Iceland to wean itself off of fossil fuel

Jeffrey Fisher jfisher at igc.org
Thu May 30 15:23:17 PDT 2002


On Thursday, May 30, 2002, at 05:12 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:


> At 02:10 PM 5/30/2002 -0700, Michael Perelman wrote:
>> They have been planning this for some time.
>
>
> Michael, I am not sure how technologically feasible the hydrogen fuel
> is, but even if it were feasible technologically - it does not seem
> feasible economically. The reason is "path dependency" -- fossil fuels
> enjoy enormous advantages over any alternative because the
> infrastructure for its distribution and use (e.g. the system of gas
> stations and service facilities specializing in servicing gasoline
> powered cars) is already in place - but it would have to be built
> almost from scratch for hydrogen-powered cars.
>
> The idea of hydrogen fuel has been around for some time, but for the
> reasons mentioned above I am not holding my breath to see
> hydrogen-powered cars on the streets any time soon. Therefore, the
> timing of this message seems suspicious.
>
> wojtek
>

at the risk of repeating michael's point, they have been planning this for a long time. i recalled reading something about this in the earth island journal, so i went there and did a quick search, finding the following: "The First H-Powered Country Iceland - Ninety percent of Iceland's buildings are heated with geothermal water while geothermal steam spins the turbines that provide 99.9 percent of the country's electricity. Iceland now is preparing to abandon internal combustion engines in favor of vehicles powered by fuel cells. In 1997, Iceland announced plans to become the world's first hydrogen economy. Iceland currently meets 38 percent of its energy needs with imported oil. It anticipates attaining total freedom from fossil fuels by 2030." http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/dept.cfm?journalID=46&departmentCatID= 8

in the interest of avoiding pulling a michael pugliese (;-), i will just say that googling "iceland geothermal hydrogen" returns much interesting reading. i will only link here to a good summary worldpressreview story: http://www.worldpress.org/europe/0123iceland.htm

as the WPR article notes, iceland is an ideal testbed, which is the main reason it's heavily wired (someone, nortel or cisco, i want to say, wired the country as a test, iirc): "Second, it is easy to conduct real-scale research in Iceland. 'It's easy to introduce a new technology in a small society because if it goes wrong, it's less difficult to fix it,' Arnason says. 'Then you take the lessons you've learned here and apply them to larger societies.'"

finally, i think hydrogen is way more possible and likely than you allow. not to the rest of the world in 30 years, but still . . .

jeff



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