here are some info I got from a professor here in Reykjavík about
hydrogen its on PDF , so I copy paste it .

(Preprint)

The Road from a Fossil Fuel to a Sustainable Energy Economy
The Strategy in Iceland

Bragi Árnason
Science Institute, University of Iceland
arnason@raunvis.hi.is


Current energy consumption of the world and future outlook

Today the world´s primary annual energy consumption is about 400 Exajoules, whereof 79.6 % comes from fossil fuel, 13.9% from renewable energy sources (hydro, biomass, wind, geothermal) and 6.5% from nuclear energy. Of the 79.6% of fossil energy 35.3% comes from oil which means that oil is a substantial part of the world´s energy consumption. There are some signs indicating that the world´s oil production capacity will soon start declining and we are going to face an energy crisis in the very near future.

In 1956 the geologist M. King Hubbert presented an extensive study where he predicted that U.S. oil production capacity would peak in 1972. The actual year the U.S. oil production peaked was 1970. Recently Kenneth S. Deffeyes applied Hubbert´s methodology to predict the world´s oil production capacity. His conclusion is that the world´s oil production will peak within four years and there isn´t anything we can do to stop it.

If Deffeyes prediction proves to be a reality we can, after 2006, expect both decreasing world oil production and increasing need for energy. This must be met by other energy sources, for instance fossil, nuclear and renewables. If coal is used to meet the decrease in oil production and increase in energy demand of humankind, the consequences could be drastic.

A good example, to demonstrate the increasing need for energy in the near future and the eventual consequences if this is met by harnessing coal, is China. The ultimate potential of the Three Gorges Project, Yangtze, 18,000 MW, will still only supply a small fraction of China´s electricity needs over the next twenty years. It has been pointed out that China will require an additional 600,000 MW over the next twenty years. This raises the question of what would happen to our planet if China approached the per capita electricity consumption of America and Europe and generated it from coal.

With the expected decline in the world´s production capacity of oil together with increasing energy demand, renewable energy sources like biomass, hydropower, wind energy, wave energy, tidal energy, geothermal energy, direct solar radiation and solar radiation stored in the oceans in the form of heat, are going to become increasingly important. In the long term solar radiation is likely to become the major energy source of humankind. Also ecological aspects, such as the need to reduce greenhouse gas emission, as well as other polluting components like sulfur and nitrogen oxides, are likely to promote increasing use of renewables.

The energy content of the solar radiation on the land surface of our planet has been estimated as 3000 times the current energy consumption of the world. Although only a small fraction of this potential is technically harnessable, solar energy is by far the largest energy source. Some experts working on the possible harnessing of direct solar radiation have expressed their opinion that after 20-30 years solar radiation could be converted, in an economic way, directly into electricity or into heat. If that were the case, solar energy would become an increasingly important energy source and in the long term one of the major energy sources of humankind. Increasing energy demands in the near term, however, must be met by other renewable energy sources and by nuclear energy.

As is the case for solar radiation, when harnessed, other renewable energy sources and nuclear energy in most cases will be converted into electricity. Whenever possible the electricity will be used directly, but there will always be a need for energy storage medium, like fuel to power land, sea and air transport. Obviously the number one candidate fuel is hydrogen. In principle any available energy source can be used to produce hydrogen.

Iceland does not have to wait until harnessing of solar radiation becomes economic. With its abundant cheap hydroenergy, which of course is nothing but a second form of solar energy, and its geothermal energy Iceland has already started the transformation into a hydrogen economy. This makes Iceland, which, though a small society, has all the infrastructure of much larger ones, an attractive pilot country to participate in developing and improving the necessary hydrogen technology and to demonstrate the transformation into the hydrogen economy.


The background for the Icelandic concept

In the North Atlantic Ocean just south of the Arctic circle where the boundaries of the North-American and Eurasian plates meet, the volcanic island of Iceland surfaces. Its origins are contained in a so-called hot spot in the crust of the terrestrial magma. The island reaches some two thousands meters of altitude and about one tenth of it is covered with glaciers. The land covers about a hundred thousand square kilometers.

The combination of high altitude and a geographical location in the path of the windy North Atlantic moisture laden lows, along with the capacitive nature of its icecaps, makes Iceland an area perfectly suitable for hydroelectric harnessing. Additionally, the volcanic nature of the island together with its precipitation creates ideal conditions for the harnessing of geothermal energy. On the other hand, as a result of the cool climate and the limited vegetation, the country is naturally deprived of fossil energy sources apart from some peat and limited birchwood which, together with wind energy, served as important energy sources for hundreds of years after the age of settlements.

At the end of the 19th century most of the energy used in Iceland came from imported fossil fuel. In the first decade of the 20th century Icelanders harnessed their first river with a hydroelectric plant and started a general process of electrification. For the past half century, they have enjoyed district heating using geothermal energy. By the end of the 20th century Icelanders had already performed two major transitions in energy sources: to hydroelectric and geothermal. With the advent of the 21st century, Icelanders expect the third major transition. This century will also see a transition from the conventional Carnot thermodynamics involving combustion engines to free energy systems involving fuel cells. We now expect that hydrogen, produced with electric energy from hydropower and geothermal heat, will become the main fuel in the Icelandic transport and fishing sectors. In this way Iceland would be almost entirely free from imported fossil fuel and its greenhouse gas emission would be reduced below 50% of the present level.

For its population of 290,000 Iceland possesses abundant amounts of hydro energy and geothermal energy. The economically harnessable hydroelectric energy has been estimated at 30 TWh/year while the economically harnessable geothermal energy has been estimated at 200 TWh/year of heat. With present technology, 200 TWh/year of geothermal heat can be used to produce 20 TWh/year of electricity. Thus the total electric energy potential is 50 TWh/year. Of these 50 TWh/year only 8 TWh/year have been harnessed up to now. If all imported fossil fuel were to be replaced by hydrogen produced from electric energy from domestic energy sources, an additional 5 TWh/year would be needed. Thus Iceland is in a rather unusual situation. Although only a small fraction of the domestic energy sources have been harnessed so far one third of the energy used in the country comes from imported fossil fuel. This has inspired a study of the possibility of replacing imported fossil fuel by some synthetic fuel produced by domestic energy sources.


Earlier research at the University of Iceland

Research at the University of Iceland concerning production of synthetic fuels from domestic energy sources goes back to 1977. In the beginning, various alternatives were considered such as synthetic gasoline, methanol, ammonia and hydrogen, but over the last 15 years, especially after the breakthrough of the PEM fuel cell in 1993, the research work has been concentrated on hydrogen. Hydrogen is the cleanest and cheapest fuel that can be made in Iceland. The only emission from the fuel cell is pure water, exactly the same amount of water as was needed to produce the hydrogen. Because of the advantage that very high energy efficiency of the fuel can be achieved, it is believed that fuel cells will become increasingly important as engines in the 21st century.

Hydrogen production in Iceland, on a large scale, has already been practised for over half a century using hydroelectric electrolysis of water. Thus the production cost of hydrogen in Iceland as a function of plant size, electricity price and currently used technology is well known. Assuming for example a 100 MW plant and electricity price of 0.02 US $/kWh, which is the estimated cost of electricity from power plants built in the near future, hydrogen produced in this way would be up to 2-3 times more expensive than presently imported gasoline when calculated on the basis of energy content.

In the cases, however, where hydrogen is used to power PEM fuel cells currently in rapid development, the energy efficiency is 2-3 times higher than in conventional internal combustion engines. The reason for this is that in internal combustion engines the chemical energy of the fuel is converted into heat with a low efficiency because of the Carnot limitations. In fuel cells on the other hand the chemical energy is converted into electric energy with a high efficiency. Fuel cells are free energy engines not Carnot engines.

Thus if both hydrogen production cost and energy efficiency are taken into account, the utilisation of hydrogen, produced from hydroenergy or geothermal energy, in the Icelandic transport and fishing sectors is approaching competitiveness compared to the use of present fuels.

The storage of hydrogen is a critical limiting factor promoting the use of hydrogen to power the transport and fishing sectors in Iceland. Hydrogen can be stored in numerous ways such as hydrogen gas, liquid hydrogen, hydrogen bound in metalhydrides and bound in liquid hydrides like methanol. Because of the large amount of energy needed to liquify hydrogen, liquid hydrogen is about two times more expensive than hydrogen gas.

In a city bus fleet powered by PEM fuel cells hydrogen can easily be stored onboard as pressurised gas in sufficient quantity to operate the buses throughout the day. The fueling time is less than 7 minutes. A city bus fleet also can be operated from one fueling station which makes no need for complicated infrastructure for the distribution of the fuel.

Storing hydrogen in private cars is not as simple as storing it in city buses. In prototype cars built until now, hydrogen has been stored onboard either as a pressurised gas, as liquid, in metal hydrides or bound in methanol. Private cars storing pressurised hydrogen onboard have only been able to run a short distance compared to gasoline powered cars. That, however, might change. Last year the Japanese company Honda presented a private car, storing pressurised hydrogen onboard, that can run 350 km on each filling. Some of the large Japanese car makers declared about two years ago their intention to start building hydrogen powered fuel cell cars in the near future. Three alternatives of storing hydrogen onboard are being considered: pressurised hydrogen, hydrogen bound in metal hydrides and hydrogen bound in methanol.

As for powering the large Icelandic fishing vessels there are in principle no obstacles provided that fuel cells in the megawatt range become commercially available. These fishing vessels are sometimes at sea for up to six weeks and therefore need to store onboard large amounts of fuel. Consequently we can rule out the storage of pressurised hydrogen gas. Liquid hydrogen is a possibility, but as mentioned before, liquid hydrogen is very expensive and so is the technology needed to handle it. Research at the University of Iceland indicates that sufficient amounts of hydrogen could theoretically be stored in light metal hydrides, like magnesium hydride, but the technology is still not ready for use on a large scale. Therefore, the only possible near term solution for storing a sufficient amount of hydrogen onboard large fishing vessels seems to be to store it bound in methanol. Technically it is possible to produce sufficient methanol in Iceland to power the entire fishing fleet, by combining electrolytically produced hydrogen and carbon oxides currently emitted from the metals industry in Iceland. This could reduce the greenhouse gas emission from the fishing sector to about 45% of the present level.

In 1997 a research team at the University of Iceland devised a roadmap to reach a hydrogen economy in Iceland. The following 5-phase scenario was suggested:

Phase1:        PEM fuel cell bus demonstration project. Up to three city buses in public transport in Reykjavik.
Phase 2:        Gradual replacement of the Reykjavik city bus fleet and possibly other bus fleets by PEM fuel cell buses.
Phase 3:        Introduction of hydrogen powered PEM fuel cell cars for private transport.
Phase 4:         PEM fuel cell vessel demonstration project. One research vessel with hydrogen stored onboard bound in methanol.
Phase 5:        Gradual replacement of the present fishing fleet by PEM fuel cell powered vessels.        

The above scenario interested three big European companies, which in 1998 led to the establishment of Icelandic New Energy, a University of Iceland spin-off corporation created to promote hydrogen economy in Iceland.


Icelandic New Energy

In 1998 a corporation, Icelandic New Energy Ltd. was founded with 51% shares owned by a consortium of Icelandic corporations in the energy sector as well as two major institutions. These are: the New Business Venture Fund, the Reykjavik Energy Company, the National Power Company, Sudurnes Regional Heating Company, the University of Iceland, the Fertilizer plant, Aflvaki hf. and the government of Iceland. Three international corporations joined as founding members: Daimler/Chrysler, Norsk Hydro and Shell, rounding up the remaining 49% of the share capital.

The aim of the company is clear: a joint venture to investigate the potential of eventually replacing fossil fuels usage in Iceland with hydrogen based fuels and ultimately create the world´s first "hydrogen economy". Additionally, three ministers from the government of Iceland, the prime minister, the industry minister and the minister of environment, declared the intent to aim for a hydrogen economy in Iceland. The strategy was to begin with the introduction of a test-fleet of hydrogen powered buses. The next phase was to promote the integration of fuel cell powered vehicles for passenger use. The final phase was to examine the possibility of replacing the fishing fleet with hydrogen based vessels.

Icelandic New Energy anticipates approximately fifty years of development towards the goal of replacing fossil fuels in the transport and fishing sectors. The company estimates that about 4.3 TWh/year of energy will be needed to complete the change using 81,000 tonnes/year of hydrogen. In the first decade of the millenium, demonstrations of the developing hydrogen technology will be performed. In the following decade fleets of hydrogen driven transport and fishing systems will be introduced. The completed scenario is expected to be reached around 2050. Considering the fact that Iceland has seen two major infrastructure changes in the twentieth century with hydroelectric and geothermal energy, it is not unrealistic to assume fifty years for the transition to a hydrogen economy.


The ECTOS project

Icelandic New Energy began preparation for a demonstration project which sought financial support from the Fifth Framework Program of the European Union. The project was called ECTOS, Ecological City TranspOrt System. The main objective of the four-year project was to construct a hydrogen fueling station completely integrated into an urban setting and fuel three hydrogen fuel cell buses in the public transport fleet of Reykjavik.

After an evaluation by a panel of experts, the European Union decided to support ECTOS with 2.85 million Euros out of the total cost of 7 million Euros. The infrastructure preparation involved building a hydrogen refueling station integrated into a Shell facility on the outskirts of Reykjavik. The station is producing hydrogen on-site by electrolysis. The electrolyser, a Norsk Hydro alkaline electrolyser, is operating on the municipal power grid and with a connection to the municipal water network. It can deliver gaseous hydrogen at 440 bars. The station is furthermore equipped with a dispenser capable of delivering about 30 kg of hydrogen in approximately 7 minutes. The total production capacity at this stage of the station is about 150 kg of hydrogen per day. The hydrogen fueling station was inaugurated in April 2003.

Three hydrogen buses arrived in Iceland in October 2003 and are now in operation in the municipal public transport system in Reykjavik. They are powered by gaseous hydrogen stored in the front roof section at a pressure of 300 bar. The fuel cell system is also situated in the roof of the bus. The fuel cell is a 250 kW PEM system from Ballard with an expected driving range of 220-240 km for each filling of hydrogen.

Following the ECTOS project nine cities in Europe decided to carry out a similar project called CUTE, Clean Urban Transport for Europe. This project involves testing three hydrogen buses in each of these cities: London, Luxemburg, Porto, Madrid, Barcelona, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Stockholm. Additionally one city in Australia, Perth, has decided on a similar bus demonstration project.


Conclusion

To be independent of fossil fuel imports and at the same time drastically reduce the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission is a beautiful vision, which could be partly realised in Iceland during the next decades and completed in the middle of the century. The University of Iceland, Icelandic New Energy Ltd. and their international partners are working together to reach this ambitious goal to create a "Hydrogen Society" in Iceland.


I have more coming later , I am not very known about hydrogen power
so I send an E-mail to this professor

Bragi Árnason Dr.scient
Professor of chemistry
Science Institute
University of Iceland
Dunhaga 3
IS-107 REYKJAVIK

So I hope some of this info answaer some questions ..

All the best Skarpi Iceland.