Icelanders laughed in the 1970s when a university professor spearheaded hydrogen as the energy of the future. Now the island nation is set to become a global guinea pig — the first fully-fledged hydrogen-powered, eco-friendly economy on the planet. Wallpaper*‘s Eric Enno Tamm investigates the latest – and greenest – quest in Iceland’s epic history.

Stuffed into a pint-sized office at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, Dr. Bragi Arnason looks like the epitome of the nutty professor. Rotund and ruby-cheeked, he has a wavy frosty-white quiff, suspenders and thick spectacles, which lend him a Christopher Lloyd zaniness. When he tells me in a raspy, pensive voice how in the 1960s he constructed the country’s first mass spectrometer to measure the deuterium level in hydrogen isotopes – which eventually sparked his idea in the late 1970s to power Iceland’s entire economy on hydrogen – I start to understand why people dismissed Arnason as the “crazy professor.”

But the jeering has turned to cheering. “Professor Hydrogen,” as the 66-year-old chemistry professor is now affectionately known, was a finalist for a lifetime achievement award from the World Technology Summit in July last year, for his research into alternative energy. He didn’t win the prestigious prize, but his efforts were nevertheless vindicated. The award went to Dr Geoffrey Ballard, founder of Vancouver-based Ballard Power Systems, who invented a hydrogen-powered PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cell, which is revolutionising the auto industry. It is this, Arnason believes, that could make Iceland the first fossil fuel-free country in the world and perhaps save the planet from suffocating on its own greenhouse gases.

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