Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced $200 million in federal funding for British Columbia Tuesday to help reduce greenhouse gases and support clean energy technologies.

The funding is part of the Harper government's $1.5-billion Canada EcoTrust environmental package, a fund that allows each province and territory to develop their own technology, energy efficiency and other pollution-fighting projects.

Harper and Environment Minister John Baird joined B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell at the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Canada headquarters at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver to announce the funding.

The money will go to environmental projects such as a "hydrogen highway" of recharging stations for fuel cells, which the prime minister called the "dominant form of energy in the future," as well as the extraction of energy from wood waste and providing clean electricity to rural areas currently supplied by diesel.

"What is clear is that the only way that we're going to make substantial reductions in emissions over time is through the adaptation and commercialization of new technology," Harper said. 

"This is obviously one of the most promising new technologies and it just helps that it's centered here in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia."

B.C. to set example: premier

Campbell said his goal was to set a "West Coast example" for the rest of the world by achieving a hydrogen highway stretching from Vancouver to Southern California by 2010.

"It will be just like getting in a car with hydrogen behind you," he said.

But Campbell also acknowledged the high costs of hydrogen technology and the unlikelihood that hydrogen-fuelled cars will be part of the mass market by the year Vancouver and Whistler host the Winter Olympics.

"Our goal is to make that technology more affordable in the future," he told reporters.

The B.C. announcement follows earlier funding allotments to Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, totalling more than $1 billion.

The prime minister dismissed questions about whether the recent funding announcements were merely repackaged environmental projects previously dropped by the Tories from their last federal budget.

Security officials wrestled protester to ground

The announcement was delayed as several security officials wrestled a screaming protester to the ground and carried him to an awaiting police car. It was unclear what message the protester was trying to deliver.

The Tories' recently announced environment strategy has irked the environmental group Ecotrust Canada, which is angry that the federal program has almost exactly the same name.

"They're actually in contravention of a trademark law of passing themselves as us," Ecotrust Canada president Ian Gill told CBC News Tuesday.

"We've spent 12 years building our brand name. We're very proud of our name and we actually want it back."