Abstract
This paper will discuss the cultural factors of hydrogen fueled vehicles in the Kingdom of Spain. A variety of cultural inventories are used to score and evaluate the ability of Spain to adopt new technologies alongside ethnographic studies of literature and structures of the culture itself.
Introduction
The primary motivations for working on technologies to integrate hydrogen fueled vehicles into the mainstream of vehicles production world wide are environmental impacts and political stability issues in the burgeoning oil consumption industries serving the internal combustion engine vehicles (Struben, 2004). There is nothing to say that hydrogen fueled vehicles would not use petroleum sources for the basis of hydrogen such as in fuel cell vehicles. Within the construct of this paper the concept is to provide for non-petroleum based hydrogen fueled internal combustion engine vehicles that are based on current technologies for the highest rate of diffusion and acceptance by the population.
Selecting such a specific type of energy source, power train, and fuel source removes the arguments against specific criticism that energy is simply being transferred and the associated losses of energy transference degrade any associated positive environmental impacts. With petroleum out of the picture as a fuel source that leaves other methods such as nuclear energy, refuse mining, wind energy, solar energy, water displacement (hydro electric via dams and tidal), and mining to gather the required hydrogen for processing or use (Solomon & Banerjee, 2006).
The Technology
Any change in the technologies of transportation is a process that requires transition. Whether the transition is from horses to automobiles, or the transition is from leaded to unleaded fuels the transition period and adoption period will be measured in decades and not months (Struben, 2004). Hydrogen is a naturally occurring and plentiful fuel that is the basic building block of our world (Robson, Cammack, & Frey, 2001). If you consider that the change to hydrogen fuels is more like the change from leaded gasoline to unleaded gasoline instead of horse to automobile the risks of adoption seem to evaporate. Many different technologies exist that will make hydrogen fuel for vehicles substantially easier to implement.
There are interesting elements to adapting a current technology to a substantially different paradigm. The change in fuel does not have a substantial change on the vehicles that the population of Spain will utilize from the perspective of a use case. The fuel changes, perhaps (but not required) the engine changes, and the infrastructure of distribution and production changes. The user experience does not change substantially in how they use the base technology of the automobile. The energy values and requirements for moving vehicles through the environment are fairly well know and those values can be converted to hydrogen fuels from petroleum fuels (Sørensen, 2005).
Decentralized, scalable, and adaptable to rural and diversified communities is important. The digestification of biomass has the ability to clean the environment of normal biomass waste (slaughterhouses, garden, etc..) while providing a clean fuel source for automobiles and transportation. The associated risk with this method is the relatively high expense of the infrastructure (Duerr M., Gair S., Cruden A., & McDonald J., 2007).
The International Energy Association (IEA) is the primary proponent of hydrogen as a fuel. The IEA is managed with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The goal of IEA is to accelerate the wide spread adoption of hydrogen as a fuel (Elam, Padró, & Putche, 2001).
The following is a selected group of the goals of the IEA agreement as the will apply to the diffusion of technology and the application of hydrogen fueled vehicles in Spain:
Hydrogen has the potential for short-, medium- and long-term applications and the steps to realize the potential for applications in appropriate time frames must be understood and implemented.
Significant use of hydrogen will contribute to the reduction of energy-linked environmental impacts, including global warming due to anthropogenic carbon emissions, mobile source emissions such as CO, NOx, SOx, and NMHC (non-methane hydrocarbons), and particulates.
Hydrogen can be produced as a storable, clean fuel from the world’s sustainable non-fossil primary energy sources – solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, biomass, geothermal, nuclear, or tidal. Hydrogen also has the unique feature that it can upgrade biomass to common liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, thus providing a flexible, sustainable fuel.
Hydrogen energy systems have potential value for locations where a conventional energy supply infrastructure does not exist. The development of hydrogen technologies in niche applications will result in improvements and cost reductions which will lead to broader application in the future.
Spain is well ahead of many other countries with an adaptable and successful move towards energy independence they are set to be ready for change. Hydrogen has several different economic incentives that make it nationally politically feasible. With the different political philosophies in place the value of the technology can be determined by the options it creates, the projected costs that it would incur, and the environmental impacts that it would likely solve or create.
The variety of different industries is investigating the production of hydrogen from various materials because there is so much risk in switching a primary fuel source for transportation. Substantial work has been done to identify methods of separating hydrogen from multiple different fossil fuels (Chemical Industry Vision, 2006).
The utter obsolescence of petroleum is in debate, as any entrenched technology would be considered safe from obsolescence. Just like lead paint, whale oil, malathion were determined to be end of life as viable technologies.
Energy
The first aspect concerns the energy and natural resources of the country germane to a technology that you select as appearing to have potential for development by that country.
Specifically you need to examine the resources, production and consumption of energy of the country and provide your reasoning on the capacity and stability of energy use in the country as it relates to the capability of the country to develop the selected technology.
Figure 2 Petroleum Production and Consumption for Spain (Energy Information Administration, 2007b)
Spain has few if any large scale natural resources usable for vehicle fuel. This as depicted in Figure 2 shows a problematic relationship between substantial consumption and nearly zero production of petroleum. This will have substantial impacts on the political and economic outlook for Spain.
Hydrogen generation near term through a variety of natural or near-natural solutions such as solar and wind generation have the ability to help with the energy dependence that Span currently is held hostage to. Hydrogen generation taking a long view versus simply near term with the associated appraisal of cost and benefit is important. In the near term it is likely that generation of hydrogen for vehicles would occur using petroleum or fossil fuels, and future generation could use solar type sources for creating the hydrogen needed for vehicles (liquid, gaseous) (T-Raissi & Block, 2004).
One of the specific transition methods moving from oil consumption with it’s associated political and environmental issues is the use of natural gas as a stepping stone. Natural gas has prevalence and capacity in it’s favor while decreasing carbon emissions when used as a transport medium for hydrogen (Harris, Saint-just, Asaoka, & Thatcher, 2001). There are issues with the longevity and over all scalability of natural gas production which in some cases could be considered a fairly limited resource for large scale deployments.
Spain Produces approximately 263.3 billion kWh and utilizes approximately 241.8 billion kWh of electricity (Energy Information Administration, 2007a). The surplus is minimal but only shows part of the problem with electricity production in Spain as a sustainable effort.
Figure 3 Spain electricity production by source (Energy Information Administration, 2007a)
Spain gathers a substantial amount of it’s electricity from oil and the upwards trend in Figure 3 shows how renewable energies are starting to become part of the energy production. Though oil and coal are as conventional thermal sources are still a large part of the equation. It is interesting to see that nuclear is such a substantial part of the electricity equation. There is a sign of renewable energy (wind, solar, etc.) growing in utilization though not a substantial part of the equation Figure 3 shows the rapid growth since the mid 1990’s.
Figure 4 Spain hydrocarbon emissions (Energy Information Administration, 2007a)
The source of energy as shown in Figure 4 is very troubling when you consider that the carbon emissions are the primary make up of power and transportation. These are the traditional thermal fuels that drive a large amount of the electrical capacity production of Spain(Energy Information Administration, 2007a). Petroleum makes the primary carbon based fuel and there are perceived reductions in petroleum if transportation is transferred to other methods of fueling vehicles.
The use of solar cells to create hydrogen removes the issues of transient energy methods and associated losses while it provides for substantial gains and efficiencies. The landmass required to provide the appropriate level of biomass of arable high quality land is thirty times more than the current solar cell requirements for the same amount of energy and solar cells are not as effected by crop rotation, water issues, and seasonal problems (Contreras, Carpio, Molero, & Veziroglu, 1999). This provides a substantial gain in effectiveness and the renewable level of the technology. Even better the technology as provided is very robust and localized versus centralized and the localized distribution created a distributed network, which is less likely to be effected by disaster. Since the method would be creating the hydrogen in the most basic consideration you are storing solar energy as hydrogen fuel. Since distributed and localized production is possible especially in heterogeneous systems trucking and associated parasitic production and marketing costs are reduced.
There are obvious risks to a homogenous fuel production scheme. The current production of petroleum resources and importation of petroleum fuels is a drag on the economy of Spain. Heterogeneous production creates similar fuels (such as hydrogen) through a variety of methods to meet demand regardless of the weather (sunny or not) (Bolton & International Energy Agency Hydrogen Program, 1996), wind, or availability of refining capacity.
Biomass production of hydrogen fuel is a possibility. Photosynthesis of bacteria has a higher production rate of hydrogen than for example crops that compete for food production land capacity (Nakada, Nishikata, Asada, & Miyake, 1999). The methods of creating hydrogen through photosynthesis are fairly well known. This creates another method of producing hydrogen that is not predicated on the other methods. Flexibilty directly feeds back on the adoption of technological innovations and the more methods to accomplish the same task the more likely that diffusion will occur.
Culture
Spain is a Southern European Country. The country has four basic languages and there is 20 ethnic groups within the borders.
Some basic facts about Spain:
The total population of Spain 40,448,191
The Median Age
Male: 39 years
Female: 41.7 years (2007 est.)
The political system is a parliamentary monarchy
Statistics for the nation of Spain (CIA World Fact Book, 2007)
Spain is a partially fragmented culture with four primary languages and one official language as shown in figure 5 across the nation. The country is fragmented along language and population ethnicities. The nation though has a fairly cohesive educational philosophy and that has homogenized the culture substantially.
What is the likelihood that a nation is going to make a substantial effort to adopt and change via technology from a risky if understood technology? Spain stands on the edge having made substantial commitments to education they may be able to make the commitment to decreased carbon emissions and the commitment to hydrogen energy while standing outside the petroleum economy (Adamson, 2004).
Hisschemoller et. al. discuss four paradigms that effect the viability of the hydrogen economy (Hisschemöller, Bode, & van de Kerkhof, 2006):
Figure 5 Languages of Spain (CIA World Fact Book, 2007)
1. Governance by policy networking
2. Governance by government
3. Governance by corporate business
4. Governance by challenge
Governance by policy networking is best expressed as outsourcing the needs of government when government can no longer express or operate as an agent of the people. This paradigm has a direct effect when the bureaucracies of governance are no longer beholden to the people and the power equation changes. Governance by government suggests that government can do what the citizens can’t. The people for example can not sign treaties or act as political entities in the world arena. The government represents its interests (or the peoples) to the large world population. Spain must represent the people in the larger political issues of energy and environmental impacts of Europe. Governance by corporate business suggests that business has the power and knowledge to govern. Examples of this might be the impacts of private business operating in the world arena in large mega corporate world wide markets. Governance by challenge is a direct and specific element effecting diffusion of innovation. Challenge suggests that customer sovereignty and options effect the implications of technological diffusion in the broader culture of Spain (Hisschemöller et al., 2006).
When you examine the broader impacts of the cultural challenges in the acceptance by Spain of hydrogen the specific elements of governance by challenge and policy networking the cultural issues show how culture effects diffusion. With a fairly low power distance (shared governance) people have a feeling of control, but the governance by challenge suggests that there is a feeling of inevitability as issues of current petroleum stores continue to rise to the surface (Grubler, 1996).
It is interesting to see this example of paradigms. Paradigms should be generalizable, specific to an industry (science), and have broader impacts then simple definitions (Kuhn, 1996; Thomas, 1996). The paradigms of governance seem to have these stronger expectations that have given the definitions of a paradigm shift and what to expect with each shift in the hydrogen fuel debate.
As hydrogen is an innovative technology that has substantial positive impacts the population of Spain should be keenly interested in whether the implementation of hydrogen as a preferred fuel and the displacement of legacy fuels is worth the associated risks and expenses when paired with the expected if not guaranteed results (Hetland J. & Mulder G., 2006). Centralized facilities match the current market and culturally accepted strategies of delivering fuels and criticism of having to gather fuel from a diverse geographic location exists (Duerr M. et al., 2007). This criticism does not seem to take into account the enormous amount of petroleum shipped into Spain and the nearly zero amount in comparison that is produced locally.
Figure 6 Land use in Spain (CIA World Fact Book, 2007)
The land space of Spain impacts the culture of the country and the resource capital of the nation. Spain has a large amount of arable cropland as we see in Figure 6. The amount of land though may not be enough to support fuel-based crops. Spain is a country that is approximately twice the size of the state of Oregon (CIA World Fact Book, 2007). Simply growing fuel crops may not be a choice for Spain when the political issues of increasing food costs as resources are poured into fuel crops change the market model.
Rate of technology and cultural diffusion
The specific elements that Rogers looks at for diffusion of technology similar to the example of Spain diffusing hydrogen and hydrogen vehicles are fairly specific (Rogers, 1995). We will look at the five factors as they effect Spain and the diffusion into the population of hydrogen vehicles.
Relative Advantage
Relative advantage for Spain accepting and using hydrogen fueled vehicles can be best characterized by the dismantling of the international based petroleum industry, the variability of the international markets, the economic impacts of intra-national fuel systems, and the localization of production and delivery of hydrogen fuels.
Compatibility
The compatibility of hydrogen when not removing the vehicle or requiring the entire world change is much better. Spain may have a better chance at compatibility since they’ve been flexible in adoption of previous technologies.
Complexity
Hydrogen fuels are incredibly simple to adapt and adopt at a local level. The technologies are simplistic and much of the technology is self regulating making adoption must easier.
Trialability
There are fall back points that hydrogen has inherent in any adoption model. Since hydrogen can be burned in most internal combustion engines the impact may not be as significant as previously thought.
Observability
It would seem that anything that would help the economy remove concern for the environment and be instantly perceived would have a high level of observability. Unfortunately hydrogen fueled vehicles are a technology that are phased in implementation and perception may be that they are lacking in in there capability. I best liken this to how HD/DVD’s are being adopted currently. Superior technology that don’t have a good foot hold and are not necessarily better than the predecessor. This same though process may be an issue for hydrogen fueled vehicles too.
Hofstede Cultural Analysis
Spain has a close association to the rest of Europe in how it is perceived within the Hofstede Cultural Analysis (ITIM).
Figure 7 Hofstede index for Spain (ITIM)
Figure 8 Hofstede index for Europe (ITIM)
Figure 9 Hofstede index comparison of Spain and Europe based on Hofstede data (ITIM)
Individualism:
The individualism factor for Spain is fairly high (Figure 5). Spain has slightly less individualism than the average European country (Figure 7) and the parliament and people of Spain do reflect a slightly more collectivist culture. This may be due to the history of Spain having been so radically changed with the substantial upheaval during the crusades and the religious turmoil of the inquisition.
Masculinity:
The masculinity index is slightly lower for Spain than other European countries (Figure 7). This was somewhat surprising as I would have thought machismo or Latin ego would play into the countries masculinity index.
Uncertainty avoidance:
Spain and Europe closely align in uncertainty avoidance (Figure 7). This high value was slightly surprising to me as after averaging Europe I though that it would reflect a much lower number, but to have them closely aligned does make sense. I would hypothesize that the existence of the European Union would be evidence of the uncertainty avoidance and the shared political philosophies.
Long term orientation
Long term orientation was not measured for Spain (Figure 7). However, we can look at Figure 8 and see the average for European countries. Looking at Figure 9 and the close fit of Spain to Europe suggest that Spain might have a fairly long view in regards to future outlook. This could become incredibly important.
The appropriateness of technology that will fit with the culture and capability of Spain balances on the suggestion that there will be advantage in the adoption. There is likely some cultural factor that will create reasons for the diffusion. With Spain the long term outlook and the economic depravity of petroleum production/consumption curves make a substantial dent in counter arguments to renewable locally producible hydrogen fuels.
Education
For the purposes of this paper the educational system is specifically of interest in regards to the research and human resource capital that exists to support development of the technologies required for hydrogen vehicle adoption. The structure of the higher educational system of Spain was created in 1983 resulting in autonomous self governing University system with approximately three-quarters of a million students (Mora, Garcia-Montalvo, & Garcia-Aracil, 2000).
Higher education in Spain is made up of 46 public universities, 16 private universities, and three universities that are engineering oriented. There is a substantial amount of engineering taught through out the university system. Spain has an interesting system where classes last an entire year, and the more traditional semester and quarter system of American universities (Mora et al., 2000). The number of engineering schools for a country twice the size of Oregon seems to be appropriate as most American states only have a density of one technical engineering school within there environs.
The decentralization and expansion of education is an incredibly important for the ability to grow and adapt to a populations needs (Fiske, 1996) (Triantafillou, Pomportsis, & Demetriadis, 2003). Spain seems to have decentralized and gone with a smaller school model rather than the large scale school systems that can create a ponderous oversight of education.
The capacity of a society to either use or develop technology is highly dependent upon the nature and extent of available education and in particular, technological education. (Harborne, Hendry, & Brown, 2007), and Spain has adapted a substantial amount of their capital to education.
The diffusion of technology can be constrained by a lack of knowledge and or the ability to utilize a technology in ways other than a black box (Fichman, 1992). Using the example of Spain developing and adapting hydrogen as an automobile fuel source it become readily apparent that Spain has an engineering and technical level of sophistication to create substantial scholarship and skills in the hydrogen processes. Though talking about information technology Fichman (Fichman, 1992) discusses the transference of knowledge from one similar domain to another as helping the diffusion of technology across a broader span of uses and audience.
Conclusion
In conclusion Spain has the need for adopting a new technology based on their issues with current petroleum imports and production. Spain has the political will and the structure associated with stability to make a sweeping change. There is a base of technology and skills in the country of Spain to make this large scale change. The cultural investment and factors of Spain suggest that they should be able to make the change but an ethnographic technology study can still miss some very basic things.
Hydrogen fuel for vehicles in Spain will likely fail. Unlike America where the continent and fuel systems are controlled by centralized government. Unlike America where people would likely never leave their country. In Spain and Europe people can exit their country fairly rapidly and move across a substantial amount of area and many national boundaries in just one day. This means that if hydrogen fuel is not picked up in a larger context that most people will require multi-fuel, and with that the technology will have issues. This puts the adoption at peril not because of Spain culture or capability but how Spain deals with outside culture and how that culture by force of economics enforces adherence to technologies that may not be in the best interest of Spain.
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