Hydrogen Economy

Thread in relation to Hydrogen production, and Iceland :

Note : Energy units can be used as currency.

Also see http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Energy_Economy

business plans based on hydrogen?
I saw your interview with L., where he mentions using the kilowat/hour as a stable international trade currency for Iceland.

Just for more specific vision, as for ways of exporting energy, I see more of the option of exporting by tanker.

I have been dreaming for some time of seeing Iceland become a Hydrogen exporter.

I wonder if Iceland has any Hydrogen tankers ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_tanker

or if it already fuels its boats with Hydrogen ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_ship

Is there any such kind of business plan ?

I also feel that hydrogen could fuel planes that would connect Iceland to the world, and enable it to become a major global business hub, based on low cost hydrogen refueling.

reply by A.

I follow the news about water splitting. I can only get behind distributed solutions that have near zero impact, and hydrogen is definitely on that list, but shipping it is not, really. Start buying platinum!

Dante reply to A.

I imagine that is pretty correct, when talking about exploiting Iceland's geothermal energy resources to sell it to North America or Europe, neither an undersea electrical grid, neither hydrogen tankers seem to be part of the sdistributed equation, yet respond to what I understand as Bernard Lietaer's suggestion to an international currency for Iceland...

I also like the distributed approach... Hydrogen powered hydrogen tanker ships can, provided the hydrogen is produced with geothermal energy, be a sustainable source of energy, but indeed, there is a factor of scale...

As also with the current aluminium plants, ...

As for geothermal plants, I know smaller geothermal plats are possible, but perhaps there too scale will play ?

reply by S.

Hi.,

Hydrogen sucks. Protons are huge, they compress poorly. Proton Exchange Membranes are hard to build. Vanadium-Gallium lattices appear to have a fairly decent storage ratio for hydrogen, but you still have the battery itself consuming the bulk of the mass.

I have a friend who has been at the forefront of the "hydrogen economy" for years, he's recently written "Planet Hydrogen". It's not a bad book, and it does hydro tech some justice, but I think that ultimately hydro will not be the winning energy transport mode.

As for KWH exports from Iceland. Well. I'm in favor of saying "if you build it, you can buy it"... have Iceland set very strict regulations alone the lines of:

- undersea electricity cables may be laid. - international treaties and the Icelandic government govern where these cables may be laid. - certain security considerations must be met. - no electricity cable may be laid without an accompanying optical cable, which will be wholly owned by the Icelandic government. [call it a "cable tax"] - the Icelandic power grid always has priority over undersea cables. In the event of a power failure, local needs will be catered to first. - electricity sent over these cables will be sold at no less than common market rates. - electricity units sold will bear a "pollution tax", which is 10% the production cost multiplied by a natural impact factor which measures the carbon footprint, unrenewable resource use, and damage to nature involved in the energy production. Entirely clean energy will then have a multiplication value of 0, meaning no pollution tax. A hydroelectric power plant could then have a factor of 3 or less, whereas a coal power plant would be factored to perhaps 30 or so. This pollution tax should go to a fund which:

a) Financially assists Icelandic companies in improving their infrastructure so as to use less energy and pollute less. b) Develop new technologies intended to reduce energy use, improve efficiency, and reduce pollution. c) Improve other existing infrastructure, including power distribution networks.

- S

=Hydrogen fueled Transportation=

I noticed this video excerpt with some of your interventions

http://www.youtube.com/user/smarimc#p/a/u/3/xmrM-Ie9JIY

By the way, in a perhaps not directly related "vision" regarding Iceland, I would like to have more easy access to "Iceland"... yet not pay too much for it, be there fast, not pollute, etc ( without owning a sailing boat )

Iceland has a huge potential to produce hydrogen through geo or hydro sources of energy, and also uses this energy to produce aluminium.

What would be a next step to produce high speed ( civilian ) ferry boats built with aluminium and fed with hydrogen ?

Could it be possible to promote a special "currency" ( based on energy, aluminium , and tax ) which can create an inventive for certain companies ( such as below ) to set up a building site on iceland for such boats ?

Perhaps soon on a aluminium ferry traveling at 40, even 50 nautical miles an hour ? ( over 70 km / hour ),

see : http://www.gizmag.com/ship-design-austal-102-trimaran/12433/

http://www.austal.com/

http://austal.com/go/news-and-images/video

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austal

( found via Paul on Open Manufacturing )

Iceland also has access to the ocean, and a big part of its exports seem to rely on the fishing industry, which requires boats. Possibly a next step, beyond the fishing industry, would be to promote tourism to iceland via express ferry lines ?

Tourism related to nature, but possibly also as a business hub, or an activist meet up hub ?

Or possibly also as a express high value merchandise terminal logistics center between europe and north america ? Especially when the price of energy soars, and that boats could stop by Iceland to "fill up" with hydrogen between europe and north america ?

I imagine that in addition to a well connected communication heaven, Iceland can be a Transportation Energy heaven ?

I made some calculations using

http://e-ships.net/dist.htm

... connecting "Brest", "Calais - France , "Dover or "Hamburg" with "Reykjavik" ( all around 1200 km ) in 17 hours ? "Leith" ( Edinburgh - Scotland ) or "Bergen" to Reykjavik ( 890 and 870 km ) in 12 hours ? New York ( United States ) or Quebec ( Canada ) in 2400 km... 36 hours ? ( still a bit long ) - this compares to a direct naval route from Rotterdam ( Netherlands ) to New York ( United States ) over 3400 km ( 48 hours ? )