Diego Arguedas Ortiz: The tiny Scottish islands leading the way in hydrogen-power
Scotland’s Orkney
islands produce more clean energy than their inhabitants can use. Their next
step? Hydrogen. Here’s why that matters – and what the rest of the world could
learn.
I’ve seen thousands of
petrol pumps in my life, but this is my first encounter with a hydrogen
refuelling station. It sits by the road in the Orkney islands, an archipelago
off the north-east coast of Scotland where residents have big dreams: they want
to have their cars, ferries and boilers all running on hydrogen. As we approach the
station, its normality is striking. There are no attendants in full-body hazmat
suits, no sci-fi loud bangs, no bright neon signs. Just your average dispenser
waiting to be used. But Adele Lidderdale,
a hydrogen project officer at the Orkney Islands Council, is a little nervous:
one of her van’s sensors has been malfunctioning lately, she says, and might
not accept fuel from the nozzle. Now, she plugs the nozzle into her van and
steps back to the screen at the other end of the black hose. She looks relieved
as the charging process starts with a hydraulic mumble from within the
dispenser. Three minutes later,
the 1.4kg tank full, we drive off – all without using one single drop of
petrol.
Since Orkney started planning
its hydrogen-based economy in 2016, the process hasn’t always been this smooth.
When five vans, including this one, arrived in 2017, the islands didn’t have
hydrogen for them, as production was still not underway. After managing to
charge the tanks, the planners encountered another potential issue: who can fix
a broken hydrogen vehicle in a community of 21,000 people?
- The
biggest energy challenges facing humanity
- The
ships that could change the seas forever
- The
island with the electric sea
- Were
these remote, wild islands the centre of everything?
In response to the
challenges, the Orcadians flew in an expert to train a local mechanic, created
fresh educational programmes for ferry operators and drafted regulations to
update maritime law to allow hydrogen use in vessels. And they aren’t stopping
there. If everything goes according to plan, by 2021 the islands will
have the
world’s first sea-going car-and-passenger ferry fuelled only by hydrogen. The archipelago might
seem an unlikely place for such cutting-edge aspirations. But if it can
succeed, it may inspire other communities to move away from fossil fuels too.
As Lidderdale says: “If we can dream that you can run a ship on hydrogen,
there’s no reason others won’t follow.”
read more:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190327-the-tiny-islands-leading-the-way-in-hydrogen-power