interview > Skúlason > skulason 12

Skúlason 12 (1:13)
Topic(s): Government / Hydrogen / Iceland
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Video Transcript

Iceland is very open to new technology and very open to change. We're a very, very young, developed society; we only started becoming a developed nation after the second World War. We're talking about 60 years of development from being quite poor—one of the poorest countries in Europe—to becoming one of the richest and people are very kind of open-minded to new technologies. And often when new technology comes out in Iceland I would assume that you would like—you should test it in Iceland because if the Icelanders don't like it, it's never going to work in the world.

So in a sense, we're very open-minded to change, we're very open-minded to new technologies, and I think people are also celebrating that we have all of those resources in Iceland and people want to utilize them for our economic gain and that's one of the things people see with hydrogen. It can create new jobs, will have- most people are convinced it will have positive economic impact, we're using domestic energy, we do not have to spend all our foreign currency on importing oil, so it has a lot of positive images and, to be able to do a change like that, we have to take some risks, we have to be willing to spend some money, to go through the learning steps, and I think the public is quite well willing to do that.