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It’s nice news when whole countries – even small ones – aspire to go over wholesale to hydrogen power. If they get there, will that make them world leaders – or exotic laboratories? Roger East looks from little islands to the bigger picture.

What if Vanuatu became a hydrogen-based energy economy by 2020? It may not be a question you have yet asked yourself, but a couple of years ago the Pacific island nation declared this to be its aim, which was, at the least, a good illustration of joined-up thinking. Vanuatu does have the basic wherewithal to produce real ‘green’ hydrogen – abundant sun, wind, and attractive potential in geothermal energy.

It also currently suffers some of the downsides of oil-based energy – including an expensive dependence on imports. What’s more, several Pacific states have good reason to be especially concerned about climate change, whose consequences could see them submerged entirely beneath rising seas.The UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific set up a special programme in 2000 to help small island developing countries ‘go renewable’, and Vanuatu was the first to respond.

Now the Pacific, let’s be honest, does have its attractions for consultants keen on an exotic location for a nice fat feasibility study. What’s more, if Vanuatu could make itself into something of a laboratory for hydrogen technologies, it might attract some interesting research and development investment. There could even be a techie sales pitch in it for the tourist industry.

But, to be blunt, it seems unlikely that Vanuatu could ever provide much of a policy blueprint for the ‘decarbing’ of major economies, the dethroning of fIt’s nice news when whole countries – even small ones – aspire to go over wholesale to hydrogen power. If they get there, will that make them world leaders – or exotic laboratories? Roger East looks from little islands to the bigger picture.

It also currently suffers some of the downsides of oil-based energy – including an expensive dependence on imports. What’s more, several Pacific states have good reason to be especially concerned about climate change, whose consequences could see them submerged entirely beneath rising seas. The UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific set up a special programme in 2000 to help small island developing countries ‘go renewable’, and Vanuatu was the first to respond.

But, to be blunt, it seems unlikely that Vanuatu could ever provide much of a policy blueprint for the ‘decarbing’ of major economies, the dethroning of fossil fuels in a ‘hydrogen revolution’. Much of the above applies to another island, nearer home – Islay, off the west coast of Scotland. The buzz surrounding the pioneering work on wave energy there [see p4] has encouraged the idea that it, too, could be in the hunt to be ‘the world’s first hydrogen-powered island’.

Green electricity from the waves would drive electrolysers to extract hydrogen from water, and this hydrogen, according to the ‘green Islay’ visionaries, would in turn power fuel cells whereby local inhabitants could run everything from tumble dryers to tractors. It’s a neat little virtuous circle, which also serves to stress the potential of the fuel cell both for vehicles and for offgrid domestic power. So is the holy grail of the hydrogen economy best sought at the micro level?

That might make it more simple to grasp – but far less potent. Consider what’s happening in Iceland. A more plausible candidate than Vanuatu to be the ‘world’s first hydrogen economy’, which it aims to achieve within 30 years, Iceland is where the world’s first commercial hydrogen fuel cell filling station opened earlier this year [GF40, p4]. Driving the country’s hydrogen hopes, in the domestic policy context, are the aspirations of the lifestyle-conscious inhabitants of a beautiful, sparsely populated island towards clean and abundant fuel.

And Iceland does have features that make it a particularly interesting case. There’s its combination of geothermal and hydroelectric power resources, for a start – and its relatively recent experience of a wholesale energy conversion; heating in the capital, Reykjavik, has gone over lock, stock and barrel to geothermal over the last 50 years. Then there’s the challenge of converting the fishing fleet, the country’s largest fossil fuel user, to fuel cell operation, depending as it does on addressing the issue of hydrogen’s bulkiness in storage.

Nevertheless, the real importance of Iceland, as future historians of the hydrogen revolution will see it, is the hosting of demonstration projects with far wider potential applications. That, after all, is why corporates such as Shell, DaimlerChrysler and Norsk Hydro are getting involved – not because of the lure of the tiny Icelandic domestic market. They have bigger fish to fry. Look at the list of places in line, after Reykjavik, for hydrogen filling stations – Washington, Tokyo, and major cities in western Europe.

Where the big fish are. So how well are we learning our Icelandic lessons in the rest of Europe? Not too well, to be blunt. In fact, the EU is quite noticeably limping along behind the USA.

There, President George W. Bush backed hydrogen technology with stirring rhetoric in a typically American idiom in January’s State of the Union address. “A child born today”, he envisioned, “will be driving a car, as his or her first car, which will be powered by hydrogen and pollution free.” More to the point, he announced substantive funding, too. The money Bush proposed to put behind the so-called Freedom Fuel initiative – variously calculated as $1.7 billion, $1.2 million, or even just $720 million in new money for the next five years – may not be anywhere near enough to precipitate a whole energy revolution in rapid time, but nowhere else on earth has seen anything like this scale of government investment to drive forward the development of fuel cell vehicles.

Taking the Bush administration’s newfound environmental enthusiasm to the global stage, the US secretary of energy, Spencer Abraham, issued an appeal in April for an international partnership on the hydrogen economy. Predictably, the Europeans made suitably enthusiastic noises. But Marcus Nurdin, managing director of the International Platinum Association and the executive director of the Frankfurt-based industry association Fuel Cell Europe, puts notions of ‘partnership’ in perspective. “Europe must quickly catch up to be an adequate partner,” he says. “Although it is true that the EU has committed about 2.2 billion euros to research and development into sustainable development, global change and ecosystems...any mentions of fuel cells and hydrogen are almost lost in the list which includes all forms of renewable energy (wind, photovoltaic, biomass, etc.), energy savings, alternative motor fuels (including natural gas, biodiesel, ethanol, methanol, etc.), new and advanced concepts in renewable energy, disposal of CO2, improving effectiveness and competitiveness of rail and marine transport, and the rational use of the car!” The EU did sign a research cooperation deal with the USA in April.

That same month, its so-called ‘High Level Group on Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies’, set up by the EU Commission the previous October, released its own report recommending steps to achieving a ‘hydrogen society’ within 50 years – including the launch of a hydrogen and fuel cells technology platform to devise a strategic research framework. Two months later, there was something of a barrage of public relations effort around a two-day EU conference in Brussels – entitled “The hydrogen economy, a bridge to sustainable energy” – held to underline its commitment to fuel cells for the future. But all the signs are that EU research spending will remain at modest levels for the foreseeable future.

Even Bush’s plans can be pooh-poohed for inadequacy – or for diversionary intent, a perhaps understandable suspicion on the part of critics who’d rather focus on achieving more near-term cuts in carbon emissions. The inclusion of funding for research into obtaining hydrogen from petrol, for instance, sparked an acerbic reaction from Daniel Becker, director of the global warming and energy program at the conservationist Sierra Club organisation. “That’s like trying to lose weight by running to McDonald’s,” he said “Hydrogen fuel cells will play a key role in a clean energy future, but the president’s plan won’t get us there.”

Of course, it’s not just a matter of how much public money is pumped in. More important still is the response that government policy engenders – whether it instils business confidence that there’ll be a return on effort and investment in hydrogen technology, infrastructure and applications. On this score, the US National Hydrogen Association (NHA) applauded the hydrogen energy roadmap (sorry, but there had to be a ‘roadmap’ somewhere in this story) drawn up last year by the Department of Energy.

“A wellbalanced plan with an intelligent transition strategy,” the NHA called it, “relying on conventional feedstocks and hydrogenfueled conversion devices to pave the way for the introduction of the fuel cell when it is market ready.” Yet in terms of actual corporate commitment the US motor industry, for all its strikingly forward-thinking soundbites about a hydrogen-fuelled future, still lags behind Toyota and Honda in actual research and development. And it was these Japanese firms that made the first symbolic entry on to the market with working hydrogen fuel cell cars, leasing a handful at the turn of last year to customers whose identities were a telling commentary in themselves – the Japanese government, the University of California and the city of Los Angeles.

Fossil fuels in a ‘hydrogen revolution’. Much of the above applies to another island, nearer home – Islay, off the west coast of Scotland. The buzz surrounding the pioneering work on wave energy there [see p4] has encouraged the idea that it, too, could be in the hunt to be ‘the world’s first hydrogen-powered island’. Green electricity from the waves would drive electrolysers to extract hydrogen from water, and this hydrogen, according to the ‘green Islay’ visionaries, would in turn power fuel cells whereby local inhabitants could run everything from tumble dryers to tractors.

It’s a neat little virtuous circle, which also serves to stress the potential of the fuel cell both for vehicles and for offgrid domestic power. So is the holy grail of the hydrogen economy best sought at the micro level? That might make it more simple to grasp – but far less potent.

Consider what’s happening in Iceland. A more plausible candidate than Vanuatu to be the ‘world’s first hydrogen economy’, which it aims to achieve within 30 years, Iceland is where the world’s first commercial hydrogen fuel cell filling station opened earlier this year [GF40, p4]. Driving the country’s hydrogen hopes, in the domestic policy context, are the aspirations of the lifestyle-conscious inhabitants of a beautiful, sparsely populated island towards clean and abundant fuel.

Look at the list of places in line, after Reykjavik, for hydrogen filling stations – Washington, Tokyo, and major cities in western Europe. Where the big fish are. So how well are we learning our Icelandic lessons in the rest of Europe? Not too well, to be blunt.

In fact, the EU is quite noticeably limping along behind the USA. There, President George W. Bush backed hydrogen technology with stirring rhetoric in a typically American idiom in January’s State of the Union address. “A child born today”, he envisioned, “will be driving a car, as his or her first car, which will be powered by hydrogen and pollution free.”

More to the point, he announced substantive funding, too. The money Bush proposed to put behind the so-called Freedom Fuel initiative – variously calculated as $1.7 billion, $1.2 million, or even just $720 million in new money for the next five years – may not be anywhere near enough to precipitate a whole energy revolution in rapid time, but nowhere else on earth has seen anything like this scale of government investment to drive forward the development of fuel cell vehicles. Taking the Bush administration’s newfound environmental enthusiasm to the global stage, the US secretary of energy, Spencer Abraham, issued an appeal in April for an international partnership on the hydrogen economy.

Predictably, the Europeans made suitably enthusiastic noises. But Marcus Nurdin, managing director of the International Platinum Association and the executive director of the Frankfurt-based industry association Fuel Cell Europe, puts notions of ‘partnership’ in perspective. “Europe must quickly catch up to be an adequate partner,” he says.

“Although it is true that the EU has committed about 2.2 billion euros to research and development into sustainable development, global change and ecosystems...any mentions of fuel cells and hydrogen are almost lost in the list which includes all forms of renewable energy (wind, photovoltaic, biomass, etc.), energy savings, alternative motor fuels (including natural gas, biodiesel, ethanol, methanol, etc.), new and advanced concepts in renewable energy, disposal of CO2, improving effectiveness and competitiveness of rail and marine transport, and the rational use of the car!” The EU did sign a research cooperation deal with the USA in April. That same month, its so-called ‘High Level Group on Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies’, set up by the EU Commission the previous October, released its own report recommending steps to achieving a ‘hydrogen society’ within 50 years – including the launch of a hydrogen and fuel cells technology platform to devise a strategic research framework.

Two months later, there was something of a barrage of public relations effort around a two-day EU conference in Brussels – entitled “The hydrogen economy, a bridge to sustainable energy” – held to underline its commitment to fuel cells for the future. But all the signs are that EU research spending will remain at modest levels for the foreseeable future. Even Bush’s plans can be pooh-poohed for inadequacy – or for diversionary intent, a perhaps understandable suspicion on the part of critics who’d rather focus on achieving more near-term cuts in carbon emissions. The inclusion of funding for research into obtaining hydrogen from petrol, for instance, sparked an acerbic reaction from Daniel Becker, director of the global warming and energy program at the conservationist Sierra Club organisation.

“That’s like trying to lose weight by running to McDonald’s,” he said “Hydrogen fuel cells will play a key role in a clean energy future, but the president’s plan won’t get us there.” Of course, it’s not just a matter of how much public money is pumped in. More important still is the response that government policy engenders – whether it instils business confidence that there’ll be a return on effort and investment in hydrogen technology, infrastructure and applications.

On this score, the US National Hydrogen Association (NHA) applauded the hydrogen energy roadmap (sorry, but there had to be a ‘roadmap’ somewhere in this story) drawn up last year by the Department of Energy. “A wellbalanced plan with an intelligent transition strategy,” the NHA called it, “relying on conventional feedstocks and hydrogenfueled conversion devices to pave the way for the introduction of the fuel cell when it is market ready.” Yet in terms of actual corporate commitment the US motor industry, for all its strikingly forward-thinking soundbites about a hydrogen-fuelled future, still lags behind Toyota and Honda in actual research and development. And it was these Japanese firms that made the first symbolic entry on to the market with working hydrogen fuel cell cars, leasing a handful at the turn of last year to customers whose identities were a telling commentary in themselves – the Japanese government, the University of California and the city of Los Angeles.

31 July 2003

Roger East

Editors' blog

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