Harnessing hydrogen: Iceland’s vision of a clean, renewable and self-sufficient future

Date: 27/03/03

With the opening of Europe's first hydrogen station, Iceland is making the most of fuel cells, writes Karen Carstens

WITH no fossil fuels of its own, Iceland has always been heavily dependent on foreign oil to heat homes and fuel fleets of gas-guzzling fishing vessels.But that is about to change.

Next month, the island with the misty moonscapes will take a step in the direction of total energy self-sufficiency.

On 24 April, a date Icelanders have observed as the "first day of summer" since Norwegian Vikings first settled on the island in the ninth century, the first commercial hydrogen fuel station in Europe will be inaugurated.

Located on the outskirts of Reykjavik, the station will feature regular petrol pumps, a café and a car wash.

However, the main attraction will be a hydrogen fuel pump that will be used to power three buses operated by the capital city, built by DaimlerChrysler and partially funded by the European Union.

Virtually noiseless, the buses operate on hydrogen-powered fuel cells and emit only water vapour.

Both the hydrogen filling station and the buses form the centrepiece of the €7.8 million ECTOS (Ecological City Transport System) project. This is part of a bold mission to create "the world's first hydrogen economy", the motto of Icelandic New Energy (INE), the partly state-owned company that administers the pilot project.

The fuel station will produce its own hydrogen gas on-site, using tap water and electricity from the country's own hydroelectric and geothermal energy sources. The European Commission has contributed €2.8 million, with the remaining costs shared between INE shareholders, which include Norsk Hydro, Shell Hydrogen and DaimlerChrysler.

The multinationals began backing Iceland's plan to spend tens of millions of euro in the late 1990s to create the first societal "lab test" of a hydrogen economy.

"Hydrogen is a democracy fuel," said María Hildur Maack, environmental manager for INE.

"The government and the people are really behind this project."

Iceland's huge reserves of natural geothermal energy are unrivalled in Europe, so it seemed only natural to harness the power of its active volcanoes, raging rivers and gushing geysers to begin producing pure hydrogen on a massive scale. Essentially, the island's volcanic power can be used to split the "H" from H20. This idea occurred to Bragi Arnason - also know as the nation's "Professor Hydrogen" - in the 1970s.

"I will see the first steps," he told Newsweek last year. "My children will watch the whole transformation. My grandchildren, they will live with this new energy economy."

Iceland's government is aiming for total "hydrogenisation" by 2050.

Some dream of eventually exporting the hydrogen to create a booming industry: Arnason has even inspired his countrymen to imagine Iceland as the "Kuwait of the North".

But the technology to transport hydrogen, which is highly flammable, is still in an embryonic phase. For INE's Maack, export is not the key priority at this juncture anyway.

"We are a fishing nation," she said. "So most of the (C02 and other fossil fuel) emissions in Iceland come from boats - that's the area we have to tackle next."

As with cars and buses, the fishing trawlers' gasoline combustion engines are to be gradually replaced by electric motors that run on hydrogen-fuel cells.

Maack said an application for more EU funding for research to convert the boats has been forwarded to the European Commission for consideration.

"We will continue to finance those proposals that are of good quality," said Eric Ponthieu, a scientific officer responsible for ECTOS in the Commission's research directorate.

"The Commission is definitely interested in following up on this," he said, adding that there is no reason why the funds will stop flowing from Brussels to non-EU member Iceland once ECTOS comes to an end in 2005.

"This might be the seed of good practice in the hydrogen sector in Europe," Ponthieu said.

"We are very pleased and delighted with the project and know that we can continue to rely on a government which is very committed to hydrogen technology."

Moreover, he said, Reykjavik is the perfect place for the ECTOS experiment because more than 70% of its primary energy sources already come from renewables, meaning that hydrogen can easily be locally produced in a "closed cycle".

"What we have hoped to do with this is to kick off something new," he said. "Three buses may not seem like much, but clearly you have to start somewhere."

And, while the buses only make up 4% of Reykjavik's total fleet, there will definitely be more to come.

The first commercial hydrogen fuel station in Europe will be inaugurated in Iceland on 24 April 2003.