Costa Rican physicist, mechanical engineer and former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang Díaz stated during the I International Hydrogen Forum that took place in Costa Rica this Monday that he wants the country to give hydrogen technologies an opportunity as a tool to transform the transportation sector in one with less contamination.

“We don’t want Costa Rica to close the doors to this technology. We are not saying this is the solution nor that this is the only solution. The solution is a mix (of technologies), there is a niche for batteries and a niche for hydrogen”, explained Chang in an interview with EFE.

Chang has stated in the past that Costa Rica has enough energy to generate its own fuel internally and satisfy the demand without the need to buy petroleum, and through the company Ad Astra Rocket which he directs, he has been working on achieving this through the use of hydrogen, batteries and the combination of both.
“What’s important is that Costa Rica doesn’t close the doors to hydrogen prematurely due to the opinion of pseudo-experts”.

“When we talk about costs we have to include the cost of public health. If is said (that the development of hydrogen technologies) is expensive compared to a diesel engine, it must be compared to the cost of air pollution and the effects in public health”, stated Chang.

“Hydrogen is a way to store the clean energy we have. Costa Rica has large quantities of clean energy sources that have not yet been exploited. The solar and wind energies are intermittent, and a lot of this energy is wasted because we cannot store it. Hydrogen will solve this problem”, highlighted the scientist.

About one year ago the first fuel cell hydrogen electric bus in Central America arrived in Costa Rica.