Hydrogen car fueling hope for green future

Colorado’s only commercial hydrogen-powered car made an appearance at an exhibition of “green” vehicles that drew about 100 windowshoppers to the state Capitol on Sunday afternoon.

As a precursor to the Denver Auto Show, dealers and a few car owners parked 25 alternativefuel vehicles in a semicircle around the front of the Capitol as a symbol, some said, of where the industry is heading in Colorado.

Vince Olech of Centennial took his soft-coated wheaten terrier, Kobe, to the Capitol to look at newcars for the first time since he bought his last vehicle in 1998. For Olech, promising economic conditions and increasingly trustworthy alternative-fuel technologies means it’s the right time to invest. Olech, supervisor of a heating and air-conditioning business, said he anticipates an exciting boom soon in clean-energy vehicles.

“In my line of business, we’ve gone from 60 percent-efficient equipment to 98 percent-efficient equipment, and it’s going to happen with the car,” Olech said. “I can feel it coming.”

Andrew Bermingham was early to embrace alternative fuels. In 2013 he accepted a year-long lease on one of just 100 available Mercedes-Benz F-Cell hydrogen fuel cell cars— the only hydrogen-powered vehicle in Colorado outside of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, he said.

Bermingham— CEO of the clean-energy company he’s worked at since 1990, Montreux Energy— said technology and society are pushing the industry toward emission-free vehicles.

“I’ve heard the oil companies talking to the auto companies to the utility companies about hydrogen for a long, long time,” Bermingham said, standing next to his mint-green, four-door car. “Hydrogen hadn’t been ready yet.”

The vehicles mix hydrogen, which is 14 times lighter than air, with atmospheric oxygen. That cocktail creates water molecules and, in the process, electricity, which powers the car.

Hydrogen cars emit water and nothing else. Bermingham said the element makes up at least 75 percent of the universe.

“Hydrogen is all around us, so why not use it?” Bermingham said. His car will be on display at the Denver Auto Show fromWednesday through Sunday.