FIRE & ICE

ICELAND WEARS ITS GEOLOGY ON THE OUTSIDE. There’s no cloak of fields and trees, no undergarment of soil and earth, what buildings and infrastructure exist look fabulously fragile in this barren zone of landslides and lava, nothing more than temporary jewellery. The occasional cap of snow and ice is all there is to cover this island’s modesty. Iceland is nature’s ‘how stuff works’ lesson to humanity.

And it’s got plenty to teach us. The geology is well understood but hand in hand with that comes energy. It’s hot under here. The mid-Atlantic ridge bisects this country, it’s expanding at a rate of 40mm per year, plus it sits on a thin crust moving over a mantle plume that is basically blowtorching the underside. Meanwhile any water that isn’t frozen in place on the topside tends to move fast. Plunge a pipe into the earth or stick a turbine under a waterfall and you’ve tapped into a power source.

Actually, 75 per cent of Iceland’s electricity comes from hydro, the rest is geothermal. Pipes run 2.5km down and bring up boiling brine or take down cold water which comes back up hot. That heats 85 per cent of the homes here. As renewable energy sources go, Iceland has it made. And you don’t need me to tell you, in the shadow of the COP26 climate conference, how important clean energy is right now. I have a