Iceland Opens Hydrogen-Filling Station

Iceland opened a filling station for hydrogen-powered vehicles on Thursday – one of very few in the world and the next step toward its dream of giving up fossil fuels completely.

By RICHARD MIDDLETON
ASSOCIATED PRESS

The first car in line was a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van, a prototype provided under a European Union-backed program to use Iceland as a test for hydrogen power.

There weren’t any other customers Thursday: None of Iceland’s 280,000 people are known to drive cars powered by hydrogen.

The new station will be used by three DaimlerChrysler hydrogen-powered buses being introduced into the Reykjavik fleet for two years, starting in August. Each bus can go about 125 miles before it needs refueling.

"In time, what is happening in Iceland will show to the rest of the world that hydrogen fuel is a real, commercial possibility that will lead to a cleaner, pollution-free environment," Industry Minister Valgerdir Sverrisdottir said at an opening ceremony.

The major partners in the venture are Icelandic New Energy, DaimlerChrysler, Norsk Hydro and Royal Dutch Shell. The European Union contributed $3.1 million of the $7.7 million cost of the project.

From the outside, the hydrogen station looks like a normal gas station – complete with the distinctive yellow Shell logo – except that one wall facing the street is emblazoned with an enormous light-blue sign that reads, "the ultimate fuel." The hydrogen, in gas form, is dispensed via a thin tube.

Iceland was chosen for the project in part because of its history of using alternative fuel, and 90 percent of its electricity is from geothermal springs or hydropower. That means the electricity needed to make the hydrogen can be produced cleanly and in Iceland.

Norway’s Norsk Hydro developed the hydrogen electrolyzers that use electricity to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. When used in a fuel cell, hydrogen and oxygen again combine, and water is the only exhaust product.

California already has a hydrogen station and stations are expected soon in Tokyo, Hamburg, Germany, and in major cities in the Netherlands, Spain, Britain, Belgium and Sweden.

"We are confident that in time, hydrogen can make a significant contribution to the global energy mix," said Jeroen van der Veer, vice president of the committee of managing directors of Royal Dutch Shell.

"But none of us expect overnight success. Despite the years of hard work, and the existence of hydrogen fuel cell technology for decades, we are in a real sense at the very beginning of the hydrogen economy story."

Iceland is a leading advocate of hydrogen power and has said it wants eventually to stop using the fossil fuels that power its fishing fleet and cars.

Around the world, auto companies have several models on the road as demonstration vehicles and plan to have more by the end of the decade. In the United States, President Bush requested $1.2 billion in federal money over five years to fund hydrogen fuel cell research.

Professor Bragi Arnason, a leading proponent of hydrogen power who has earned the nickname "Professor Hydrogen," said the nation’s fishing fleet could be running on hydrogen within 25 years.

"Using hydrogen, from renewable geothermal water in Iceland, is really only the first step toward a pollutant-free environment," said Arnason, head of chemistry at the University of Iceland’s Science Institute.

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On the Net:

Norsk Hydro: http://www.norskhydro.no

Iceland’s Industry Ministry: http://government.is/interpro/ivr/ivreng.nsf/pages/index.html%und

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-eur/2003/apr/24/042409005.html