Iceland is a Mecca for geothermal energy.  If one were to design a country with the production of geothermal energy in mind, they would inadvertently draw the same type of structure and layout that Iceland has today.  The image pictured below shows the hotspot that Iceland sits on top of.  Red triangles being volcanoes, and the purplish color area being the extremely active rift zone, rife with magma.

This access to geothermal energy has allowed Iceland to become a world leader in geothermal energy production.  It is now used to produce around a quarter of the countries electricity!  This is a breakdown of all the uses of that geothermal gold mine.

As you can see while electricity production is one utilization of geothermal energy that is from the end of its uses.  Today 90% of homes in Iceland are heated by tapping directly into this geothermal source.  With all of its direct uses geothermal energy accounts for more than half of Iceland’s entire energy needs!  While this may be hard to wrap your head around, these numbers probably won’t help.  Between 1970-2000 Iceland saved ~8.2 billion US dollars by using geothermal energy.  They also decreased Co2 emissions by 37%.  If the rest of the world were to follow that lead, our planet would be exponentially better off than it is today.  Greenhouse gases would be a discussion for far future generations to have, and as a bonus all our bills would be cheaper!

While Iceland’s geological positioning is rare it is not unique among the world.  In the US there is another hotspot in Montana that could be utilized for energy production albeit it is not as close to homes so home heating would be more difficult but why not electricity production?  There are also other hotspots around the world including around Asia, Hawaii and up along the eastern seaboard of Africa and into the Mediterranean.  If all of these spots were exploited just a little bit more the effects would be profound and a global impact would undoubtedly be noticed.  So then, the question remains. Why aren’t world powers using these readily available resources better?  I don’t have the answer and many have tried to find out why more countries aren’t following Iceland’s lead, my suggestion…write you’re local government official, that should work, right?

Tobias Weisenberger (2013). “Introduction to the geology of Iceland”

Sveinbjorn Bjornsson, Geothermal Development and Research in Iceland (Ed. Helga Bardadottir. Reykjavik: Gudjon O, 2006)

http://www.nordicenergy.org/thenordicway/