California is planning to invest millions to support the rollout of new hydrogen fueling stations. Pictured here is a station near Los Angeles Int’l Airport that was built by a partnership that included BP, Praxair and LAX.Courtesy Hydrogen Assn.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu may want to slam the brakes on future hydrogen funding, but California will continue to pay its own way down the Hydrogen Highway, infuriating electric vehicle advocates in particular.

Obama’s top energy official cut more than $100 million slated for hydrogen fuel-cell research from next year’s federal budget, arguing that in tough times, tough choices had to be made. His department will allocate nearly $800 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for advanced biofuels research and commercial-scale biorefinery projects, part of his area of expertise at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before he joined the Obama administration.

In California, however, state lawmakers and regulators are handing out more money for hydrogen projects. Shell Oil, for example, will receive nearly $2 million in state funds to help build a hydrogen pump at a gas station near a swank Newport Beach country club and high end shopping mall. The pump will service a few dozen cars. State officials and hydrogen backers say it is a small but key step forward in solving the nation’s energy and environmental woes. An additional $5 million in tax dollars will help build hydrogen fueling pumps near UCLA’s campus, San Francisco Airport, and at the foot of wealthy southern California coastal communities.

Despite the state’s massive budget woes, officials also approved another $120 million in alternative fuel expenditures, paid for with revenue generated from fees of about $10 recently tacked onto the costs of renewing a driver’s registration. Hydrogen and electric plug-in technologies will both fare well, getting an estimated $40 million and $46 million respectively from the state.

But electric vehicle advocates said even those expenditures prove their point: According to the California Energy Commission, it will cost $40 million to build 11 hydrogen fueling stations, compared to just $12 million cost to build 6,500 EV charging stations.

Critics of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R) much ballyhooed “Hydrogen Highway” program, unveiled in 2004, say the hydrogen funding is the latest outrage in a doomed and costly effort to convert drivers in the nation’s most populous state to a still unproven replacement for gasoline. California is reeling from a potential $20 billion budget shortfall, but critics say oil companies and car manufacturers will continue to be prime beneficiaries of costly, state-funded hydrogen boondoggles.

By contrast, Chu’s announcement left them dancing metaphorically on hydrogen’s grave.