Thirty years ago, a plan was hatched to heat the capital, Reykjavik, with steam-powered turbines using Icelands huge reservoirs of hot underground water. It worked, and today, hot water from Reykjavik is piped all over the country. But it was a massive step from geo-thermal power, to cars running on water. Now, thats about to happen.
And its all down to Professor Hydrogen, as Bragi Arnason is known today. In the 1970s, Arnason was living on top of a glacier and mapping Icelands underground water reservoirs as part of his doctoral thesis in chemistry. The reservoirs were no secret, in a land where people have been known to cook by burying boxes of bread in the ground. But the professor was the first to map the extent of Icelands geothermic energy reserves. He began to wonder why, if Iceland could heat its houses, it couldnt fuel its cars and thus the idea of the hydrogen economy was born.
He spent the next few decades trying to convince his colleagues, and the government, that his vision could work, but it wasnt until 1999, when Daimler-Chrysler arrived in town to set up a joint venture with the Icelandic government, that the sceptics were finally silenced. In a couple of months, Icelands first hydrogen-powered buses will be on the streets, filling up at the worlds first hydrogen filling station.
This is a new energy resource coming into the market, and we as an energy company want to be involved in the future, a Shell representative tells Geoff. The key to producing power from H2Ois to zap it with electricity. This splits the hydrogen from the oxygen. The hydrogen is then passed through a fuel cell that powers an electric motor. There are no pollutants, just steam.
Iceland currently owns more cars per head than almost any other nation on earth, and is the largest per capita producer of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases, due to its huge fishing fleet and metal smelting industry, so the benefits of a switch to hydrogen power will be global. Not only that Icelanders are hoping that they can serve as a laboratory for the rest of the world.
If it comes together in a positive way we can show the rest of the world that its possible to have an entire society based on a new kind of energy, President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson tells Geoff.
Energy that doesnt threaten the life on earth, doesnt threaten the climate and is friendly to the future of mankind.
Of course there are still many hurdles to overcome at the moment it costs twice to three times as much to produce hydrogen as the equivalent amount of oil, and the buses cost around six times as much to manufacture as their conventional counterparts. The cost of replacing an entire infrastructure based around oil will also be huge. Shell Hydrogen estimates it would take at least $US19 billion to build hydrogen fuel stations in the US. But because Iceland is so small, the cost will be millions rather than billions making it the ideal location for a grand experiment.
Its also a nation accustomed to being in front famous for its innovation, and the imagination of its people. It seems that once more, Iceland is ahead of the rest of world. I will see the first steps, says Professor Arnason. My children will watch the transformation, and my grandchildren will live in this new energy economy.
Icleand shots
Music
00:00
Hutchison: It lies remote from Europe, high in the North Atlantic. Iceland -- home to one of the worlds great wildernesses. Barren, and for the most part uninhabitable -- full of glaciers and Arctic deserts.
00:21
It may be cold in the clouds, but deep within Icelands volcanic crust, beats a hot-blooded and furiously powerful heart.
00:50
Eleven hundred years ago, Vikings used the power of the wind to sail here. Now, the people of Iceland are hoping to harness another readily available energy source, from right underneath their feet.
Iceland is hoping to become the worlds first hydrogen economy. The aim -- to free itself from fossil fuel dependency, within maybe 30 years.
01:23
Power plants
Grimsson: In a way you can ask yourself, where does the audacity come from for this small nation desiring to lead the world in a field where all the nations have a stake?
01:35
Grimsson
Super: Olafur Ragnur Grimsson
President, Iceland
And maybe it comes from this desire to be creative, to do something new, to walk paths that nobody has walked before
01:53
Geyser/Tourists
Hutchison: This geyser, about an hours drive from the capital Reykjavik, is one of Icelands most popular tourist attractions. The country has more geothermal activity bubbling underground than anywhere in the world.
02:16
Grimsson outside White House
Icelanders have a great appreciation of nature -- it extends right across society and all the way to the White House, where President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson exudes an environmental righteousness thats almost evangelical.
02:42
Grimsson: We have this eternal machine in this country, created by the almighty which consisting of the fire below under the ground,
03:02
Grimsson
and the glaciers and the water that comes from the sky and it goes on year after year, century after century, creating this fascinating source of energy.
03:10
Rivers/Waterfalls
Music
03:18
Hutchison: Back in the 1970s scientists realised they had harnessed only a tiny fraction of Icelands hot springs, rivers and waterfalls. Iceland has no oil, gas or coal reserves and across its volcanic vistas, no timber either. The need for cheap, sustainable energy became critical.
03:26
Power plant
And so an ambitious project was born to do away with expensive imported fuels and heat the city of Reykjavik from the power within.
04:00
A generation on, and steam powered turbines now produce low cost, non-polluting electricity and hot water, piped all over the country.
Buildings/sky
Today, almost every building in Iceland is heated this way.
04:26
Bragi Arnason takes swim in waste water
And this is the man largely responsible --Professor Bragi Arnason -- better known as Professor Hydrogen -- preparing to take a dip in the power plants waste water known to locals and tourists alike as the famous Blue Lagoon spa.
04:47
For more than 40 years, Professor Hydrogen has mapped and researched Icelands geothermal energy. It was he who first posed the question, if we can heat our water, why cant we fuel our cars.
05:09
Arnason
Arnason: We have only taken the first real steps towards the hydrogen economy. We have a very long way to go still -- and there will be lots of problems and a lot of trouble and everything like when in the research mode. But at the end, I am almost certain that we will succeed.
05:25
People swimming in waste water
Hutchison: And the reason he believes it will succeed is that Iceland is the perfect laboratory. It has a small infrastructure, but a real one, and good ideas dont get lost in bureaucracy.
05:50
Arnason: The benefit of such a small society is that communication goes very fast.
06:05
Arnason
Super: Professor Bragi Annason
Geothermal expert
We dont have to wait for half a year to get an answer from a minister. We can pick up a phone and talk to him -- thats a very great advantage.
06:11
Grimsson: In order to justify our existence, we have to be relevant. We have to make a contribution, we have to do something new, and the hydrogen project became a fascination for the people of Iceland because it
06:25
Grimsson
combined our emphasis on clean energy, of the waterfalls, on the geysers and creating electricity from environmentally sound resources that are completely renewable.
06:45
Laboratory equipment
Music
07:02
Hutchison: To understand the essence of all this, we need to stand among the test tubes and lab coats at the University of Reykjavik, where Thorstein Sigfusson, head of Icelandic New Energy will try to explain how it all works.
07:12
Sigfusson and Hutchison
Sigfusson: Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. Its all over the universe, if you like. Its the lightest of the elements, its the simplest of the elements. When hydrogen combines with oxygen, it forms water. In fact, you can split water using electricity again, into hydrogen and oxygen and this is exactly the basis of the hydrogen energy economy. We would be using hydrogen for powering vehicles, ships, buses, etcetera.
07:29
Laboratory
Hutchison: So, Iceland has plenty of the key ingredients, water and electricity.
08:02
Zap water with electricity and you produce hydrogen, which is then passed through a fuel cell to power an electric motor. The benefits? No pollutants. No smoke, only steam.
Hutchison: It really is quite a visionary idea how do you guarantee that the momentum will be there to see it to the end?
08:25
Sigfusson and Hutchison
Sigfusson: I think the momentum will come from the sheer fact that the oil reserves of the earth have come to the top. The slope is downwards from now. This is what everyone recognises. And be it fifty years or a hundred years it doesnt matter, the oil has to be replaced somehow.
08:32
Motor
Hutchison: A few years ago this hydrogen powered motor attracted the interest of international vehicle and energy companies. They were soon knocking on the presidential door asking to come in -- bringing millions of investment dollars with them.
08:54
Grimsson
Super: Olafur Ragnur Grimsson
President, Iceland
Grimsson: What is it that brings such different participants together and unifies them in this one project? I think it is a vision of the future. I think it is a desire, really, to change the world.
Oil Company Rep: I think we are seeing this as a new energy resource coming into the market
09:16
Oil Company Rep
and we as an energy company and we are distributing energy and if this is a future product we want to be in there.
09:44
People at petrol bowsers
Hutchison: Its Friday afternoon and Reykjaviks drivers are pouring out of the city, filling up their four wheel drives and heading for the great outdoors.
10:01
Despite their clean and green ethos, Icelanders are rather bad polluters. They own more cars per head than just about anyone else in the world.
10:15
Traffic
Concerned with Icelands own contribution to global warming, the government believes, one day, hydrogen fuel will cut greenhouse emissions by 50 percent.
10:35
And within a couple of months Daimler Chrysler will deliver the hydrogen powered buses to truly begin this energy revolution.
10:47
Petrol station
They won't fill up here, but just on the other side of the forecourt -- at the world's first hydrogen filling station.
11:00
Sigfusson
Super: Prof. Throsteinn Sigfusson
Icelandic New Energy
Sigfusson: It will take about six and a half minutes to fill the buses from this dispenser station here, and they will have enough hydrogen to run for a whole days 250 kilometres within Reykjavik. Besides that, we will see the buses, the nine other cities in Europe with three buses each, all running in the months to come
11:12
Icelandic scenery
Music
11:34
Hutchison: By now, you might be thinking what an idyllic place Iceland is. How sensitive and respectful people are of its environmental health. Youd be partly right, of course, but the hydrogen economy wont be delivering its benefits for years. And in the meantime, Iceland like everywhere else, has to balance environmental considerations with economic ones.
11:40
Its about to embark on its biggest development project yet -- a multi billion dollar scheme which will change one of its greatest wildernesses for ever.
12:22
Dam site
The government has reached an agreement with the ALCOA company, to re-route rivers, flood big parts of the highlands and build several dams to provide hydro-electricity for a new aluminium smelter in one of the eastern fjords.
12:42
Grimsson: We are very much aware that here in Iceland we have the largest wilderness left in Europe. You can travel all over Europe and you will not find the open spaces, the landscape wilderness, that you find in this country.
13:02
Grimsson
And we know that we are here, the guardians of this wilderness, not just for ourselves for mankind, for future generations, but at the same time, we have to make a living.
13:26
Hauksdottir in plane
Hutchison: Last year, this woman went on a hunger strike to try to stop the project going ahead. Her name is Hildur Runa Hauksdottir, better known as the mother of Icelands most famous export --the pop star Bjork.
13:41
Hildur Runa Hauksdottir is returning to the highlands for the first time since construction began. She cannot believe her governments willingness to sacrifice this place.
13:58
Super: Hildur Runa Hauksdottir
Conservationist
Hutchison: How precious is this part of the highlands to Icelandic people?
Hildur: To me they are the pride of Iceland. To be an Icelander, to have this mountain, to have this wilderness, and to take it away, is to lose your identity.
14:12
Reservoir building
Hutchison: But the huge project is already underway. Access roads and tunnels being carved in preparation for work to begin on a huge reservoir.
Fishing port
But Iceland faces some tough economic realities. Two-thirds of its economy is based on the sometimes unreliable fishing industry and while tourism is a growing sector, the season is a short one -- often only three months long.
14:59
Hjalmar Arnason is one politician who says the smelter must go ahead, arguing that if its powered by Icelandic electricity at least it will be clean.
15:20
Arnason
Super: Hjalmar Arnason
Iceland MP
Arnason: Although we have to sacrifice something in our unique nature, this is a very small part of Iceland that we are sacrificing, but what we gain is our environmental contribution to the world and we create money, we are exporting electricity in the form of aluminium, we create jobs and we will maintain the most beautiful part of Iceland.
15:39
Dirt car rally
Hutchison: Its Saturday afternoon and hundreds of fans are watching Icelands version of an off road bush bash. Its a day of gravity defying thrills and spills, and nowhere in the country is fossil fuel being guzzled with greater thirst.
16:21
But if the vision of a hydrogen economy is to become reality, this sort of thing may no longer no affordable.
16:42
At the moment, hydrogen costs up to three times as much to produce as petrol or diesel fuel, and scientists can't yet agree on the best way to store it. And even if the experiment works here, it won't be easy to replicate elsewhere, because few countries have such easy access to clean electricity.
16:51
Music
17:13
Rural scenery
Hutchison: All of which makes fossil fuels a more attractive economic option -- for now. Icelanders though, are convinced that as the oil dries up, hydrogen is the way of the future.
17:27
Grimsson
Grimsson: If it comes together in a positive way we can show the rest of the world that it is indeed possible to have an entire society or a city comprehensively based on a new type of energy. Energy that doesnt threaten the life on earth, doesnt threaten the climate, and is friendly to the future of mankind.
17:45
Children
I am sure there will be authorities all over the world who will take a very keen interest in this project, and I would say if it succeeds would have to adjust their entire city planning, their way of life, their way of thinking to the success of the Icelandic experiment.
18:16
Sunset/geyser
Hutchison: If it comes off, it will indeed be a remarkable achievement. Not that Icelanders would be that surprised. Theyd like to tell you good ideas have been bubbling away here for thousands of years.
18:44
Credits:
Reporter: GEOFF HUTCHISON
Camera: JOHN BENES
Editor: SIMON BRYNJOLFFSSEN
Producer: RENATA GOMBAC
And its all down to Professor Hydrogen, as Bragi Arnason is known today. In the 1970s, Arnason was living on top of a glacier and mapping Icelands underground water reservoirs as part of his doctoral thesis in chemistry. The reservoirs were no secret, in a land where people have been known to cook by burying boxes of bread in the ground. But the professor was the first to map the extent of Icelands geothermic energy reserves. He began to wonder why, if Iceland could heat its houses, it couldnt fuel its cars and thus the idea of the hydrogen economy was born.
He spent the next few decades trying to convince his colleagues, and the government, that his vision could work, but it wasnt until 1999, when Daimler-Chrysler arrived in town to set up a joint venture with the Icelandic government, that the sceptics were finally silenced. In a couple of months, Icelands first hydrogen-powered buses will be on the streets, filling up at the worlds first hydrogen filling station.
This is a new energy resource coming into the market, and we as an energy company want to be involved in the future, a Shell representative tells Geoff. The key to producing power from H2Ois to zap it with electricity. This splits the hydrogen from the oxygen. The hydrogen is then passed through a fuel cell that powers an electric motor. There are no pollutants, just steam.
Iceland currently owns more cars per head than almost any other nation on earth, and is the largest per capita producer of carbon dioxide and other greenhouses gases, due to its huge fishing fleet and metal smelting industry, so the benefits of a switch to hydrogen power will be global. Not only that Icelanders are hoping that they can serve as a laboratory for the rest of the world.
If it comes together in a positive way we can show the rest of the world that its possible to have an entire society based on a new kind of energy, President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson tells Geoff.
Energy that doesnt threaten the life on earth, doesnt threaten the climate and is friendly to the future of mankind.
Of course there are still many hurdles to overcome at the moment it costs twice to three times as much to produce hydrogen as the equivalent amount of oil, and the buses cost around six times as much to manufacture as their conventional counterparts. The cost of replacing an entire infrastructure based around oil will also be huge. Shell Hydrogen estimates it would take at least $US19 billion to build hydrogen fuel stations in the US. But because Iceland is so small, the cost will be millions rather than billions making it the ideal location for a grand experiment.
Its also a nation accustomed to being in front famous for its innovation, and the imagination of its people. It seems that once more, Iceland is ahead of the rest of world. I will see the first steps, says Professor Arnason. My children will watch the transformation, and my grandchildren will live in this new energy economy.
Icleand shots
Music
00:00
Hutchison: It lies remote from Europe, high in the North Atlantic. Iceland -- home to one of the worlds great wildernesses. Barren, and for the most part uninhabitable -- full of glaciers and Arctic deserts.
00:21
It may be cold in the clouds, but deep within Icelands volcanic crust, beats a hot-blooded and furiously powerful heart.
00:50
Eleven hundred years ago, Vikings used the power of the wind to sail here. Now, the people of Iceland are hoping to harness another readily available energy source, from right underneath their feet.
Iceland is hoping to become the worlds first hydrogen economy. The aim -- to free itself from fossil fuel dependency, within maybe 30 years.
01:23
Power plants
Grimsson: In a way you can ask yourself, where does the audacity come from for this small nation desiring to lead the world in a field where all the nations have a stake?
01:35
Grimsson
Super: Olafur Ragnur Grimsson
President, Iceland
And maybe it comes from this desire to be creative, to do something new, to walk paths that nobody has walked before
01:53
Geyser/Tourists
Hutchison: This geyser, about an hours drive from the capital Reykjavik, is one of Icelands most popular tourist attractions. The country has more geothermal activity bubbling underground than anywhere in the world.
02:16
Grimsson outside White House
Icelanders have a great appreciation of nature -- it extends right across society and all the way to the White House, where President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson exudes an environmental righteousness thats almost evangelical.
02:42
Grimsson: We have this eternal machine in this country, created by the almighty which consisting of the fire below under the ground,
03:02
Grimsson
and the glaciers and the water that comes from the sky and it goes on year after year, century after century, creating this fascinating source of energy.
03:10
Rivers/Waterfalls
Music
03:18
Hutchison: Back in the 1970s scientists realised they had harnessed only a tiny fraction of Icelands hot springs, rivers and waterfalls. Iceland has no oil, gas or coal reserves and across its volcanic vistas, no timber either. The need for cheap, sustainable energy became critical.
03:26
Power plant
And so an ambitious project was born to do away with expensive imported fuels and heat the city of Reykjavik from the power within.
04:00
A generation on, and steam powered turbines now produce low cost, non-polluting electricity and hot water, piped all over the country.
Buildings/sky
Today, almost every building in Iceland is heated this way.
04:26
Bragi Arnason takes swim in waste water
And this is the man largely responsible --Professor Bragi Arnason -- better known as Professor Hydrogen -- preparing to take a dip in the power plants waste water known to locals and tourists alike as the famous Blue Lagoon spa.
04:47
For more than 40 years, Professor Hydrogen has mapped and researched Icelands geothermal energy. It was he who first posed the question, if we can heat our water, why cant we fuel our cars.
05:09
Arnason
Arnason: We have only taken the first real steps towards the hydrogen economy. We have a very long way to go still -- and there will be lots of problems and a lot of trouble and everything like when in the research mode. But at the end, I am almost certain that we will succeed.
05:25
People swimming in waste water
Hutchison: And the reason he believes it will succeed is that Iceland is the perfect laboratory. It has a small infrastructure, but a real one, and good ideas dont get lost in bureaucracy.
05:50
Arnason: The benefit of such a small society is that communication goes very fast.
06:05
Arnason
Super: Professor Bragi Annason
Geothermal expert
We dont have to wait for half a year to get an answer from a minister. We can pick up a phone and talk to him -- thats a very great advantage.
06:11
Grimsson: In order to justify our existence, we have to be relevant. We have to make a contribution, we have to do something new, and the hydrogen project became a fascination for the people of Iceland because it
06:25
Grimsson
combined our emphasis on clean energy, of the waterfalls, on the geysers and creating electricity from environmentally sound resources that are completely renewable.
06:45
Laboratory equipment
Music
07:02
Hutchison: To understand the essence of all this, we need to stand among the test tubes and lab coats at the University of Reykjavik, where Thorstein Sigfusson, head of Icelandic New Energy will try to explain how it all works.
07:12
Sigfusson and Hutchison
Sigfusson: Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. Its all over the universe, if you like. Its the lightest of the elements, its the simplest of the elements. When hydrogen combines with oxygen, it forms water. In fact, you can split water using electricity again, into hydrogen and oxygen and this is exactly the basis of the hydrogen energy economy. We would be using hydrogen for powering vehicles, ships, buses, etcetera.
07:29
Laboratory
Hutchison: So, Iceland has plenty of the key ingredients, water and electricity.
08:02
Zap water with electricity and you produce hydrogen, which is then passed through a fuel cell to power an electric motor. The benefits? No pollutants. No smoke, only steam.
Hutchison: It really is quite a visionary idea how do you guarantee that the momentum will be there to see it to the end?
08:25
Sigfusson and Hutchison
Sigfusson: I think the momentum will come from the sheer fact that the oil reserves of the earth have come to the top. The slope is downwards from now. This is what everyone recognises. And be it fifty years or a hundred years it doesnt matter, the oil has to be replaced somehow.
08:32
Motor
Hutchison: A few years ago this hydrogen powered motor attracted the interest of international vehicle and energy companies. They were soon knocking on the presidential door asking to come in -- bringing millions of investment dollars with them.
08:54
Grimsson
Super: Olafur Ragnur Grimsson
President, Iceland
Grimsson: What is it that brings such different participants together and unifies them in this one project? I think it is a vision of the future. I think it is a desire, really, to change the world.
Oil Company Rep: I think we are seeing this as a new energy resource coming into the market
09:16
Oil Company Rep
and we as an energy company and we are distributing energy and if this is a future product we want to be in there.
09:44
People at petrol bowsers
Hutchison: Its Friday afternoon and Reykjaviks drivers are pouring out of the city, filling up their four wheel drives and heading for the great outdoors.
10:01
Despite their clean and green ethos, Icelanders are rather bad polluters. They own more cars per head than just about anyone else in the world.
10:15
Traffic
Concerned with Icelands own contribution to global warming, the government believes, one day, hydrogen fuel will cut greenhouse emissions by 50 percent.
10:35
And within a couple of months Daimler Chrysler will deliver the hydrogen powered buses to truly begin this energy revolution.
10:47
Petrol station
They won't fill up here, but just on the other side of the forecourt -- at the world's first hydrogen filling station.
11:00
Sigfusson
Super: Prof. Throsteinn Sigfusson
Icelandic New Energy
Sigfusson: It will take about six and a half minutes to fill the buses from this dispenser station here, and they will have enough hydrogen to run for a whole days 250 kilometres within Reykjavik. Besides that, we will see the buses, the nine other cities in Europe with three buses each, all running in the months to come
11:12
Icelandic scenery
Music
11:34
Hutchison: By now, you might be thinking what an idyllic place Iceland is. How sensitive and respectful people are of its environmental health. Youd be partly right, of course, but the hydrogen economy wont be delivering its benefits for years. And in the meantime, Iceland like everywhere else, has to balance environmental considerations with economic ones.
11:40
Its about to embark on its biggest development project yet -- a multi billion dollar scheme which will change one of its greatest wildernesses for ever.
12:22
Dam site
The government has reached an agreement with the ALCOA company, to re-route rivers, flood big parts of the highlands and build several dams to provide hydro-electricity for a new aluminium smelter in one of the eastern fjords.
12:42
Grimsson: We are very much aware that here in Iceland we have the largest wilderness left in Europe. You can travel all over Europe and you will not find the open spaces, the landscape wilderness, that you find in this country.
13:02
Grimsson
And we know that we are here, the guardians of this wilderness, not just for ourselves for mankind, for future generations, but at the same time, we have to make a living.
13:26
Hauksdottir in plane
Hutchison: Last year, this woman went on a hunger strike to try to stop the project going ahead. Her name is Hildur Runa Hauksdottir, better known as the mother of Icelands most famous export --the pop star Bjork.
13:41
Hildur Runa Hauksdottir is returning to the highlands for the first time since construction began. She cannot believe her governments willingness to sacrifice this place.
13:58
Super: Hildur Runa Hauksdottir
Conservationist
Hutchison: How precious is this part of the highlands to Icelandic people?
Hildur: To me they are the pride of Iceland. To be an Icelander, to have this mountain, to have this wilderness, and to take it away, is to lose your identity.
14:12
Reservoir building
Hutchison: But the huge project is already underway. Access roads and tunnels being carved in preparation for work to begin on a huge reservoir.
Fishing port
But Iceland faces some tough economic realities. Two-thirds of its economy is based on the sometimes unreliable fishing industry and while tourism is a growing sector, the season is a short one -- often only three months long.
14:59
Hjalmar Arnason is one politician who says the smelter must go ahead, arguing that if its powered by Icelandic electricity at least it will be clean.
15:20
Arnason
Super: Hjalmar Arnason
Iceland MP
Arnason: Although we have to sacrifice something in our unique nature, this is a very small part of Iceland that we are sacrificing, but what we gain is our environmental contribution to the world and we create money, we are exporting electricity in the form of aluminium, we create jobs and we will maintain the most beautiful part of Iceland.
15:39
Dirt car rally
Hutchison: Its Saturday afternoon and hundreds of fans are watching Icelands version of an off road bush bash. Its a day of gravity defying thrills and spills, and nowhere in the country is fossil fuel being guzzled with greater thirst.
16:21
But if the vision of a hydrogen economy is to become reality, this sort of thing may no longer no affordable.
16:42
At the moment, hydrogen costs up to three times as much to produce as petrol or diesel fuel, and scientists can't yet agree on the best way to store it. And even if the experiment works here, it won't be easy to replicate elsewhere, because few countries have such easy access to clean electricity.
16:51
Music
17:13
Rural scenery
Hutchison: All of which makes fossil fuels a more attractive economic option -- for now. Icelanders though, are convinced that as the oil dries up, hydrogen is the way of the future.
17:27
Grimsson
Grimsson: If it comes together in a positive way we can show the rest of the world that it is indeed possible to have an entire society or a city comprehensively based on a new type of energy. Energy that doesnt threaten the life on earth, doesnt threaten the climate, and is friendly to the future of mankind.
17:45
Children
I am sure there will be authorities all over the world who will take a very keen interest in this project, and I would say if it succeeds would have to adjust their entire city planning, their way of life, their way of thinking to the success of the Icelandic experiment.
18:16
Sunset/geyser
Hutchison: If it comes off, it will indeed be a remarkable achievement. Not that Icelanders would be that surprised. Theyd like to tell you good ideas have been bubbling away here for thousands of years.
18:44
Credits:
Reporter: GEOFF HUTCHISON
Camera: JOHN BENES
Editor: SIMON BRYNJOLFFSSEN
Producer: RENATA GOMBAC