More Power To You

By Mark Halper

Robert K. Lifton, 75, is an unlikely front runner in the tech races. More than two decades ago, this career chameleon was making tracks of a different kind, helping produce Debby Boone's 1977 hit You Light Up My Life. Today he is trying to light up something else. His New York City--based company, Medis Technologies, is one of several World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers developing new ways to deliver clean electricity to homes and cars, not to mention mobile phones and digital cameras. "The market is huge," says Lifton, and he's not exaggerating: he wants to power up the world's billions of portable gadgets.

Electricity, like clean water, is a resource that's often taken for granted. But last summer, when blackouts struck much of the northeastern U.S., Ontario and Rome, consumers on two continents were given a painful reminder of just how fragile electricity supplies can be. The massive disruptions stranded commuters, defrosted freezers, shut down businesses and refocused attention on where most of the planet's power comes from: oil-and gas-fired generators and nuclear plants. These sources are not only plagued by creaky infrastructures, but they also pollute the environment and, many consumers feel, pose unacceptable health risks. Entrepreneurs like Lifton are trying to offer an alternative: clean energy from renewable resources that's plentiful--and portable. Lifton's Medis Technologies, as well as companies like Hydrogenics and Nanosys, is tapping into fuel cells and solar panels to give people power when and where they want it, free from dependence on local grids.

The search for alternative energy is nothing new, but the current crop of innovators is focusing on the long-elusive goal of making clean and sustainable power a mainstream commodity. For example, the fuel cell--which extracts electricity from the chemical reaction between oxygen and hydrogen--has been around for about 150 years, though its commercial deployment did not begin until the 1960s and then only as part of NASA spacecraft. Today this technology is coming down to Earth in places like Tokyo, where Japan's first hydrogen-fuel filling station opened in June; in nine European cities, from Stockholm to Porto, each operating three hydrogen-fuel-cell buses; and in Iceland, which is trying to create the first fossil-fuel-free hydrogen economy by 2030.

When hydrogen and oxygen molecules combine, the reaction produces heat and water. Fuel cells harness this reaction to generate electricity. With the cell-phone and gadget market in mind, Medis has developed a fuel cell with cheap components that generates little heat and effortlessly eliminates waste water without resorting to energy-gobbling pumps. One of the attractions of fuel cells is that they can be big enough to run a factory or small enough to fit under the hood of a car. Medis' innovation is a type of micro--fuel cell, a power source that's small enough to slip into your pocket. The Medis Power Pack--a portable, wire-free mobile-phone recharger slated to be in shops by the end of next year--will allow users to boot up their handsets whenever and wherever the need arises.

Phone fading fast at the football game? Just plug it into your Power Pack. About the size of a cigarette pack, the Power Pack will cost between $25 and $40 and last a year or more. The power comes from a disposable fuel cartridge that costs about a dollar and provides up to nine hours of phone use. Lifton sees enormous market potential, noting the 2 billion mobile phones estimated to be in use worldwide by 2007. New York--based market researchers Allied Business Intelligence predicts that by 2011 the market for micro--fuel cells will hit $2 billion to $3 billion; by 2013 the market for fuel cells--big and small--could reach $35 billion.

Hydrogenics, based in Mississauga, Ont., is also working to bring the fuel cell to market, though its products are big enough to power a car--or a tank. Hydrogenics and General Motors (which owns about a quarter of the Canadian firm) are developing for the Army a fuel-cell-diesel hybrid engine for a new generation of 30,000 light tactical vehicles, which are used for battlefield surveillance and missile targeting. The military likes fuel cells because they can help free a vehicle from dependence on vulnerable supply lines, cut fuel consumption 20% and generate enough hydrogen to be self-sufficient in electrical power for up to five hours with the engine turned off. Fuel cells are also quieter and cooler than traditional portable generators and therefore are harder for the enemy to detect. "Aside from the need for additional power, we occasionally need to go into what's called silent watch," says an Army official at the Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command in Warren, Mich., who requested anonymity. Fuel cells last longer than the batteries that currently support such operations. The devices can also provide soldiers with water, a much needed resource, especially for those stationed in desert conditions. The water vapor from the fuel cells can be recycled for human consumption.

And it's not just the military that's interested. General Motors' vice president of research and development, Larry Burns, says GM hopes to sell fuel-cell-powered cars by 2010. Deere & Co., the maker of farm and construction equipment, is working on a hydrogen-powered forklift. And the Canadian government has pulled Hydrogenics into a $6.1 million project to deliver a fuel-cell-powered transit bus to the streets of Winnipeg, Man., by March 2005. Hydrogenics co-founder Pierre Rivard says fuel cells probably won't go mainstream for another 5 to 15 years, but with GM's backing, the $128 million publicly traded company, which lost $20.6 million last year, can probably afford to wait that long.

What about that other long-promised alternative-energy source, solar power? Technology Pioneer Nanosys of Palo Alto, Calif., thinks solar's day in the sun has finally arrived. The firm is developing tiny photovoltaic cells that can be incorporated into the fabric of roofing materials to provide power to homes and other types of buildings. Nanosys is combining the science of solar cells with the science of nanotechnology, which manipulates items as small as an atom to do everything from switching electricity to storing data to sensing the movement of a bridge that is beginning to weaken. Thanks to this, Nanosys can already embed microscopic photovoltaic crystals into plastic sheeting. One prefabricated Nanosys roof could generate enough electricity to run all the appliances in a typical home, including the washing machine, the toaster, the PC and the entertainment center. Electricity generated during the day can be stored in batteries for use at night.

A single square meter of the solar-ready plastic will cost about $100 and last about 20 years, so a complete roof would cost a few thousand dollars. Nanosys' co-founder and head of business development, Stephen Empedocles, says that's a good investment, since the tiles will generate electricity at a cost of about 4-c- per kW-h, well below the 20-c- to $1 for traditional solar panels.

Empedocles doesn't expect his product to reach market until 2006. With $70 million in venture funding from Arch Ventures, Polaris and Lux Capital, along with multimillion-dollar U.S. government contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the 35-person company should make it. With persistence and that old variable, luck, firms like Medis, Hydrogenics and Nanosys could see a big payback for giving power to the people. The way Lifton sees it, that would be one happy song. --With reporting by Chris Daniels/Toronto, Unmesh Kher/New York and Chris Taylor/San Francisco

With reporting by Chris Daniels/Toronto, Unmesh Kher/New York and Chris Taylor/San Francisco