Profesor Hidrogen - Dr. Bragi Arnason

Bragi Arnason adalah seorang profesor dari University of Iceland yang terkenal dengan gagasannya yang brilian tentang pemanfaatan hidrogen sebagai bahan bakar masa depan. Beliau sudah melontarkan idenya tersebut sejak tahun 1978, yang intinya mencoba melepaskan ketergantungan konsumsi energi negaranya (Eslandia) akan bahan bakar minyak import. Negeri dekat kutub utara tersebut kaya akan sumber energi panasbumi dan air, namun mereka butuh import minyak untuk menggerakkan industri dan sektor perikanannya.

Ide Bragi Arnason adalah menggunakan sumber energi terbarukan panasbumi dan tenaga air Eslandia untuk memproduksi hidrogen dengan metode elektrolisis (biasa). Gas hidrogen ini yang dipakai sebagai pengganti bahanbakar fosil yang merusak lingkungan itu. Jadi energi bahanbakar hidrogen yang bersih (tak ada emisi karbon) diproduksi dengan memakai sumber energi yang bersih pula (panasbumi dan tenaga air).

Saat ini negara Eslandia adalah satu-satunya negara di dunia yang telah bertekad menggantikan bahanbakar minyak dengan bahanbakar hidrogen. Dan dalam waktu yang tidak lama lagi, bisa jadi mereka malah menjadi negara pengekspor energi hidrogen di masa depan.

Dapatkah ide ini kita terapkan di Indonesia? Untuk sekedar informasi, potensi sumber energi panasbumi kita mencapai 20000 MW yang tersebar sepanjang "ring of fire" khatulistiwa. Dan yang dimanfaatkan saat ini baru 4% saja yaitu sekitar 800 MW.

Berikut artikel yang dikutip dari majalah Rolling Stone:

Can a single nation completely eliminate its consumption of oil and coal, meeting all of its fuel needs entirely through hydrogen? That's what Iceland plans to do in the next forty years, thanks to the pioneering efforts of Bragi Arnason. Known as "Professor Hydrogen," the University of Iceland scientist has turned his nation into a testing ground for the world's most advanced experiment in renewable energy. Prompted by Arnason's crusade, the university has teamed up with Shell and DaimlerChrysler to wean the country from its annual dependence on 6 million barrels of imported oil, converting every bus, car and boat on the island to hydrogen. "If they can demonstrate that an economy run on renewable energy is viable," says Kert Davies of Greenpeace, "it will be an enormous precedent for the world to follow."

Arnason, who has been pushing his vision of a hydrogen future for nearly thirty years, was long regarded as something of an eccentric. "He was the preacher in the desert -- very few people listened to him," says Thorsteinn Sigfusson, a fellow professor. "Now he is the founding father of hydrogen, well-known all over Iceland."

Following Arnason's blueprint, the city of Reykjavik is transforming its bus fleet into hydrogen vehicles. Arnason concedes that switching the entire country to fuel cells won't be easy: It takes energy to produce hydrogen -- energy that usually comes from the very fossil fuels it's meant to replace. But Iceland already produces nearly all of its electricity from geothermal and hydroelectric power, giving it a clean, homegrown way to separate hydrogen molecules from water. By the time the country is finished implementing Arnason's vision, it will have cut its climate-warming pollution in half.

Arnason, 70, doesn't expect to be around to witness that day -- but his four daughters and eight grandchildren will be. The professor, who rides horses across Iceland for weeks at a time, says his country's future will look much like its past. "When the Vikings settled in Iceland, they used only renewable energy like wind, sun and wood," he notes. "The Icelanders were in the 'first solar-energy civilization' -- and so was the whole world. Now we are finding our way out of the fossil-fuel era, back into the 'second solar-energy civilization.' And, in the end, the same will also be the case for the rest of the world."