During a conference in the Costa Rican congress regarding the relation between oil and hydrogen in the country, former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang Díaz, current director of Ad Astra Rocket Company, states that Costa Rica has enough energy to generate its own fuel at home and satisfy the demand, without the need to buy petroleum.

According to Chang, his organization has been working on achieving this, through the use of hydrogen, batteries or the combination of both; in May they will launch the first hydrogen fueled bus, and this will be the start point of a transportation project that will employ this energy.

The Costa Rican physicist and mechanical engineer, confirms that the potential of generation of renewable energy in the country is of 338 thousand terajoules (TJ) a year. Currently the total consumption of energy in the country, including fuels like oil, is of only 100 thousand TJ per year.

Chang confirms he aspires to operate a transportation ecosystem with zero carbon emissions, something that currently can’t even be achieved even in the event that everyone migrated to electrical cars.

If this plan was put into action, it would translate into a positive impact for the environment as well as the country’s economy, it will also make the country self-sufficient, eliminating the need to import oil.

The big question is, When? And this is a question that still has no answer, Chang confirms however that fossil fuels are slowly on the way out.

The hydrogen bus will begin working in Guanacaste as of May, it has capacity for 35 passengers and it is expected to work three possible routes, Liberia-Nicoya, Liberia-Tamarindo and Liberia-Panama Beach.