Solar cells, hydrogen cars and wind-generated power expected to blossom in upcoming years

• Advocates of wind power, solar cells, and hydrogen vehicles promise that any day now, they'll blossom from science-fair projects into major businesses, competing squarely with the cars we drive today and the energy sources we use now.
• Jim Gordon was only going over to Walter Cronkite's house for coffee and muffins one morning in August 2003.
• But for Gordon, an entrepreneur trying to build America's first offshore wind farm, this was a high-stakes coffee klatch.
• The most trusted man in America had recorded a series of radio and TV ads for a group that opposed Gordon's project, and Gordon knew that it would be a tough slog to get the wind farm built with such a respected journalist serving as the public face of his foes.
• Gordon, who built and operated a handful of natural-gas-fired power plants around New England in the 1980s and 1990s, knew that he'd have to deal with opponents when he decided to try to build a wind farm in the middle of Nantucket Sound (between Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard, where Cronkite had a home).
• The odds are stacked against replacing an established technology such as the gas-powered internal combustion engine overnight.
• The 20 partnership members -- ranging from BP to Volkswagen to United Technologies to the U.S. Department of Energy to Hyundai -- conduct their own research and development.
• But they wanted to be able to share a single hydrogen fueling station so that they could make sure that it was designed to work with all of the vehicles, and vice versa.
• One Toyota staffer, Darryl Umale, puts the price of a prototype hydrogen- powered Highlander SUV into context by remarking, "You are looking at 20 Lamborghinis."