Hot times in Iceland

Electricity Abroad visits Iceland, where sustainable energy production on a massive scale is an everyday affair.

Renewable energy, like carbon-based energy is a bit of a lucky dip geographically speaking. Just as the Middle East has the greatest portion of the world's oil reserves, the various types of renewable energy tend to favour one geographic area over another. In Ireland, for example, the conditions for wind, hydro and possibly tidal power generation are favourable. In chilly Iceland - surprisingly and even somewhat ironically - naturally occurring heat, that rises from the centre of the earth is a principal source of energy for electricity generation.

'Iceland' is something of a misnomer for this island nation that is the site of a large concentration of volcanic activity that can be exploited for electricity production. Although Iceland does not possess the largest geothermal power plant in the world (that distinction belongs to the Geysers, a vast geothermal field in California), it certainly has the most highly developed and exploited geothermal resources anywhere on the planet.

Geothermal energy provides more than 25 per cent of Iceland's electricity requirements. In addition, geothermal heat also provides the heating and hot water requirements for around 87 per cent of the nation's homes. Incredibly, the reserves of geothermal energy are so plentiful and inexpensive to use that in winter even the pavements in Reykjavík and Akureyri are heated.

Hydroelectric energy is also a plentiful resource in Iceland, providing the lion's share of electricity generation - some 74 per cent of the total. This means that fossil fuels account for an astoundingly small percentage - a mere 0.1 per cent - of Iceland's electricity generation, making it one of the greenest nations in the world.

Iceland has a total of five major geothermal power plants, two of which produce both electricity and hot water for heating and three that only generate electricity.

The Svartsengi power plant produces 46.5MW - currently being expanded to a total of 77MW - and 475 litres per second of water heated to 90°C. The Nesjavellir plant generates 120MW and about 1,800 litres per second of heating water. The Krafla plant produces another 60MW, with expansion to 90MW in the planning stage. The Reykjanes plant came on line at the end of 2006, with two turbines which are producing 100MW. And finally, a new power plant at Hellishei_i is under construction, with two turbines producing 90MW already on line with plans to achieve 250MW and the equivalent of 400MW of heating water by 2009.

While all this sustainable development is exciting, the technology involved has a long history. The world's first geothermal power plant became operational in 1904 at Larderello in Italy and was the brainchild of the Italian chemist, Piero Ginori Conti. Although geothermal energy is potentially available in many places around the world and is used commercially in more than 70 countries, its exploitation has been relatively slow until now. In fact, geothermal power today accounts for less that one per cent of the world's energy.

In a report last year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated that it would be possible to generate 100GW through geothermal resources by 2050 in the United States alone and the report also calculated the world's total usable resources could be more than 2,000 zettajoules - an unfamiliar figure but roughly equivalent to about 1,000 times the earth's entire coal reserves and enough to provide for all the world's energy needs, the scientists claimed, 'for several millennia'.

Clearly, in the field of sustainable energy generation, things are 'hotting up'. EM