Iceland: Pioneer in Green, Geothermal Energy

Iceland gets 26% of its electricity from geothermal power, and is a pioneer in the industry, such that Kenyan and other scientists go there for training. It has cut its carbon emissions…

Iceland gets 26% of its electricity from geothermal power, and is a pioneer in the industry, such that Kenyan and other scientists go there for training. It has cut its carbon emissions almost to zero, and is even considering attempting to export electricity to the UK.

This video surveys Iceland’s geothermal energy production:

The US also has enormous geothermal potential, mostly untapped.

Moving to green energy as quickly as possible is essential to stop rapid climate change from human beings dumping billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere annually.

7 Responses

  1. Thank you for this type of news–positive, forward-thinking, and a concrete model of success! A kind of witness for the interfaith religious value of preserving the earth with green, renewable energy resources in contrast to oil or natural gas extraction which increasingly destroys our water supply.

  2. Carbon dioxide emissions are a side-effect of geothermal energy. Other pollutants include mercury and antimony that can be released from the Earth’s interior during the creation of usable geothermal energy.It is however worth exploring as an alternative resource if the noxious emissions can be reduced to environmentally safe levels.

    Geothermal energy projects are being implemented in the Phillippines and Switzerland, among other diverse locations.

    Chevron, the oil company, is one of the key corporate sponsors of geothermal energy as a viable alternative resource to fossil fuels.

  3. It always annoys – okay, enrages – me when pols and flaks in the US say there’s no point for the United States of America to do anything to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, because, well, China.

    Yet there are the much smaller nations – Iceland, Germany, etc – who are stepping up and making the changes needed, without whining that, since their contribution can’t solve 100% of the problem, they should do nothing.

    I’m so old that I can still remember the days when the United States thought it was important to be the leader in science and technology. Now, we won’t move at all unless we can slink along behind the crowd.

    • That is because what appears to be an ingenious trap that our masters set for us –

      1. Drive down wages by busting unions and outsourcing
      2. Then blame #1 on blacks and corporate regulation, creating a vast reactionary movement based on nostalgia for the “good old days”

      You end up with people permanently feeling that they’ve been cheated out of money they ought to have, chasing it by the means the corporate right has indoctrinated – tax cuts, education cuts, but not military cuts, etc. It becomes an economic race to the bottom, as workers become less and less able to get relevant training, and education is increasingly demonized. Eventually we sacrifice civilized standards, compassion, even our neighbors, to regain an economic surplus that will simply get carted off by our bosses and investors anyway. The worse they make things for us, the more desperate we are to give them what they want, as we’ve seen with fracking.

      People in Iceland and Germany don’t feel they were cheated out of some birthright. Though they did feel that way in Germany in 1933, and you know how that turned out.

      • Germans felt the same way in 1910, 12, 14. And it looks like since the engines of war are less Krupp-ish and more financial-ish, the feeling is still there, but the damage is a lot bigger and longer than the rail guns of August. link to

        Lots of inventive ways to conquer, subjugate and extract from…

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