Hydrogen Buses In Iceland

dapyx writes "As part of the shift away from the fossil fuels, Iceland began its switch to hydrogen-powered buses, which are now used on the streets of the capital, Reykjavik. About 70 percent of Iceland's energy is already met by green power. Iceland plans to become the first oil-free country by 2050."

Hydrogen from where?

[GrouchoMarx]

Honest question here. Isn't one of the best sources of hydrogen for such things hydrocarbons? Which are plentiful in, you guessed it, oil? Breaking water is not very efficient and requires electricity in the first place. So how does a "hydrogen economy" free us from dependence on oil? Where does the hydrogen come from that it's so clean?

Not intended as a troll, honest question.

I hate the term "green power", article full of shi

[stratjakt]

Hydrogen, tested in buses from Amsterdam to Vancouver and used in the rockets of the U.S. space shuttle, is a clean power that promises to break dependence on oil and gas -- at least in Iceland.

Except that hydrogen isn't found, or mined, it's created. Either from fossil fuels or by electrolyzing water, which requires electricity, which comes from fossil fuels.

How are they generating the hydrogen?

It's easy for iceland to claim 70% "green" because geothermal heating is a real option for them. The air is cold, the earth is hot. It doesn't work for most of the rest of the world. There's nothing for me to dig into but cold muck and the chesapeake watershed.

Oil free?

[agm]

I predict we will all be oil free by 2050 - because there won't be any left! Well, not the kind that gets sucked out of the ground at least.

Progress

[zachthemagictaco]

Ah, finally. All these years of speculation, the United Nations, and treaties is resulting in something.

Of course, the U.S. doesn't approve of this, as we reject the Kyoto Treaty.

Energy independence is a national security issue

[Camel Pilot]

Replacing foriegn oil imports is vital to continued economic growth and ensuring security for any nation or society. A country would be foolish to place their bets on a resource that is dwindling and susceptible to manipulation by foreign interests. The good news is that it is mearly a technical problem but the lead time requires planning and foresight - which in some unnamed countries is sadly lacking.

Anyone interested this topic should checkout the Rocky Mountain Institute [rmi.org] and read up on the ideas of Amory Lovins.

Re:Hydrogen from where?

[gl4ss]

iceland has lots of thermal energy for effectively "free".

elsewhere, you got this 'nukularrrr' reaction that you can use to create power to break down that water. but don't tell the ecomaniacs, they wouldn't want you to save the earth.

(honestly, that's just about the only REALISTICAL option for breaking water down to hydrogen on big enough scale. hydrogen is just a way to store energy in this case and the energy HAS to come from somewhere, and the 'eco' sources are not that plentiful or viable to be used in the scale that replacing oil dependency needs.. my opinion? that we won't move into such direction on large scale before we have fusion as viable energy source)

Re:Hydrogen?

[homer_ca]

That's the catch with hydrogen from electrolysis. Sure, if you had surplus electricity and nothing else to do with it, then yes, making hydrogen makes sense. A lot of impractical things become possible with free electricity. Unfortunately, not many countries have free surplus electricity. Maybe China when they finish that huge hydro dam.

Re:Got a bet for you all

[spellraiser]

You can't do that! Relations between us Icelanders and America have always been great. I mean, we're members of the Coalition of the willing [wikipedia.org] and everything! You guys even have an army base [navy.mil] over here, to protect us, seeing that we have no military of our own

...

Oh shit.

We're fucked, right?

Re:Hydrogen from where?

[schtum]

Rat in a wheel?

With distributed computing catching on, this might not be such a bad idea. How many people own or otherwise use exercise equipment? (i know, wrong place to ask). It shouldnt be too hard to convert those machines into generators and have them dump their power into the grid. Individually, each person may generate an insignificant amount of electricity, but it all adds up.

I'm picturing a World War II style government propaganda blitz with "victory workouts" replacing victory gardens.

Re:Oil free by choice or coercion?

[Wenalex]

Well, as long as we are judging things on the basis of "merit" we should calculate the true price of oil with all the extranalities involved in the equation and none of the tax breaks and subsides that the oil industry recieves. The external costs of the drilling, transporting, refining, transporting again, and then the end use of oil are incalculable. Consider things like an army to protect the oil at its source, how much does it cost to maintain the ships to transport this oil, what's the environmental toll payed in cleanup costs for every oil spell, the enormous rise in health care costs caused by polution, the money it takes to build roads, cars, etc... many of these costs would still persist in a 'hydrogen economy' but many not, and many would disapear if we would only learn the true cost of our consumption and then account for it. I'll have my 'oil-free' economy any day thank you.

Re:In the case of Iceland...

[MrPC81]

Insanely harder than Natural Gas. And even Natural Gas is impossible to ship between continents in any serious volume (the load from an LNG tanker would barely keep the lights on in any serious size city for a few days, weeks if everyone was an energy miser).

If you have a source of carbon dioxide handy, you could just convert the hydrogen to methane (2H2 + CO2 = CH4 + O2) and just have the end users burn the methane in an internal combustion engine instead. Or use steam reformation to re-release the CO2 and split it from the Hydrogen.

Anyway, Hydrogen has a very nasty habit of leaking from just about every containment vessel ever produced. When it leaks, it goes up. Due to its extremely low weight, it reaches escape velocity and goes into space, though there's a good chance some of it will do a bit of melding with atmospheric ozone on its way up and even further wreck the ozone layer.

If we produce heaps of hydrogen and half of it ends up going into space, even if the energy source for producing the hydrogen is renewable, the fuel certainly isn't.

Re:I hate the term "green power", article full of

[zenlunatics]

actually the "greens", or whatever they were called back then, having been recommending we find alternatives to fossil fuels for over 30 years (probably more). The problem is the powers that be don't want to listen because their power comes from their control of oil.

Re:I hate the term "green power", article full of

[Anonymous Coward]

Either from fossil fuels or by electrolyzing water, which requires electricity, which comes from fossil fuels.

Since when is uranium a fossil fuel?

Nobody is claiming that hydrogen is an "original" power source, just that it's a better carrier than even the best batteries in an electric car, which is why it'll be used when oil runs out (assuming batteries won't get any development meanwhile). The electricity can originally be created with environment friendly nuclear plants, or in Iceland's case, geothermal heating.

Nuclear energy is cleaner than burning any fossil fuels. This is really a no-brainer.

Re:Hydrogen?

[misleb]

Yeah, it blew up just like an truck carrying gasoline would. Are you seriously trying to argue that hydrogen is not a good alternative fuel supply because a long time ago people decided to fill a huge balloon with it that had an extremely flammable outer skin while there was lighting shooting down from the sky?

That is the least of the reasons why hydrogen isn't a good alternative fuel supply. The main reason being that it isn't a fuel supply at all. It is a storage medium... and not a very good one at that. But I guess if you are swimming in geothermal energy like Iceland is, it makes more sense to waste some of the energy using hydrogen than it does to import oil. For the rest of us, oil is extremely convenient form of energy. All you need to do is pump it out of the ground and process it a little... and maybe go to war from time to time.

If this country (USA) wants to get off its coal, natural gas, and petroleum dependency, it has to build new nuclear power plants to power homes and use that to generate hydrogen to power vehicles. No new nuclear power plant has been built since the Three Mile Island incident, which similar to Chernobyl, was a combination of untrained workers and poor design.

Sorry, the "too cheap to meter" dream died a long time ago. Get with the times, man. There are more reasons than fear that keep us from moving all power to nuclear. Fossil fuels are just too damn convenient and still plentiful enough.

-matthew

Re:Hydrogen from where?

[ltbarcly]

You dope. Water vapor as a greenhouse gas? CRAP. We had better get a big pool cover for the ocean.

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Kyoto is not the end-all and be-all of emission reduction, but we as a species have to start making changes somewhere to reduce the negative impact we are having on this planet we live on.

Rather then ride around on your high horse complaining how unfair Kyoto is to America, why don't you americans go it alone and come up with your own plan that has some substance to it.

Wonder why the world doesn't love you as a becon of hope and freedom (and trust me they don't)?

It has to do with America always putting it's own interests/profits ahead of everyone else on the planet. (WMD/oil in Iraq, supporting dictators in Pakistan & Saudi Arbia and other places, not signing the Landmines treaty, torturing prisoners, not paying it's members fee at the UN, ...)

Re:Progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, redistribution of wealth would be the best means against terrorism. But hey, try killing another hundred thousands people in the years to come, see if that helps...

Re:Progress

[vidarh]

Kyoto was a starting point, not the goal. As the US behaviour has shown, it was a fairly optimistic starting point. Trying to go further right away would have been counterproductive as it wouldn't have had a snowballs chance in hell of actually being supported by enough countries.

Complaining that something isn't effective because it doesn't do enough isn't exactly a good reason to reject it - it's a good reason to adopt it AND push for going further.