Low Impact

Just a quick one today to point you to this story at CNN, titled “Iceland phasing out fossil fuels for clean energy”.

The story discusses how almost of all Iceland’s domestic energy needs are met from local renewable sources, typically hydroelectric, or geothermal. And now, trials are underway to reduce their reliance on oil.

Climate change aside (as if that wasn’t a big enough reason!), Iceland has the additional motivation that it costs a lot of money to transport oil all the way there, with a consequence that a litre of petrol costs around $2US a litre. So, they are trialling a number of hydrogen-powered cars and buses. After all, if there’s one thing that Iceland has plenty of, its ice and water - both great sources of hydrogen!

Now normally, the hidden catch in hydrogen power is that electricity is required to break the hydrogen out of the water molecules. When your primary electricity source is a carbon dioxide emitting coal power plant, things stop being so green… But for a country like Iceland, where their power is coming from renewable, non-polluting sources, its perfect.

It makes you wonder why Australia can’t go at least some way down the same path. There’s some promising research into “hot rocks” as a power source in Australia, but we’ve got a long way to go to reach Iceland’s level. Iceland is currently 53rd in the world in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per capita (i.e per head of population) with 7.6 tonnes of CO2 emitted per person per year. Australia is at position 13 in the table with more than twice that figure with 16.3 tonnes of CO2 per person, per year.

We’ve got a little way to go yet before Australia reaches Iceland’s level…!

Categories: efficiency, energy, environment, green