Iceland’s Ice Is Melting So Quick That It’s Boosting Hydropower
Melting glaciers are making a inexperienced vitality windfall in Iceland—however for the way lengthy?
CLIMATEWIRE | REYKJAVÍK, Iceland — Few nations can compete with Iceland with regards to renewable vitality. The island nation will get almost 100% of its electrical energy from inexperienced sources, and Iceland has championed using each geothermal vitality and hydroelectricity.
That makes the nation a mannequin for a world making an attempt to battle local weather change — which is ironic as a result of Iceland’s electrical grid is just going to get stronger because the world will get hotter.
The explanation? Hydroelectricity. Or extra particularly, melting glaciers.
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Iceland will get greater than 70 p.c of its energy from hydroelectric stations fed by glacial meltwaters. In order the Earth heats up and glaciers soften sooner, hydroelectric stations may have extra water to spin generators and energy the grid — a silver lining for a rustic mourning its glacial decline.
“When the glaciers melt, then it will be more production from hydro,” mentioned Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, minister of the Atmosphere, Power and Local weather, in an interview with E&E Information. “We have everything to be the mecca of green energy, and that’s what we want to do.”
Local weather change is already making a distinction.
Almost all of Iceland’s glaciers have been shedding mass because the Nineteen Nineties, and that’s led to a rise in hydro influx — a lift that the nation’s energy system “has been mostly able to utilize,” in keeping with a report launched by the European Union.
Locals see the potential, too.
“We are anticipating more for the next hundred years — more water flowing,” mentioned Guðmundur Finnbogason, a challenge supervisor with Landsvirkjun, the nationwide energy firm.
Hydro stations are “literally producing gold for us,” mentioned Finnbogason throughout a tour of the Írafoss Energy Station, which is about 30 miles from Iceland’s capital Reykjavík.
The boon in energy, nevertheless, comes with two potential pitfalls.
The primary is wasted vitality. A gaggle from the Arctic College of Norway cautioned that at-capacity stations have been bypassing additional water and throwing away potential electrical energy.
Þórðarson, the vitality minister, acknowledged the missed alternative.
“We’ve got a bit complacent,” he mentioned. “We haven’t done that much when it comes to both hydro and geothermal in the last 15, 20 years.”
However, he added, “now things are moving very fast.”
The nationwide energy firm plans to construct extra generators to seize the climate-driven water surplus. Glacial runoff is anticipated to peak in about 40 to 50 years.“We are doing investments to be able to harness this increase of flow from the glaciers,” mentioned Landsvirkjun CEO Hörður Arnarson.The second — and extra existential — downside for Iceland is what to do when its glaciers have melted away.The EU report warns that “almost no Icelandic glaciers will be left in 2200.”It’s a bleak long-term projection, however the expectation is matched by a second — and extra optimistic — estimate.The Icelandic Meteorological Workplace initiatives that precipitation will enhance by 1.2 p.c to 4.3 p.c by the center of the century, largely as a result of results of local weather change.So even when the glaciers disappear, “we can expect more water coming to the power plants than we did in the beginning,” mentioned Arnarson, the Landsvirkjun CEO.However that wetter future is way from a given, and scientists warning it’s difficult to foretell a 2200 local weather greater than 150 years away. Ocean currents that improve precipitation in Iceland could possibly be gone or considerably slowed by then, for instance.The uncertainty is why Þórðarson desires Iceland to diversify its grid from hydro and geothermal reliance to incorporate wind, and presumably photo voltaic, tidal and rain energy.“If one thing occurs, and it’ll occur within the close to or distant future, then we all the time have a Plan B,” Þórðarson said. “We can’t put all of the eggs in the identical basket.”
Reprinted from E&E Information with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2024. E&E Information supplies important information for vitality and setting professionals.
