ICELAND: First hydrogen filling station opens to public in Iceland as part of plan to replace fossil fuels

Record ID: 1519010

  • Title: ICELAND: First hydrogen filling station opens to public in Iceland as part of plan to replace fossil fuels
  • Date: 30th November 2007
  • Summary: (EU) REYKJAVIK, ICELAND (FILE) (REUTERS) HYDROGEN CAR LEAVING FILLING STATION
  • Embargoed: 15th December 2007 09:05
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iceland
  • Country: Iceland
  • Topics: Energy
  • Reuters ID: LVAS06IQ47YQW2VS0OG323SGLB5
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: Iceland is a country where natural energy is bountiful and which has been successfully harnessing it for some time. Almost all of the country's electricity comes from hydroelectric power and geothermal power sources.
    But now Iceland wants to take it one step futher, establishing itself as the world's first hydrogen economy - energy self-sufficient and clean. The country's geothermal and hydroelectric power sources allow hydrogen to be produced without pollution and Iceland aims to become independent of fossil fuels by mid-century.
    One of the first steps towards that goal was taken in Reykjavik on Wednesday (November 28) when the first hydrogen filling station opened up to private cars.
    It is part of a pilot project conceived by Icelandic New Energy, a company backed by the government, academics and private firms, that aims to have up to 40 hydrogen cars on the roads of the capital by the end of 2009.
    The filling station, the first in the world, opened four years ago to serve buses and the plan is eventually to replace the capital's whole bus fleet with cell buses, which will be produced in Iceland, using clean energy.

    "We have already tested buses in Iceland for three years and now we have normal vehicles on the streets and by having Hertz as one of the participants with the vehicle, the public has access to the hydrogen vehicles," Jon Bjorn Skulason, general manager of Icelandic New Energy said.
    Skulason said the future for hydrogen cars was bright and that many car manufacturers were looking to produce hydrogen cars in the near future. He said Daimler and General Motors were talking about serial production after 2012 and Iceland was ready and waiting.

    "We have an abundant source of renewable power, both geo-thermal and hydro power, so we can start implementing hydrogen technologies faster than most of the other world," he said.

    "However, we need to follow what is happening in the rest of the world. We are waiting more or less for the car manufacturers to introduce the vehicles, we need the infrastructure companies to participate and make hydrogen more readily available with more filling stations and then following that we can introduce hydrogen to the normal public," he added.
    The filling station will be available to power 10 new Toyota Prius hydrogen cars that VISTORKA, a shareholder in Icelandic New Energy, delivered to three Icelandic companies on Wednesday.
    Three of those 10 went to Hertz car rental, which will offer tourists to Reykjavik the chance to rent and drive hydrogen cars for the first time.
    VISTORKA is owned by a consortium of Icelandic corporations.
    All the hydrogen projects are a part of a bigger plan.
    Professor Bragi Arnason of the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, pioneered the "hydrogen society" concept, earning the nickname "Professor Hydrogen".
    Before it became fashionable, he put forward the idea of basing the whole country's economy on hydrogen, produced locally.
    At the time many thought he was mad, but once big corporations started to take an interest in the idea and the threat of global warming became evident, things started to change and now it's a project taken very seriously indeed. It has become official government policy.
    Arnason sees hydrogen as the only way forward:
    "Now we're in the middle of a fossil era and now we'll be forced to rapidly increase using any kind of renewable energy sources and maybe at the end of this century most of energy consumed in the world will come from renewables.Then the human kind has found its way back to the solar energy civilization," he said.
    To make hydrogen, water and electricity is needed. The inability to produce hydrogen without causing pollution has so far been a major stumbling block in the quest to make it a viable alternative energy source.
    But since Iceland can produce electricity cheaply and cleanly, it hopes it will give it a head start and allowing it not only provide enough clean electricity to make hydrogen for its own consumption, but also have enough for export.
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