ICELAND BECOMES GLOBAL CATALYST FOR CLEAN ENERGY
A millennium ago Viking raiding parties terrorized coastal areas of Europe and Viking sailors through their daring carried out the first European exploration of North America. Today Iceland, a nation of about 300,000, whose people are largely descendants of these same Viking raiders and explorers, has set out on an even more daring venture — to lead a global clean energy transformation. This is not entirely altruistic. Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson has pointed out that a rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet could change ocean salinity and slow the Gulf Stream with grave climatic consequences for Iceland and many other countries. Just as Leif Eriksson led his crews on their explorations, President Grimsson seems determined to span the globe to spur a clean energy revolution.
In a remarkable New Year’s Address President Grimsson spelled out his determination to have his nation play a lead role in clean energy development. He pointed out that the Chinese recently built the largest geothermal district heating project in the world with the help of two Icelandic firms, Glitnir and Reykjavik Energy. This project is in the City of Xiang Yang in Shaanxi Province. Iceland is also working with India and Russia to encourage exploration of geothermal resources in these populous nations.
Iceland has exploited its own geothermal and hydropower abundance to vault its economy to one of the most prosperous in the world. Iceland Geosurvey has mapped out ways these skills can be applied abroad to greatly expand global geothermal production.
January 2007 saw a remarkable event: the President of Djibouti, President Grimsson, and Jeffrey Sachs, Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, convened a meeting of Heads of State or Vice Presidents of five East African Nations in Djibouti to discuss geothermal energy development in the African Rift. These nations include the host, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda. Djibouti is already the site of extensive test drilling and an area where geothermal might provide much of the nation’s energy supply.
Iceland hosts, under auspices of the United Nations University, a remarkably international geothermal training program. In 2006 its 21 Fellows came from a dozen nations: Azerbaijan (1), China (2), Costa Rica (2), Indonesia (3), Iran (2), Kenya (2), Mongolia (2), Nicaragua (1), Philippines (2), Tanzania (1), Turkey (1) and Uganda (2).
President Grimsson made clear to the Climate Institute in December 2006, during a meeting of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change held at Columbia’s Earth Institute, that Iceland sees its role in catalyzing clean energy development as extending well past geothermal to encompass the whole spectrum of greenhouse-friendly energy.
Recently an unassuming Bangladeshi economist, Mohammad Younus, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work spawning a micro-credit movement that has done much to enhance livelihoods of millions. Dr. Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, also an economist, has brought the same strategic vision and humble demeanor to the even more daunting task of changing energy systems before irreversible climatic changes are underway. If he and his countrymen and women succeed, their feat will exceed in imagination and scope anything achieved by the most daring of their Viking forebearers.
