was here a year ago and we cut a ribbon and opened this cutting-edge hydrogen station. The grand opening made a splash all over the world. Why? Because the world has been waiting for this. We can no longer depend on oil, be it the economic issues, be it the political issues and, most importantly, the climate issues, which are impacting all of us.

Fuel cell vehicles produce zero emissions and the only thing coming out of the tailpipe, as the Governor said, is a water vapor. The hydrogen at this station is generated using renewable electricity from LADWP, our power company, wind energy from the high desert that comes into the station via power lines. An electrolysis unit on the roof of the canopy produces hydrogen from the water, right there. A compressor pressurizes the hydrogen so it can power these vehicles.

We need more hydrogen fueling stations to build a robust fueling network that can support the vehicles of the future. This is a great partnership, as the Governor said. If you don’t have partners, you don't get anything going, be it the government, be it the private sector, be it right here at this station and Shell. This is a great partnership between government, encouraging innovation and clean technology and the private sector stepping up to the plate to deliver.

Climate change is here now. We must act to save our planet and hydrogen-powered vehicles will play a major role in our transportation future.

I now would like to introduce Eamonn Percy, who is the president of Powertech. (Applause)

EAMONN PERCY:

Well, good morning and thank you very much. We really appreciate the opportunity, on behalf of Powertech, to speak at this event and really strongly support the comments that were made earlier. British Columbia, like California, is a hydrogen and fuel cell leader. The BC Fuel Cell Sector has invested over $1 billion in both public and private funds and created over 1,800 high-tech jobs in the hydrogen and fuel cell area. And, like California, British Columbia recognizes the importance of hydrogen, of fuel cells, for the environment, for the economy and ultimately for the future of clean transportation.

As the Governor mentioned, in 2010 Vancouver will very proudly be hosting the Winter Olympic Games and I'd like to take this opportunity to invite everybody to come up to Vancouver, have a great time for the Winter Olympics in February of next year. During the Winter Olympics we're going to have a fleet of 20 fuel-cell buses built by California's own ISE Corporation that uses Ballard fuel cells and these buses are going to carry literally hundreds of thousands of people from Vancouver to Whistler during the 17 days of the games. So this will give people a first-hand, close-up and personal experience with zero-emission fuel-cell vehicles, give them an idea of how the technology has developed and what the speed and the performance and how quiet these vehicles are and they'll be just as amazed as we are with these vehicles in front of us here today.

The ties between California and British Columbia are strong. Together we've been working with Oregon and Washington to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by creating the Green Highway along the 1-5 area, linking the California hydrogen stations with the five Vancouver-area stations that already exist. These ties are absolutely instrumental in building the fuel cell and hydrogen clusters both here in California and in Canada.

Powertech's commitment to this technology is we are providing, a first for the hydrogen vehicles, we're using a mobile fueler that's going to boost the pressure into these vehicles with a portable compressor. And by storing more fuel on board these vehicles we're able to extend the range by up to 400 miles on a single fill and fill just in minutes. It's technology that's here today with Powertech and it will soon be deployed in California.

So Powertech is proud to be an organizer and participant in the Hydrogen Road Tour. We're proud to be a partner with California in this mission to give consumers a choice of clean, efficient transportation.

And I would like again to thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today and would like to introduce Steve Ellis from Honda. Thank you. (Applause)

STEPHEN ELLIS:

Thank you very much. Thank you, Governor, thank you the state of California, the California Air Resources Board, CAL/EPA, the resource agencies, the fuel cell partnership and certainly Shell Hydrogen for leadership with these hydrogen stations. These are critical for our customers and we could not be deploying vehicles if it wasn't for these stations that you're seeing developed today.

Honda is really glad to be part of this year's Hydrogen Road Tour. I think the Road Tour offers a tremendous demonstration of fuel cell electric vehicles and the significant advances that have been made in this technology over the last few years. The fact that we have these tremendous range capabilities of the vehicles and that we're leasing the cars to everyday consumers, I think is a great proof statement of how far we've come.

And this, I think, again shows the goal towards commercialization of this technology on a broader scale, so the state of California is definitely leading the way. We appreciate the Governor's leadership and the need for clusters of hydrogen stations in these communities that he spoke about. The hydrogen stations that will serve our customers, customers that today rely on this hydrogen station for their everyday refueling needs, everyday commuting in their vehicles, running their families around, just like they operated vehicles in the past.

With the recent funding announcement that just funded four hydrogen stations in California, again we're grateful that this will open the door to additional vehicles that we can deploy in Southern California. We will continue to lease to these customers and look forward to even more stations in the future as the Governor announced.

The fuel-cell cars, like the FCX Clarity here, can serve a valuable role to address the three important environmental challenges that California citizens seek today and that is:

·         To reduce our dependence on oil,

·         To cut smog emissions, and

·         To reduce CO2 emissions.

These vehicles strike at all three of those important societal goals.

So, on behalf of our customers that are so dependent on these stations and appreciate the ability to drive them on a daily basis, thank you to the Governor. We look forward to being an even bigger partner in this public-private partnership with the future of all of your environmental initiatives. Thank you very much. (Applause)

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:

Just before I go and take some questions, I just want to make sure that we also hear just a few words from Terry Tamminen, to come out here and who is my environmental hero and he has been so helpful, to help me with policies and to move in the right direction for California. So please welcome Terry Tamminen, a great, great man. (Applause)

TERRY TAMMINEN:

Thank you, Governor. I only want to add two things to what everyone else has already said.

First of all, in addition to continuing to be honored to advise you, Governor, as you know, I travel around the country and around the world speaking with other leaders about climate and energy policy and they're all copying California. That's the fact. As you mentioned, President Obama is doing the same and Congress doing the same.

But one of the questions I get asked all the time is, how do I get a hydrogen car, how do we build a hydrogen highway in our state or our country, as far away as Bahrain recently in the Middle East, China, India, as well as many states in our own country. So what California is doing is not only demonstrating what is possible but that this creates green jobs, jobs that are very important and sustainable for our long-term economic recovery.

The other thing I want to mention is just to compliment you on your incredible leadership and how what we've done with hydrogen is a great example for many of our other problems. When you authorized me, when I was secretary of California's EPA in 2004, to create the Hydrogen Highway and the Hydrogen Highway network, we put together 200 stakeholders from all walks of life, from the energy companies, the car companies, academics, government, private citizens. It took 200 of us to come up with the plan to break this chicken-or-the-egg problem. No one will build fueling stations if there are no vehicles, no one will build vehicles if there are no fueling stations. And so that 200-person -- and it's growing all the time -- stakeholder group continues to map out this Hydrogen Highway future and that's a great example, I think, of how we can solve many of our technological challenges in the future.

And finally, Governor, I just want to kind of say that, you know, you owe it to the hydrogen industry, because to be honest, before you became governor, you set back the cause by quite a few years. In the movie Terminator 3 you reached into your chest and you pulled out a hydrogen fuel cell and you threw it out the window and we saw a nuclear explosion. And I can't tell you how many people, when I talk about hydrogen, they say, "Well, didn't you see Terminator 3? Aren't you afraid of driving that car?"

So I think you're really just paying back your debt to this important industry and this important technology by being such a leader. Thank you. (Applause)

GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:

Thank you very much, Terry. But that was only to create a little bit of drama, because that's the only way you get attention. So, you know, that explosion was something that people talked about and now they are driving hydrogen-fueled vehicles. You see what happened? Just from Terminator 3. Think about it. I'm glad that I could take credit for that one.

QUESTION/ANSWER:

GOVERNOR:           Anyway, if there are any questions about any of this, please feel free to ask. Yes, please. We have a mic.

QUESTION:              Some of your critics have suggested that you're just using scare tactics on the budget when you're talking about tens of thousands of children from Healthy Families, families from CAL WORKS and then losing all the federal money that goes with that, billions of federal money. How do you respond to them and do you really need to cut those programs?

GOVERNOR:           Well, the only reason why we need to cut those programs, or to make any cuts, is because we only have a limited amount of money. As you know, our revenues dropped since last September by 27.5 percent, so that means that our revenues went from $104 billion all the way down to $76 billion. Those are now the revenues that we had when I came into office in 2003. And if you calculate in inflation, it takes us back to the revenue level of 1999.

So we have only a limited amount of money because of the drop in revenues and I think that the people in the last special election have made it very clear that we don't want to have revenue increases, no tax increases, live within your means. That's exactly what we have to do. So make ends meet and tighten your belt, so that's what we have to do.

Do I like it? It hurts me when I sit there at that table on the budget and we have our budget debates in our office. It is painful to know that the kind of programs that you cut that are absolutely essential to people. But when you don't have the money you can't promise something to people or do something that you can't afford. And as you know, that doing gimmicks, doing borrowing, all of those things, are out of the question because the people made that very clear. So we have to live within our means.

                                    Go ahead.

QUESTION:              You're losing about $5 billion in federal matching funds too, if you cut CalWORKS, you cut the Healthy Families.

GOVERNOR:           It's a very tough decision because the federal government puts such strict guidelines on how we have to spend the money and how much we can reduce our spending. So therefore we have to sometimes give up federal money so we can move forward and live within our means. So that's just the way it is. And it's like I said, it's painful but that's decisions that we have to make.

And it's also very important, as we go through this budget process, to urge everybody in Sacramento not to just take care of the budget this year and for the coming year but also to think about what will happen in the future. It doesn't make any sense to solve a budget problem today and knowingly have $20 billion of budget deficit again in two years from now. So we're got to really get in there now and try to live within our means and create a reality and not always live in a fantasy, to always talk about, you know, that we should be spending now $114 billion, when in fact we only have $76 billion.

QUESTION:              Governor, is hydrogen still worth doing when battery electric cars are coming on so strong?

GOVERNOR:           Well, I think that the hydrogen cars are coming on very strong, as you can see with this fleet here today. I haven't seen that many electric cars as I've seen hydrogen cars. So I think that -- but you know, we don't want to push one over the other. The key thing is and what I said earlier, we want electric cars, we want the batteries to develop and to eventually have small batteries that will last forever and those kinds of things. So it's great to develop that technology and to develop biofuels, to develop hybrid cars. All of those things we welcome.

The great thing is, no matter what it is, we are the capital of those alternative-fuel vehicles and that's why the car manufacturers have invested billions of dollars to develop hydrogen cars because they see that California -- which, by the way, purchases 20 percent of all the cars in the nation, just in California alone. So that just shows to you why the car companies are so interested in catering to us and also seeing that we are building the fueling stations and therefore they feel like OK, let's produce the cars and let's put them out there, because this is where the action is, is right here in California.

QUESTION:              (Inaudible)

GOVERNOR:           No. I mean, if I would be satisfied, I wouldn't be here. I'm hungry. I am hungry for more. Always, I am always dissatisfied with everything. I think that we have to do it faster, I think we have to do more of it. I think we need more hydrogen-fueled vehicles, we need more of everything. I think that the national government, I mean Washington, has to get with it to be an inspiration and to go and create incentives for those alternative fuel vehicles. I think -- you know, I'm never happy. It always has to be faster.

But I've learned one thing in this job, that you also have to have some patience, you know, because you can't just get it all your way, because there are so many people -- as you can see, there are so many partners that you have to rely on.

And I tell you one thing; I'm so proud of the people that are standing here with me here today, because they all are important players. I mean, if those car manufacturers wouldn’t have invested the billions of dollars, if Shell, for instance, who is known as an oil company but they want to participate and fight global warming. So that's terrific.

People years ago said you can't deal with the oil companies. I said, "That's not true. I think we just have to bring them in and make them part of the solution." And you know something? They want to be part of the solution. Every conversation I've ever had with them, they want to be part of the solution. We just talked about let's build as quickly as possible the hydrogen highway up to Alaska and I didn't get like, well, no, it's impossible. They said, "OK, let's get going." It was a positive answer right away. So that's what I like, you know?

                                    Yes, please.

QUESTION:              I just wanted to ask you what your reaction is to the Prop 8 opponents taking their case to the federal courts now?

GOVERNOR:           I think that, you know, people will be challenging those decisions again, like the initiative challenge, the original decision by the Supreme Court. So right now we will respect that opinion and we are going to enforce the law accordingly. Then they will take it to the federal court and there that decision may be overturned and then we will respect that law and enforce that law. So I think this whole thing will still take some time to really play it all out, until that's settled and done. And I cannot even tell you if it ever will be settled and done. But I think if you look at the past, I think you can see the writing on the wall in the future also and I think eventually this will be settled. OK?

                                    Yes?

QUESTION:              Governor, given the state budget situation, can you continue funding additional hydrogen stations? Will the budget be there? Will the money be there to continue this project?

GOVERNOR:           Well, let's assume for a second, because of the budget crunch, that it is not there. But we will find, through our public-private partnership, we will find people that will invest money in this and will build those hydrogen fueling stations. So it maybe will slow us down a little bit, because you're absolutely correct, we have a limited amount of money and we have to really pay attention to it and we have to make cuts in every area, if it is in hydrogen fueling stations or if it is in education or in health care or in prisons or in law enforcement. Everywhere we have to make cuts.

But we will find the partners and we will build those fueling stations, like I said. Our plan is to have seven more within the next year and to invest $40 million more in the next two years. So there is no stopping. And I think the key thing also for the car manufacturers to know is that we will never roll back, no matter how low the fossil fuel will become, we will never go backward, we will always march forward.

                                    So thank you very much, thank you for being here today. (Applause)

###

Got an e-mail from Terry Tamminen as follows:

"My only suggestion is that in the future, you make it clear that both
hydrogen and batteries are sources of power for electric cars. There is no
competition between electric cars and hydrogen cars - - only between
batteries and hydrogen as a fuel source."

Duly noted.

JW