Introduction

Icelandic New Energy (INE) is a company that promotes the use of hydrogen as a fuel in the transportation sector. INE is owned by the Icelandic holding company Vistorka (a cooperation platform made up of all the major power companies and research bodies as well as investment funds) and Daimler-Chrysler, Norsk Hydro and Shell Hydrogen. The company has been involved in developing the hydrogen economy in Iceland since 1999. INE works as an international project manager in demonstrations and research involving hydrogen applications for infrastructure, transportation and backup-power. These projects aim to facilitate Iceland’s transition to an economy which is run purely on renewable, local energy sources.
By 2006, the company had run a number of successful pilot projects, including a trial with three hydrogen fuel cell buses and an electrolytic production and filling hydrogen station (ECTOS project).
Along with this initiative several social surveys and inquiries with the public had been made indicating a general interest and positive attitude towards the idea of using hydrogen as a local energy carrier. INE was interested in testing a tool that could help address social acceptability issues for highly innovative technology projects.

Objectives and target audience

INE’s objective was to study and develop the use of hydrogen, hydrogen carriers, and fuel cells as energy systems in various fields of application in Iceland.
The political will transform Iceland into a hydrogen economy is very apparent as shown by the initiative for INE and the ECTOS Project. If hydrogen could be Iceland’s main energy carrier, the island would free itself from dependence on imported fossil fuels and it could easily reach its Kyoto protocol commitments on CO2  emissions. Iceland’s technical, financial and political communities see this development as a stepping stone towards reaching their objective, which is to be a self-sufficient energy provider for all the island’s energy requirements.
Because the ECTOS Project combines environmental and technological aspects, it is the first step in a foreseen transition to a hydrogen-based economy for Iceland. The main objectives of the project are:

• to gain experience in establishing a new infrastructure, interacting with the regenerative electric supply system;
• to estimate the cost and timeframe of integrating a new infrastructure for the fuelling distribution system of the future;
• to contribute to creating a CO2 -neutral public transport system;
• to gain public acceptance for the use of an alternative energy source to power the transport system that is independent of fossil fuel supplies;
• to study the life-cycle analysis of the equipment (buses and the filling station) and the fuel production chain.

Financial Resources and Partners involved

After an evaluation by a panel of experts, the EU decided to support ECTOS with 2.85 million EUR (3.4 million USD, at an exchange rate of .846 EUR/USD) out of the total cost of 7 million EUR (8.3 million USD).
Partners involved :

• Icelandic New Energy
• Vistorka
• DaimlerChrysler and EvoBus
• European Commission
• Shell Hydrogen
• Skeljungur in Iceland (Shell Iceland)
• Norsk Hydro Electrolysers
• University of Iceland

Process

About Iceland
The conditions on Iceland make it an ideal test ground for the new hydrogen economy. There are five main reasons for this:

1. Iceland is a small, highly developed society. It has a population of only 280,000, the majority of whom lives in the Reykjavik area, and some 180,000 vehicles. Because of this scale, small projects have more impact than they would in larger societies (three buses in Reykjavik comprise 4% of the total bus fleet).
2. Iceland has experience in switching from one energy source to another. Space heating was converted from oil to geothermal heating between 1940 and 1975. So there is a thorough understanding of the fine points of such a shift.
3. Iceland has standards and transport systems that are similar to those in most other developed countries. This means the results of any research project can be easily transferred to other sites.
4. The new hydrogen technology can be evaluated under the severe Icelandic weather conditions, seasonal changes, and a varied topography.
5. Iceland has the rare opportunity of being able to operate a hydrogen-based fuel project in a next to zero CO2  system. The island is already 99% dependent on renewable geothermal and hydroelectric energy. Therefore, the hydrogen will be produced by electrolyses run on electricity from geothermal steam turbines and hydropower.

Public support
Apart from these conditions, Iceland’s social environment is also ideal. Social acceptance of a hydrogen-based future is very high. A recent survey showed that 93 percent of the Icelandic people are very positive about the idea of replacing traditional fossil fuels with fuel cells. One of the key factors assumed to impact the public view is increased independence of the Iceland economy. In addition, Iceland’s technical, financial and political communities see the development as a means of achieving their ambition, which is to become a self-sufficient energy provider for all the island’s energy needs.
With the announcement of its aim to transform Iceland into a hydrogen economy in the near future, the Icelandic government has demonstrated that it is one of the main drivers behind the hydrogen project on the island. The vision is to see the transformation completed by the year 2050.
It goes without saying that many aspects still have to be investigated. Will there be cost
savings for customers? Will there be cost savings on a national level? How much assistance is the government going to give during the transition period? What new legislation is needed? The Icelandic authorities are evaluating these and other aspects in close co-operation with all the relevant parties.
Applying ESTEEM
Maria Maack is a project manager at Icelandic New Energy, where she works together the general manager of the company and another project manager at promoting hydrogen in Iceland. She has applied ESTEEM as an ‘in-house ESTEEM consultant’ at Icelandic New Energy.
The SMARTH2 project started to use ESTEEM in April-May 2007. As always, this was a busy time for the SMARTH2 project: Its governmental funding had just been announced publicly after years of negotiations with the companies that would be test users of the hydrogen cars and the suppliers of cars and other equipment. But Maria wanted to get an organizational overview and find out if views that were reported from former surveys were unchanged and perhaps understand underlying expectations; what stakeholders think about hydrogen in Iceland and how they perceive the SMARTH2 project within the local energy context. She decided to first organize a small workshop in Reykjavik, to which the Create Acceptance team of researchers would be invited as external facilitators.
The ESTEEM process starts with Step 1 ‘Project history, context and actors’. In SMARTH2, the ‘narrative’ was based on material that was familiar to Maria and her colleagues, but identifying the ‘defining moments’ was useful for creating self-awareness within the project management and assessing the status of project, and who were involved in problem solving during the design phase. Moreover, the ‘context analysis’ and ‘actors’ table’ proved useful to pinpoint who are the ‘active participants’ and their stakes concerning the project, this was linked to the work done for  Step 2. The ‘actors table’ also helped INE to devote more attention to ‘external’ and ‘peripheral’ stakeholders in addition to the owners and customers of the project.
Step 2 followed closely on the footsteps of Step 1. In this step, the visions of the project manager and those core stakeholders are articulated. The stakeholder visions were extracted by organizing a workshop (rather than through interviews as suggested to be the first choice in the ESTEEM manual). In preparation for the workshop, the social network maps for ‘PM present vision’ and ‘PM future vision’  were combined. They show that the SMARTH2 project is a complex project involving stakeholders in the fields of technology, science, society, policy/politics, market and partners/investors.
Moreover, each category of stakeholders involves representatives from different societal groups.
Step 3 ‘Identifying the conflicting issues’ was useful for organizing the results of the workshop and establishing priorities. Maria found the ‘issues rating graph’ useful for communicating priorities and inspiring a search for solutions. As a result, continuity and local visibility were identified as having high urgency and priority, and these are the issues that SMARTH2 started working on right after Step 2.
Step 4, ‘Portfolio of options’ focuses on identifying options to improve the social acceptability of the project. Because INE started solving the problems right after the workshop, the Step 4 tables were used in SMARTH2 to monitor which issues had already been solved and to follow the development of the issues and solutions in the time following the workshop.
Step 5, ‘Getting to shake hands’, consists of organizing a workshop for stakeholders. The most urgent issue, and most problematic was to get all stakeholders to the future scenario workshop, including opponents and those who influence the general discourse in society. This event can be interpreted as a demand from the public through INE to make the governmental policy on hydrogen more visible in the local context. Also to encourage a broad discussion on all types of alternative fuels in the local context. This has many conflicting issues that need to be at least discussed at the same level: hydrogen versus other types of fuel, fuel security, governmental support without suppressing private initiatives, research policy, financial policy, taxation policy, current energy infrastructure, agriculture and energy use etc. The issues were so many, so broad and so close to the core activities of Icelandic New Energy that Maria decided to ask the University to step in and conduct this stakeholder workshop and act as a go-between for the government, the company and all those who may have stakes in a new fuel economy in the Icelandic context. Maria on the other hand mobilized the ministry of Industry, the oil companies, those interested in local and global economy development and others that had appeared on the original map of actors within the SMARTH2. The ESTEEM Workshop cookbook was introduced to the University as a framework for the next actions. Four students and two department chefs were engaged since the goal became to outline a frame that could give rise to research projects on all types of new fuels and energy carriers for the Icelandic society.
Step 6, ‘Recommendations for action’. After the workshop, Maria sat down to think about the next steps. First, she listed the main results from the workshop in terms of acceptability of the different options suggested. She also made a list of the new options that emerged from the workshop. For planning where to take it from there, she started out by filling in the
‘acceptance and feasibility table’. Using these tables, Maria drew up for INE a short-term action plan, a collaboration plan and a long-term capacity building and monitoring plan. Moreover, the workshop helped her to update INE’s communication plan and include there the new actions that need to be communicated to the stakeholders.

Results

Critical Success Factors / Challenges

The outcome of the ECTOS Project could have major implications for the future of hydrogen power globally. Many other countries are increasingly sourcing energy from renewable sources that can also be used to produce hydrogen. The ultimate challenge for these countries is producing the hydrogen and establishing an infrastructure for its delivery. The ECTOS Project could serve as a model to the rest of the world for a hydrogen-based future.