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Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2000
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Running On Thin Air
Iceland is making its dream of a hydrogen economy come true
By HELEN GIBSON Reykjavik
Iceland has a dream: it wants to do away with all fossil fuels over the next three to four decades and become the world's first clean, green, hydrogen-powered economy. It's not such an impossible dream, either.
Some of the world's big players on the energy scene certainly take it seriously. Shell, automaker DaimlerChrysler and Norway's hydroelectric company Norsk Hydro have all become partners in Icelandic New Energy, a joint project with a consortium of Icelandic companies that aims to make this hydrogen revolution a reality.
By the end of 2002, three state-of-the-art DaimlerChrysler buses with hydrogen-powered fuel cells will start plying the streets of the capital, Reykjavik, with refueling available from a Shell service station. The vehicles will be quiet but above all clean — fuel cells produce electricity by electrochemically mixing hydrogen and oxygen; the only waste product is water vapor. The plan is to gradually switch the nation's 180,000 vehicles — first buses, then cars, followed by its 2,500 fishing vessels — to hydrogen power. "We believe hydrogen has a great future as a fuel for transportation," says Don Huberts, CEO of Amsterdam-based Shell Hydrogen, which was formed last year. "And Iceland is an ideal place to test and bring this new fuel to the market."
For one thing, Iceland is well ahead of the energy game already. The country's transport and fishing fleet still depend on fossil fuels, but an impressive two-thirds of Iceland's energy consumption is derived from renewable sources, of which vast amounts remain untapped: 90% of Iceland's buildings are heated with just 2% of the country's geothermal energy while only a quarter of the available hydroelectric power is harnessed. Hydrogen can thus be generated cheaply and greenly by electrolyzing water, using all that surplus geothermal and hydroelectricity.
These enviable energy resources — coupled with Iceland's small population, its relatively small economy and an island geography that isolates its vehicles to within its shores — makes it a more easily monitored and manageable candidate for conversion than most places. "Three buses in Reyjavik represents 5% of the city fleet. You are going to get real- scale projects without spending too much money," says Jón Björn Skúlason, general manager of Icelandic New Energy.
The icing on the cake, as far as the foreign players are concerned, is the Icelandic government's official endorsement of the hydrogen project. When esoteric international hydrogen conferences are convened, Iceland sends its cabinet ministers. No other government, apart from California's state government, which is also pushing hydrogen as a fuel, has gone so far, and only Iceland has committed itself to a fully hydrogen society. Says Johannes Ebner of DaimlerChrysler's fuel cell project, "It's easier to plan for the future with such assurances from the government."
The government's enthusiasm is not hard to understand. Iceland's hydrogen society will not only help save the planet but also precious foreign exchange spent on imported hydrocarbons. As a pioneer, too, Iceland stands to be uniquely placed to export its hydrogen and hydrogen expertise to the rest of the world — a tantalizing vision for a country on the Arctic Circle, which can sometimes feel forgotten. Last but not least, Iceland does have a pollution problem itself despite its exemplary use of renewables. Its transport sector and its fishing fleet, together with an expanding metal smelting industry that belches out great quantities of carbon dioxide, make the country (pop. 270,000) one of the world's top per capita emitters of the greenhouse gas. In fact, Iceland has not yet signed the Kyoto Protocol.
The obstacles to overcome in this new technology are the high cost of the fuel cell vehicles — at around $1.1 million, the DaimlerChrysler bus is four to five times the price of a conventional diesel vehicle — and the ability to carry enough hydrogen, liquefied or compressed, to offer the driving distances conventional vehicles achieve between refueling stops.
Skúlason, however, has no doubts that the hydrogen age is coming. "Fossil fuels are only 100 years old, they may last another 50 and then it could be the turn of hydrogen for 150 years after that," he says. As a leader of a world energy revolution Iceland would then be hard to ignore, even if it does sit up there on the Arctic Circle.
Check out timeeurope.com for more Fast Forward Europe stories in the days and weeks to come. Our Fast Forward coverage culminates in a year-end special issue and website to be published on December 14
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