The signs of Iceland’s geothermal riches are hard to miss. Earlier this summer, bright orange lava sprayed like a fountain and flowed like a river from an active volcano, visible from miles away. Out on older lava fields, thick steam clouds rose from the ground as the earth brimmed with heat. The famous Blue Lagoon offered yet another reminder: The spa’s milky-teal water comes from the runoff of an adjacent geothermal power plant.
For decades, Iceland has harnessed this natural abundance to heat the majority of its homes and produce a sizable share of the country’s electricity supply. Outdoor swimming pools, streets, and sidewalks stay free of ice and snow during the long Nordic winters thanks to the geothermal resources piped beneath them.
The country is an undisputed leader in geothermal energy, which is drawing increasing attention globally as an on-demand source of renewable energy. Yet Iceland hasn’t fully unlocked its potential. Hidden from sight, miles beneath the surface, scalding-hot rocks and churning magma chambers are the latest frontiers in geothermal energy, promising a clean and inexhaustible supply of heat and electricity — if only scientists and engineers can figure out how to extract it.
New research projects are underway to drill into those resources in Iceland, and experts from the United States and other countries are collaborating and watching closely. By gathering data and developing technology in the most extreme environments, Iceland aims to export its findings to unleash geothermal energy in places without flowing lava and seething hot springs.
“A big goal of ours is to use Iceland as a test bed,” said Hjalti Páll Ingólfsson, director of the Geothermal Research Cluster, or GEORG. He spoke in late May on the sidelines of the Iceland Geothermal Conference, held inside the glimmering Harpa concert hall in downtown Reykjavík.
The conference took place during a momentous period for the global geothermal industry. In the U.S. and worldwide, private companies and government agencies are ramping up support for geothermal projects while working to meet the world’s urgent need for renewable, carbon-free energy — and for around-the-clock power that can fill in the gaps left by intermittent sources like wind and solar.
At last year’s United Nations climate change conference in Dubai, countries committed to tripling the world’s installed renewable energy capacity by 2030 to align with international climate targets. For geothermal in particular, meeting that pledge will require adding 48 gigawatts of electricity capacity and 520 gigawatts of thermal heating and cooling capacity, all in about six years’ time.
“If you do the back-of-the-envelope calculations, it means we have to start drilling 20,000 wells per year … to get that energy we’ve pledged towards by the end of this decade,” Marit Brommer, executive director of the International Geothermal Association, said during the conference. Today, the industry drills around 1,500 geothermal wells every year.
Such dramatic goals underscore the need to tap into deeper, hotter resources. Companies produce geothermal power by extracting hot water or steam from underground wells and using the heat to drive turbines. The hotter the fluid, the more efficient and powerful the system, meaning companies can derive more energy from a smaller number of wells.
This is why Iceland is exploring the potential of drilling near volcanoes and into superhot rock formations. These attempts are still in their infancy and will likely require significant research funding and repeated trial and error before the concepts can be transformed into commercial-scale projects. But proponents say the efforts are worth it. Even Iceland’s conventional, easy-to-reach geothermal resources likely won’t be sufficient to serve the rising urban population, the shift to electric vehicles, and industrial growth.
“We need to think about how we’re going to provide both electricity and district heating for people 100 years from now,” said Arna Pálsdóttir, head of resource innovation at Reykjavík Energy, the utility company serving the capital region. “We’re really figuring out everything we can at this point so that we’re ready for the future.”
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