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Can a single nation completely eliminate its consumption of oil and coal, meeting all of its fuel needs entirely through hydrogen? That's what Iceland plans to do in the next forty years, thanks to the pioneering efforts of Bragi Arnason. Known as "Professor Hydrogen," the University of Iceland scientist has turned his nation into a testing ground for the world's most advanced experiment in renewable energy. Prompted by Arnason's crusade, the university has teamed up with Shell and DaimlerChrysler to wean the country from its annual dependence on 6 million barrels of imported oil, converting every bus, car and boat on the island to hydrogen. "If they can demonstrate that an economy run on renewable energy is viable," says Kert Davies of Greenpeace, "it will be an enormous precedent for the world to follow."
Arnason, who has been pushing his vision of a hydrogen future for nearly thirty years, was long regarded as something of an eccentric. "He was the preacher in the desert -- very few people listened to him," says Thorsteinn Sigfusson, a fellow professor. "Now he is the founding father of hydrogen, well-known all over Iceland."
Following Arnason's blueprint, the city of Reykjavik is transforming its bus fleet into hydrogen vehicles. Arnason concedes that switching the entire country to fuel cells won't be easy: It takes energy to produce hydrogen -- energy that usually comes from the very fossil fuels it's meant to replace. But Iceland already produces nearly all of its electricity from geothermal and hydroelectric power, giving it a clean, homegrown way to separate hydrogen molecules from water. By the time the country is finished implementing Arnason's vision, it will have cut its climate-warming pollution in half.
Arnason, 70, doesn't expect to be around to witness that day -- but his four daughters and eight grandchildren will be. The professor, who rides horses across Iceland for weeks at a time, says his country's future will look much like its past. "When the Vikings settled in Iceland, they used only renewable energy like wind, sun and wood," he notes. "The Icelanders were in the 'first solar-energy civilization' -- and so was the whole world. Now we are finding our way out of the fossil-fuel era, back into the 'second solar-energy civilization.' And, in the end, the same will also be the case for the rest of the world."