Power drive gathers steam

It looks much like any other filling station: Shell-branded petrol pumps lined up before a brightly lit convenience store on the shoulder of a busy highway.

But this is the hub of one of Iceland's most ambitious projects, an obligatory stop for visiting foreign dignitaries that offers a glimpse of what might be the future of human transportation.

This is no ordinary Shell station. Just to one side, where you might expect to find diesel pumps, stands the world's first commercial hydrogen fuelling station.

Pull up in your hydrogen-powered car, swipe your credit card, attach the pump fixture and in five minutes you will be back on the road, your tank full of emissions-free fuel produced right at the filling station from water and sustainably generated electricity.

“It's a completely green car, with only water coming out of the tailpipe,'' says Jon Bjorn Skulason, general manager of Icelandic New Energy, who drives one of the city's 14 hydrogen-fuelled vehicles.

“If we complete our plans, we will be a zero-emissions society. We would not have to import fuel from foreign sources and we would be 100 per cent sustainable, which must be the true future of the world.''

While many countries talk about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sustainable energy, Iceland is committed to weaning itself off fossil fuels altogether by the middle of the century.

Instead of importing oil to power its cars and fishing vessels, this remote island nation of 300,000 plans to power them like everything else here: with electricity from hydroelectric and geothermal plants.

The idea is to use electricity generated by geothermal (steam) and hydro plants to power cars.

While plug-in electric cars might be sensible for commuters, fishermen, long-distance travellers and aircraft pilots have power and range requirements that can't be practically served by battery storage alone, says Bragi Arnason, the University of Iceland chemist who first conceived Iceland's “hydrogen experiment''.

“Most experts agree that hydrogen is candidate fuel No. 1 because it's the cheapest and easiest to make,'' Arnason says.

Critics, however, say this entire approach is illogical. “If you have renewable electricity, why would you throw away some of that making hydrogen, buy an expensive tank to store it and put it in a vehicle just to make it into electricity again?'' asks Joseph Romm of the Centre for American Progress in Washington, author of The Hype About Hydrogen.

Standing on the deck of the fuel cell-equipped whale-watching vessel Elding, mechanical engineer Hallmar Halldors disagrees.

“You just don't get the range with batteries and you could never use them for fishing vessels,'' he says, noting that the latter are out at sea for weeks at a time.

The Elding's captain, Vignir Sigursveinsson, uses his vessel's fuel cells to power the ship's electrical system, allowing him to shut down the diesel engines altogether while observing whales.

“It's totally silent,'' he says. “Now when we stop the engines, we really realise how loud the old generator was.''

The system has received coast guard certification and the Elding's customers — many of them British tourists — haven't expressed concern with having hydrogen on board.

Its only waste product is steam, which Sigursveinsson would like to harness to make cappuccinos. “It's technically possible,'' Halldors notes with a smile, “but the safety certifiers are very cautious.''

Switching the country to hydrogen will be a long process, says Professor Arnason, who has been advocating the move since the oil shocks of the 1970s.

“If you look back in history, every change from one type of energy to another — wood to coal, coal to oil — it always takes 50 years,'' he says.

“I will only see the first steps but when my grandchildren are grown, I am sure we will have this new economy.''