New partnership focuses on next generation of automobile power

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- With a growing stake in automobiles and the research to make them run cleaner and cheaper, the South isn't taking sides in the ethanol vs. hydrogen fuel cells debate.

The future of fuel dominated the agenda at a meeting last week that signaled a new automotive power partnership between South Carolina and the Tennessee Valley Corridor, an economic development initiative for Tennessee, north Alabama, southern Kentucky, and southwest Virginia.

Speaking alongside promoters of hydrogen and fuel cell research and a top BMW engineer who described models already using some hydrogen power, University of Tennessee president John Petersen made a pitch for plans to grow switchgrass as a replacement for gasoline.

No one booed. Although the approaches to alternative fuels differ, the theme of the Monday meeting was working together instead of competing.

The Tennessee Valley Corridor automotive sessions were hosted by the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. The still unfinished campus, in the same region as a BMW Manufacturing Co. plant at Greer, already offers master's and doctorate programs in automotive engineering.

U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., said he wants to see "plenty of collaboration between the Savannah River National Lab and the Oak Ridge National Lab."

Making grassoline

Other members of Congress from Tennessee and South Carolina detailed efforts to get federal dollars for the region's varying research interests in the hunt for alternatives to fossil fuels.

Petersen described the university's role in developing a $40 million pilot plant for making cellulosic ethanol -- grassoline -- from switchgrass by the summer of 2009.

Proponents maintain the venture could eventually create 4,000 jobs in rural communities, generate $100 million in new farm revenue and help switchgrass supplant corn as the best and cheapest source for the ethanol industry.

"Tennessee happens to be an ideal climate for switchgrass," Petersen said.

A Joint Institute for Biological Sciences at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that will research new processes for processing switchgrass is also planned.

Tom Baloga, BMW of North America's vice president of engineering in the United States, predicted that some balance between hydrogen and batteries will replace gasoline.

"We think the answer is hydrogen," Baloga said.

The technology combines hydrogen with oxygen in the vehicle's fuel-cell stack, and energy from the reaction is converted into electricity that powers the vehicle. The vehicle's only emission is water.

The South's appeal to automakers

South Carolina lawmakers this year pledged $15 million to lure companies involved in hydrogen fuel research to the state.

Shannon Baxter-Clemmons, director of the South Carolina Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Alliance, said the Center for Hydrogen Research in Aiken County, affiliated with the Savannah River National Laboratory, was financed partly by the community.

"They are excited about hydrogen and fuel cells," Baxter-Clemmons said. "There are second- and third-graders telling me what a fuel cell is."

In recent decades, Japanese, German and Korean automakers have built assembly plants across the South and in stark contrast to Detroit, employees at those plants have not unionized. Nissan North America Inc. last year moved its corporate headquarters from California to Tennessee, where it is finishing construction on a building in the Nashville suburb of Franklin.

Clemson University president James F. Barker said statistics from the South Carolina Department of Commerce show that nearly one in six of the state's manufacturing workers is employed by an automotive company.

Peter Brown, associate publisher and editorial director of Automotive News, told the meeting that "the American South is a place on the way up in the automotive world," and fuel economy is the industry's overriding issue.

Brown warned that the South's appeal to automakers could be temporary.

He said the region's ascent "is in large part due to the absence of the UAW (United Auto Workers)" and lower costs could eventually take the jobs to Mexico, China and India.