Mr. Staples was the principal of Staples & Associates an environmental/marketing consulting firm with an emphasis on hydrogen energy technologies, and is founder of HyGen Industries.  The Clean Air Now Solar Hydrogen Vehicle Project was developed by Staples & Associates in early 1991.  Later that year he concluded it would be easier to raise the funding for this demonstration project with the tax advantages of implementation through a non-profit organization.  At that point Clean Air Now (CAN), an inactive non-profit a 501(c)(3) organization with an impressive pioneering history during the early days of the modern day environmental movement.  Mr. Staples reorganized the organization by recruiting a new board of directors, and the organization was reborn.  With this new board, he co-authored a new mission statement, which the group adopted; “to take a pro-active approach to solving this country's air pollution and energy problems through implementation of the renewable hydrogen economy”.

As President of the Board, Executive Director of Clean Air Now, and Project Director and General Manager of the CAN Solar Hydrogen Vehicle Project at Xerox from 1991 - 1996, he lead the effort, and built the team that brought the project together.  He also spearheaded an effort (with the invaluable support and leadership of the then SCAQMD Governing Board Member - Sabrina Schiller) to re-organize the AB2766 funding process, a legislation passed by the California State Assembly to provide funds through vehicle registration fees for public/private partnerships to fund pollution reduction projects.  The result of this effort is that AB2766 is now a more effective and fair program that funds projects that have the potential to develop and deploy technologies that will obtain significant air pollution abatement impact for the present and the future.

This set the stage for 1993 when he co-wrote and submitted two proposals to fund the CAN Solar Hydrogen Vehicle Project at Xerox.  One through AB2766, and one to the White House Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP).  The TRP was a federal public/private partnership-funding program developed by the White House for defense conversion.  Both proposals were funded and the CAN Solar Hydrogen Vehicle Project at Xerox in El Segundo, California, the world’s first commercially permitted solar hydrogen generating facility, became a reality, as well as the beginning of the renewable hydrogen economy.  With the same team (and a few new additions to the team), he embarked on an effort to bring these hydrogen technologies to the marketplace for transportation and general energy needs as Chairman/CEO of HyGen.

As Chairman and CEO of HyGen, Mr. Staples has, with the same team (and a few new additions to the team), embarked on an effort to bring these hydrogen technologies to the marketplace for transportation and general energy.  In this role he is responsible for developing for the City of Santa Monica’s Environmental and Public Works Department, their Hydrogen Vehicle and Fueling Infrastructure Program and Project, which lead to a 5 city 6 site funded program involving the additional cities of Burbank, Riverside, Santa Anna, & Ontario, as well as the SCAQMD Headquarters, which provided hydrogen fueling stations for each location fueling 30 hydrogen converted Toyota Prius Hybrids.

His educational background includes environmental science and engineering, media, marketing, advertising and public relations.  His professional experience includes over 20 years in those areas, as well as 2˝ years with Citizens For A Better Environment, a 501(c)(3) non-profit NGO.

Alexander Kolb, Director:

Mr. Rambach has developed optimization methods for design and operation of intermittent renewable energy systems where energy storage provides on-demand power, and his 5-kW wind-solar-hydrogen-fuel cell facility still operates at the University of Nevada, DRI in Reno. Mr. Rambach has worked as a research engineer at Stanford University and spent 20 years at the Livermore and Sandia National Labs.  Previously, Mr. Rambach served as Director of Engineering at Texaco Ovonic Fuel Cells, Director of New Technology at Tenneco Automotive. Most recently, Mr. Rambach completed R&D contracts supporting a nuclear company and a defense contractor in the areas of hydrogen economics, very large scale hydrogen production and transport, and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels.

Early in his career he led experimental research in the fundamentals of combustion at Stanford and the Sandia Combustion Research facility. Mr. Rambach has written numerous papers and given presentations on technical, policy and strategy issues for advanced energy devices, systems and marketing. He has two solid oxide fuel cell patents, is the inventor of a high-pressure cryogenic hydrogen fuel tank and is a co-developer of the first x-ray laser. Mr. Rambach received his BS in Aerospace Engineering from Cal Poly University and his MS in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University (Thesis on Fundamentals of Emulsified Diesel Fuels).