Whoosh! Iceland’s Got a Hot Idea

With the patience of a visionary, Bragi Arnason has been talking up the power of
hydrogen power for more than 20 years. Now the energy elite is finally paying
attention.

by Ian Wylie
photographs by Baldur Bragason
from FC issue 39, page 50

As a world-class brand,
Iceland has been cool
for centuries. For 1,126
years, the inhabitants of
this small, geologically
hyperactive island
nation have been
refreshing and
reinventing their global
positioning — with nary
a marketing strategist
in sight.

Their glaciers and
volcanoes and
underground hot
springs ( Iceland: Land
of Fire and Ice! )
demand attention. Their
love of democracy (
Iceland: The First Republic! ) demands respect. Their boast of beating Christopher
Columbus to North America by five centuries ( Iceland: Nation of Explorers! ) demands
… well, a second look.

Now their latest revision — Iceland: The Hydrogen Economy! — is almost ready to ship.
As the first country to make a real effort to become free of fossil fuels, Iceland is now
poised to play pasha to the global explorers of renewable energy. Already, automakers
and oil giants are beating a path to the home of a ruddy-cheeked grandfather in a lab
coat. So it goes with breakthrough innovations: Sometimes the biggest ideas start in
the smallest settings.

Bragi Arnason — Professor Hydrogen to admirers, head of chemistry to students at the
University of Iceland’s Science Institute, in Reykjavik — has been preaching his
enviro-friendly, hydrogen-fueled gospel for more than 20 years. It will only be another 30
or so, he says, before hydrogen fuel cells will be powering all of Iceland’s cars, buses,
and fishing fleets. If Iceland is successful, it will cut greenhouse-gas emissions by a
third and become a leading exporter of hydrogen.

DaimlerChrysler, Norsk Hydro, and Shell International like the idea so much that they’ve
entered into a joint venture with Vistorka, an Icelandic consortium, to create the
Icelandic New Energy Co. Ltd. Oil supplies are, after all, dwindling, while demand for oil
continues to grow.

Iceland is an ideal test bed for hydrogen power. Two-thirds of the country’s energy
consumption already comes from clean, renewable hydroelectric and geothermal
energy — which, by using methods first pioneered by Professor Arnason in the 1970s,
can be harnessed to produce hydrogen for fuel cells in nonpolluting electric motors. But
the remaining one-third of Iceland’s energy comes from expensive fossil-fuel imports.
At the same time, the island’s metals industry, though powered by hydroelectric energy,
coughs up enough emissions to negate reductions racked up elsewhere. So there’s
plenty of motivation in Iceland to come up with some radical solutions.

Back in Detroit, Stuttgart, and Tokyo, there’s an emerging consensus that conventional
combustion engines are on their way out, and that they’re going to be replaced by
free-energy systems such as proton-exchange-membrane fuel cells, which generate
power by creating a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. Automobiles
fueled by hydrogen cells, which emit no exhaust fumes, are already being tested.

But in order for hydrogen to be a true, long-term, renewable alternative to fossil fuels ( it
runs more efficiently than gasoline, but it costs twice to three times as much to produce
), it will need to be produced with a clean, low-cost electricity source such as
hydroelectric power. Most oil-reliant countries simply don’t have access to vast amounts
of clean electricity. But Iceland does.

"For hydrogenauts, the Iceland experiment signals the intent of the more progressive
players to invest some real effort and come to grips with one of the major issues of the
21st century," says Peter Hoffmann, editor of the "Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter." And
Arnason, 65, is within reach of a dream. "When I wrote my first paper on hydrogen, in
1978, people said I was being stupid," he recalls. "But a visiting professor assured me
that my work was promising. He said that if my dream would make sense in the next
century, I should start building it now."

Contact Bragi Arnason by email ( [email protected] ).

Sidebar: Renew Your Energy Source

How does a country power its people? Here are some of the things that have put
Iceland on top of the world.

Invest in human resources.

Iceland ‘s average life span ( 78.9 ) ranks among the world’s top ten, and its population
of 278,000 boasts 100% literacy. It publishes more books per capita than any other
country, and Reykjavik was named European City of Culture 2000 by the European
Union’s culture ministers. Little wonder, then, that the island has such high retention
rates.

Break and reform.

Iceland is a valve for the world’s subterranean pressure, so its landscape has a habit of
cracking and mending as the planet flexes its muscles. Icelanders are accustomed to
seeing mountains rise in front of their eyes and to opening their curtains in the morning
to find a different horizon. So it’s no surprise that Icelanders don’t seem to mind making
seismic shifts of their own: They have embraced two major new energy sources — both
hydroelectric and geothermal — in the last half-century.

Think very long-term.

"It has always taken mankind about 50 years to change from one kind of fuel to another
— for example, from wood to coal, or from coal to oil," says Professor Bragi Arnason. "I
will see only the first steps of the hydrogen economy. But my children will see the
transformation, and my grandchildren will live in this new economy."

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/39/iceland.html