WISCASSET – Just a few miles from the site of Maine’s last foray into alternative energy – the now defunct Maine Yankee nuclear power plant – environmentalists spent Saturday debating cleaner, safer energy options for the 21st century.

With mounting evidence for global climate change as a present reality rather than a distant threat, reducing energy use and finding substitutions for fossil fuels are among the best means of protecting the planet from an unnatural climate shift, speakers at the Chewonki Foundation’s sustainable energy conference said.

“Why play dice with the planet?” asked Robert Kates, a professor emeritus at Brown University who has participated in state and international efforts to quantify climate change since his retirement to Trenton.

To that end, Chewonki is in the process of installing a fuel-cell system that uses well water and solar power to create hydrogen, which can fully power the environmental education group’s energy-efficient headquarters for four days.

Along with portable solar panels, turbines to harness the currents of a tidal river and household-scale windmills, hydrogen fuel cells were presented as technologies that likely will become part of our lives over the next generation.

“Even though we have fossil fuels to keep us going for a long time, we can choose a better way,” said Rick Smith of the Hydrogen Energy Center in Portland.

Since December 2002, America’s trade deficit has doubled, with nearly a third of that increase from importing fossil fuels. Last year America spent $180.7 billion on crude oil – not counting the defense spending required to keep sources secure, said Smith and his colleague Paul Faulstich.

The Chewonki Foundation, working in partnership with the Hydrogen Energy Center, has spent $140,000 in materials alone to install a hydrogen fuel cell system, which is expected to go on line this summer.

The system draws water from a well, then uses solar energy from photovoltaic panels on the roof and some power purchased from the electric grid (likely from a “green” power provider such as Maine Interfaith Power and Light) to run an electrolyzer, a machine that extracts hydrogen gas from the water.

The fuel cells used by Chewonki run the hydrogen through a membrane that allows passage of protons but not electrons, producing electricity and water. The three fuel cells, each about the size and shape of a microwave oven, can produce 3 megawatt-hours of power.

“Think of hydrogen as like a battery,” Faulstich said. “You use energy to create that hydrogen, just like you need to use energy to charge a battery.”

Someday, homeowners could install similar systems, using the hydrogen to fuel the family car, Smith said.

“Hydrogen will not take over our energy lives all at once,” he said, predicting that commercial vehicle fleets will make the transition first, followed by homes, cars, submarines, airplanes and, eventually, even the batteries in your cell phone or laptop.

“Bifuel” cars, offering drivers the opportunity to switch from hydrogen to gasoline, vehicles equipped to run on natural gas-hydrogen blend, and hydrogen-electric hybrids already are being produced experimentally. It’s just a matter of time before fuel costs decrease enough to make the technology feasible, Smith said.

Some scientists predict that hydrogen-powered vehicles will be available by 2020, said Faulstich. But to be accepted as a safe fuel, hydrogen has a reputation to overcome. Most people’s minds go directly to the doomed Hindenburg, a hydrogen-filled airship that crashed in Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937. But despite the 800-foot-tall flames, a relatively small number of people died, most as a result of leaping from the burning zeppelin, he said.

“Anything that can hold energy can release energy,” Faulstich said.

Working with Peter Arnold of Chewonki, he demonstrated hydrogen’s power by filling soap bubbles with hydrogen gas, then touching a flame to a mass of bubbles cupped in Arnold’s hands. Instantly, the bubbles disappeared with a loud pop and a small sphere of orange light, the heat and flame dissipating upward, leaving Arnold unharmed.

Hydrogen’s small, light atoms ensure that its flame will be tall and narrow. Tests have shown that in some instances – such as an auto accident – a tall, narrow flame is actually safer because the fire is less likely to spread, according to Faulstich.

Iceland has announced plans to produce hydrogen using its abundant geothermal resources and to become an energy exporter – the “Kuwait of hydrogen,” he said.

It’s just matter of time before the technology becomes cheap enough that the average American adopts Faulstich’s view.

“I’d love to install one in my house right now,” he said.

For more information, visit www.chewonkih2.org.