The statement points out many significant benefits to the environment and other areas, including the elimination of 80% of the emissions from light duty vehicles, according to studies by Japan, the European Union and the US.

The open letter is addressed to the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer, ahead of the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen. It emphasizes that renewable energy produced hydrogen provides an energy carrier that allows for storage of variable energy with electrical grids, helping to solve intermittent generation and upstream congestion challenges.

‘The significant investments by national governments and private companies around the world have resulted in rapid technology advancements recently compared to just a few years ago,’ says Terry Kimmel, Chairman of the Partnership for Advancing the Transition to Hydrogen (PATH).

‘And as recently as a couple months ago, several countries like Japan and Germany made large commitments to take advantage of these advancements by investing in hydrogen infrastructure, while the US continues to support technology development and deployment,’ Kimmel continues. ‘Each country around the world has something to gain from using hydrogen technologies and the global community will benefit from the resulting reduction of greenhouse gases.’

‘In addition to hydrogen’s ability to replace or more cleanly use carbon-based fuels, hydrogen technologies encourage the widespread use of renewable energy,’ adds Jeffrey Serfass, General Manager of PATH. ‘Hydrogen provides so many benefits and works cooperatively with such a wide variety of alternative energy technologies, no national government can afford to leave hydrogen out of its climate change plans.’