The EU and the US agreed on Monday to pool their research efforts into hydrogen fuel cells, despite their widely differing views on what the technology will mean for energy policy.
While the EU views the fuel cells as a way to harness renewable power sources like solar or wind energy, the US is focusing on ways to use it along with fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
"This agreement lays out the framework for our two entities to collaborate on a matter important to both the US and the European Union: hydrogen research," said the US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham at a meeting on Monday with his European counterparts in Brussels.
Abraham said other countries would be invited to join the effort agreement later on.
"The United States is looking forward to working together on a broad international basis, including countries such as Japan," he said.
But critics said the EU was allowing its plans for hydrogen to be hijacked by the fossil-fuel-friendly Bush administration.
Eight months ago, European Commission President Romano Prodi laid out a vision for Europe's energy future once hydrogen had been harnessed as a practical energy source through the use of fuel cells.
Central to that vision was a reversing of the electricity grid, with many homes and businesses producing more energy than they use and piping the surplus through the grid to be sold elsewhere. But that component was not evident in the agreement on Monday.
"It's a glaring omission from the European plan," said Jeremy Rifkin, author of a book called The Hydrogen Economy and an adviser to Prodi.
Still, he said, Europe's approach to hydrogen is more enlightened than the approach being pursued by the US.
Although the US is spending far more on hydrogen research than Europe, Rifkin and others say that much of the money is being channeled to producers of fossil and nuclear energy.
European Commissioner for Energy Loyola de Palacio denied that the union's vision for a hydrogen-powered economy had been co-opted.
"We can cooperate in the interests of the whole world," de Palacio said.
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