Doug's Blog #3
Iceland is well on its way to becoming the model country in the world for clean energy. But it did have a head start. It is located where hydroelectric power is abundant and geothermal power is readily available. Also only about 300,000 people live on this island so they do have an advantage over the rest of the world. However they do have their disadvantages, they have to ship all their oil in for their automobiles. The cost of importing oil to an isolated island in the harsh North Atlantic? About $8 a gallon, and we though our gas was high. However the environmentally minded Icelanders have a clean solution to this too. They are going to start converting all the country's automobiles to hydrogen power. The main ingredients? water and electricity, both of which Iceland has plenty of. This is going to be a great test ground for this new technology and should help hydrogen fuel cell cars to become available to the U.S. soon. The technology seems too good to be true. Fill your car up with hydrogen created from sending an electrical current through water separating the hydrogen and oxygen, filling up your car with the hydrogen, it travels through a fuel cell, and at the end of the day you have to empty your cars tank. The only byproduct of this process is water. Why hasn't this started full production in the U.S.? Well it takes a lot of energy to make the hydrogen and if the electricity doesn't come from clean processes then your not saving the environment. In my opinion I blame the oil companies for lobbying influential people from developing this technology. I believe this is the technology that will break our addiction from oil and it should be researched to the maximum.
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