Today, Reykjavik is home to the largest district heating system in the world, and it has been estimated that were Icelanders still dependent on oil, their heating costs would be five times as high, according to Margeirsson. Across all of Iceland, 90 percent of households are connected to a district heating system, with just a few remote households getting their heat from fossil fuels such as propane.
Clean energy boom
Today, 99 percent of Iceland's electricity is produced from renewable sources, 30 percent of which is geothermal (the rest is from dams—and there are a lot of them), according to Iceland's National Energy Authority. When transportation, heating and production of electricity are considered as a whole, geothermal provides half of all the primary energy used in Iceland. (Although there are efforts underway to use the island's supplies of renewable energy to power its fishing fleet and motor vehicles through conversion to hydrogen fuel, these efforts are still at the earliest stages of development.)
For example, guests at the famous "Blue Lagoon" spa cannot help but notice the Nesjavellir geothermal power plant in the distance, whose plumes of steam tower over the turquoise outdoor pools from which the lagoon derives its name. Indeed, the lagoon would not exist without the plant, whose stream of used groundwater gradually clogged the porous rocks into which it had been flowing, forming the hot baths that are now Iceland's leading tourist attraction.
Yet only a small fraction of Iceland's geothermal capacity has been tapped. "It's been estimated that by conventional use of geothermal, the available power in Iceland could be on the order of 20 to 30 terawatt-hours per year," says Ólafur Flóvez, general director of ÍSOR, or Iceland Geosurvey, the governmental institution that employs roughly 100 geologists to conduct research on geothermal resources. "Currently we're producing maybe four terawatt-hours per year." (A terawatt equals one trillion watts.)
Industry is already driving further development of Iceland's remaining geothermal resources. Aluminum smelting alone currently uses more electricity than all other activities in Iceland combined, and by 2015, 400 additional megawatts (million watts) of geothermal electricity are scheduled to go online just to serve a single new aluminum smelter in Bakki, in the north of the country, according to U.S.-based aluminum giant, Alcoa, which is investing heavily in the plant. Other industries are also looking to take advantage of this resource.
"It's no secret that both Microsoft and Google have looked at Iceland," Richter says. The enormous power needs of the clusters of powerful computers used to run the World Wide Web, known as data centers, have inspired companies to look for sites anywhere in the world there is cheap energy and sufficient connection to global networks.
The future is now
Not content to max out the country's geothermal potential using existing technologies, a consortium known as the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP), which includes the Icelandic government, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the European Union and Alcoa have banded together to tap an exotic and hard to exploit form of geothermal energy: supercritical steam.
When steam exceeds a certain temperature and pressure—in excess of 750 degrees F (400 degrees C) and 250 times greater than normal atmospheric pressure—the density of steam becomes identical to that of liquid water. This steam "would yield five to 10 times as much energy per unit of volume extracted from the Earth," says Sverrir Thórhallsson, head of ÍSOR's engineering department.
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3 Comments
Add CommentDear Sirs!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for excellent article about Iceland's geothermal energy. I do want however to comment on your geography. From the geothermal spa of the Blue Lagoon you can not see the Nesjavellir Power Plant but you can see the Svartsengi Power Plant operated by Hitaveita Sudurnesja (Sudurnes District Heating Inc.)
Teitur Gunnarsson, M.Sc., Manager Chemical Processes, Mannvit Engineering, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Super critical steam seems like the best renewable resource so far! We should invest in figuring out the ins and outs (no pun intended) of extracting, or drilling for, this sustainable energy. Exporting this geothermal power will inevitably help the environment and continue to encourage sustainable energy research. The Blue Lagoon is a prime example of how popular this resource can be. We should keep on with the Green Energy!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes... to more sustainability!
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