Iceland leads hydrogen way

2003-05-07 09:38

Reykjavik - The Japanese are working on it, the Americans too, but the island nation of Iceland may be the one to watch when it comes to developing the world's first hydrogen economy.

In the coming weeks, the country will begin operating a small fleet of hydrogen-powered buses that rely on renewable sources of energy instead of fossil fuels.

The buses will tap the hydroelectric and geothermal sources of energy that already provide 72 percent of this North Atlantic island nation's total energy needs.

"Energy independence is the key issue," said Jon Bjorn Skulason, managing director of Icelandic New Energy, (INE), the consortium overseeing the pilot project.

There are already a number of hydrogen pumps operating in Europe, Japan and North America, but they serve up hydrogen generated from reforming conventional fossil fuels, such as natural gas or petroleum.

In Iceland, the buses will run off hydrogen electrolysed from water - either rainfall or the island's various natural springs or water resources.

At the moment, the nation's first dedicated hydrogen refuelling station on the coast road near downtown Reykjavik is sitting idle, but in the coming weeks the first of three new city buses designed to run on hydrogen will be delivered to INE.

When they go into operation, they will replace a full four-percent of the island's mass transit fleet.

The buses are equipped with fuel cell stacks, which combine hydrogen with oxygen from the air, creating water vapour and electricity - in this case, 250 kilowatts of current that allows the Citaro buses to perform much like a conventional diesel bus.

Questions to be answered

There are plenty of questions to be answered, the issue of public acceptance for one. Eventually, at least 30 hydrogen-powered Citaro buses will go into operation across Europe as part of the EU-sponsored Ecological City Transport System, or Ectos, project.

In the Netherlands, urban bus drivers have balked at switching to the prototype vehicles, citing a variety of safety fears, some experts dub the "Hindenburg Syndrome".

That's a reference to the Nazi zeppelin that burned spectacularly following an explosion that was incorrectly blamed on the hydrogen gas used to keep it afloat.

So far, Icelanders have been a bit more accepting, one reason the country is taking a lead role in Ectos.

To help Icelandic citizens feel comfortable with hydrogen, the highly visible Reykjavik station was consciously located along a main route. But INE participants admit it would take only one accident to trigger deep concerns.

Then there's the question of how Fuel Cell Vehicles, or FCVs, match up to conventional vehicles in terms of range, performance, versatility and price.

The most critical of these is price and FCVs are likely to require sizeable subsidies initially.

On the US west coast in California, for example, Honda is leasing its fuel cell vehicles to the City of Los Angeles for $500 a month, only a small fraction of what it actually costs the automaker.

Automakers and energy companies are investing billions of dollars hoping to answer the myriad questions, but while there are now several dozen fuel cell buses and automobiles in operation around the world, most experts predict the first commercial fuel cell vehicles won't hit local showrooms before 2010.

- AFX