Geoffrey Ballard, 76; Developed Hydrogen Fuel Cells

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2008; B05

Geoffrey Ballard risked bankruptcy and his professional reputation to get the internal combustion engine off the streets and its smog out of the skies.

He knew alternative energy could work -- he had a doctorate in geophysics and had been the head of a federal energy conservation office in the early 1970s. Without outside backers, he cashed in his pension and, for $2,000, bought a run-down Arizona motel to use as a laboratory. He first tried to make a high-energy lithium battery, a research project that put him in bankruptcy.

Dr. Ballard, 76, who died Aug. 2 of complications from liver disease at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, B.C., eventually developed hydrogen fuel cells and, with them, built an emissions-free transit bus that stunned the transportation industry when it was introduced in 1993.

"My goal from the very beginning was replacing the internal combustion engine -- just getting that off the streets," he told Discover magazine in 2002.

Although that goal has not yet been achieved, and Dr. Ballard dubbed skeptics "piston-heads," his work accelerated the drive to replace fossil fuels. He became known as the father of fuel-cell industry. The magazines Discover and the Economist gave him their innovation awards in 2002 and 2003, and Time magazine named him one of its "Heroes for the Planet" in 1999.

One of his three sons told the Vancouver Sun that Dr. Ballard was a proponent of solar and nuclear power as well, but hydrogen offered the best and quickest prospect for upending the surface transportation world.

It seemed to be lucrative; the company he founded, Ballard Power Systems, sold its fuel-cell division to Daimler and Ford Motor earlier this year for a reported $96.6 million.

A small fleet of buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells now plies the streets of Hamburg, as well as streets in the United States, Japan and Singapore, discharging only water and water vapor.

Instead of burning fossil fuel, a vehicle powered by a fuel cell relies on a chemical reaction that isolates hydrogen, then combines it with oxygen to produce electricity.

The idea was not new. High school science students do the reverse when they use electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen. And the technology was used in the Gemini space program to supply electricity and drinking water, but it was expensive.

Dr. Ballard found a way to vastly increase the amount of power produced while also using a lighter, smaller and cheaper fuel cell.

He was born near a huge source of hydroelectric power, Niagara Falls, in Ontario, and he studied geological engineering at Queen's University in Ontario. He received a doctorate in earth and planetary sciences from Washington University in St. Louis in 1963.

Dr. Ballard worked first for Mobil Oil and the U.S. Army, specializing in microwave communications and studying how to hide bomber refueling tanks in Greenland.

During the energy crisis in the 1970s, he was appointed head of what was then known as the Federal Energy Conservation Research office. He soon quit, believing Congress was not serious about weaning the country from imported fuel.

He moved to Arizona and sank his own money into a laboratory, toiling away for seven years at creating a rechargeable super-battery for vehicles. Around this time, scientific colleagues were "embarrassed to be seen with me at professional symposia," he told Time magazine.

By 1979, he moved to Vancouver and formed a firm that went to work for the Canadian military, which wanted someone to research a proton-exchange-membrane fuel cell. In three years, Ballard team created the most powerful fuel cell of its size in the world.

A hydrogen-powered car began to seem feasible. Dr. Ballard raised a little more than $4 million and built a municipal bus powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

He took the bus to energy fairs around the world, and Daimler-Chrysler and Ford invested $750 million to buy a one-third stake in the newly public Ballard Power Systems. Dr. Ballard stepped down from active management in 1998.

A second company he started to encourage the development of the industry, General Hydrogen, was sold last year to Plug Power Inc. for $10 million. Dr. Ballard, who then retired, spent part of the year in Maui, Hawaii.

Survivors include his wife, Shelagh Ballard, and three sons.

Dr. Ballard, who did not like to make predictions, told Time in 1999 that the fuel-cell cars should become economical by 2010 and "the internal combustion engine will go the way of the horse. It will be a curiosity to my grandchildren."