This presentation will describe the methods of outreach used by the New Jersey Hydrogen Learning Center and discuss the results and lessons learned from its first year of activities. The Center focused on outreach to four specific groups: private companies, policymakers, educators and students, and the general public. Since New Jersey is a state that is at the beginnings of establishing its own hydrogen and fuel cell policy, the Center provides a unique perspective on building a stakeholder network to inform and develop state policy in the hydrogen and fuel cells arena. The results and lessons learned here are applicable to any state or set of stakeholders looking to further outreach in their communities.

The New Jersey Hydrogen Learning Center was launched in September 2004 and recently completed its first year of operations. The Center provided opportunities for hands-on demonstrations, tours of facilities and other education and outreach activities to enhance public knowledge in hydrogen and fuel cells. In addition, a hydrogen portal website at www.njhydrogen.org was established to provide general information on hydrogen and fuel cells and information targeted to policymakers.

The NJ Hydrogen Learning Center is a distributed center comprised of colleges and universities within the state that have fuel cell facilities on their campuses. The university partners of the Center have joined together to develop hydrogen and fuel cell educational modules and host networking meetings. The center has incorporated university based demonstration sites into its activities to maximize the ability for students and other stakeholders to obtain hands-on learning experiences at facilities close to their communities.

The NJ Hydrogen Learning Center has endeavored to facilitate collaboration and networking among hydrogen and fuel cell stakeholders. Targeting private and public stakeholders, quarterly networking meetings hosted at various university member sites were held to enhance and increase discussion among companies, policymakers, educators and students.

In addition to these activities, the NJ Hydrogen Learning Center sponsored a training course for planning, zoning and code officials on key hydrogen and fuel cell building, fire and other safety codes. This popular course enrolled over 200 officials over 3 courses throughout the year. For each of these activities results were documented and findings were identified for lessons learned and areas of improvement in the Center's education and outreach mission. Most notable were the surveys given to students before and after participating in one of the educational modules. These surveys tracked the level of understanding about hydrogen as a fuel and fuel cell technologies and the effectiveness of the modules in improving their knowledge and opinions.

The NJ Hydrogen Learning Center is funded by a grant from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and is administered by the Center for Energy, Economic & Environmental Policy within the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.