NWI Insights - The Iceland experiment - an oil-free energy society

This past week Up Close, an excellent news documentary programme on NWI, featured a look at a possible alternative energy source for the future. Major energy companies and various countries are already investigating fuels that could replace oil and gas when the finite resources come to an end. Iceland are leaders in this field and have already seriously begun changing their fuel types with significant inroads. The two-part documentary looks at the Iceland experiment and whether such techniques would be transportable to the US.

CBC's Diane Buckley reports on the situation in Iceland. Buckley explains that the Icelandic people have always been explorers and quick to embrace new technologies and ideas. Iceland is a country of 280,000 people with a grand plan for the future, she contends. In her discussions with the President of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, Buckley discovers that Iceland aims to be the first society to totally phase out oil and use hydrogen as an alternative energy source.

Construction of hydrogen service stations has already begun, explains Buckley and hydrogen powered buses are scheduled to be in use by the summer with cars to follow shortly afterwards. There have been a number of corporate sponsors of the project including Shell Oil and Daimler Chrysler and the hydrogen cell is to be built by Ballard a Canadian company, reports Buckley.

Buckley talks to Iceland's President about the scheme. President Grimsson asserts that Iceland is revolutionary in its ideas and that they are undertaking an experiment which if it succeeds will be a resounding success not only for Iceland but for other societies interested in such energy options. He hopes that Iceland can be a role model for others and that modern cities will be able to be planned using hydrogen. President Grimsson expands upon the Icelandic connection and close relationship with nature which stems somewhat from the dynamic geology of Iceland which undergoes constant geological change. This he asserts is further motivation to make the new technology viable.

The use of hydrogen as an energy source all began in the 1970s with Bragi Arnason, now known as 'Professor Hydrogen', reports Buckley. Arnason, a chemist by training, was originally interested in mapping Iceland's underground water system. Through his research he discovered that Iceland's underground water resources were much larger than initially thought and that the water bubbling away at 240 centigrade, was in fact a huge untapped potential energy source, explains Buckley. Arnason's idea was to utilize this energy through splitting water into its two component molecules, hydrogen and oxygen and thus creating a clean, alternative energy source.

This may seem a far-fetched idea, Buckley furthers, but Iceland have already achieved one major goal of completely changing the energy source for heating their homes. Instead of using oil or gas, Iceland developed a system where they could use the vast supplies of geothermal underground energy to create electricity to heat all the homes in Iceland's capital city Reykjavik. Built in the 1970s, the system to alter home heating was initially viewed with skepticism and did have teething problems but after decades of hard work, billions of dollars and revolutionary technology they achieved their goal of omitting oil from heating homes, says Buckley.

The methodology Buckley clarifies, uses steam to power turbines and the results are the cleanest and cheapest energy system in the world, with the waste gas being simply steam. If that were not an incredible feet in itself, says Buckley, they also discovered that the excess water from this process is abundant in minerals of therapeutic nature. Next to the power plant thus they have created a spa where hundreds of people bath to reap the health benefits of the waste products of electricity.

Although still in its early phases of development, Buckley asserts that the future hope is that Iceland will succeed in its second goal of alternative energy sources, hydrogen-fuelled cars. One of the motives for the development of new sources explains Buckley is that Iceland is concerned about the cost and supply of oil and this drives on the research into hydrogen power. The plans for hydrogen power came under serious consideration in Iceland in the 1990's when Chrysler, a German firm and Canada's Ballard Power joined forces to develop hydrogen fuel cells for buses. This, alongside Arnason's ideas, led to the approval of plans for a hydrogen-based motor future by the President and the New Iceland Energy Company was created, says Buckley.

The role of New Iceland Energy is to bring the plans to fruition, contends Buckley. Their first goal is to create an appropriate infrastructure to facilitate the hydrogen-powered vehicles. Fuelling stations are the initial focus of the plans, a situation made easier by the fact there are only 170 filling stations in Iceland, states Buckley. However, she emphasizes that the plans are clearly still in their infancy with the technology not fully developed to the needed capabilities. For example the hydrogen cell buses at present can only carry one third of the fuel that a conventional bus can hold.

Iceland is an experiment says Buckley and proposes the question as to whether such a scheme is transferable anywhere else in the world? President Grimsson responds that he has already had interest from China, California and many other countries. Clearly the corporate sponsors believe in the wide potential of the new technology, agrees Buckley.

This extract forms part of just one of the many insightful news features presented on the 24 hour news network Newsworld International (NWI). If you would like further information or are interested in subscribing to NWI, visit their website at www.nwitv.com or telephone their subscription service on 1-800-280-4388.