Late Great Engineers: Geoffrey Ballard - fuel cell visionary

Looking back from a time when it is taken as axiomatic that ‘disruptive’ technology can only be a force for good, it seems quaint that the central tenet of Geoffrey Ballard’s vision for powering the world’s car fleet with hydrogen was that it should not be disruptive. Referring to when the first cars were introduced, Ballard explained: “there were dire predictions that every horse and buggy driver would be out of a job. It was a complete social disruption. That’s what I’m working to avoid.” The trick, he told Scientific American magazine two decades ago, was to introduce hydrogen-based fuel cells in a way that didn’t disrupt the automobile market economy, while finding common ground between car manufacturers and environmental legislators.

At the turn of the millennium, the geophysicist who was to become one of Time magazine’s ‘Heroes for the Planet’ founded General Hydrogen. His ambition was to find the best way to make hydrogen a popular and accessible fuel. Author of Powering the Future: The Ballard Fuel Cell and the Race to Change the World Tom Koppel, referring to the hydrogen economy, wrote that Ballard “kick-started and expedited the movement.”