Iceland has a huge geothermal energy resource, due to its
volcanic origins. Plans to transmit this energy through an underwater cable
over 745 miles (1198km) long to Europe are currently being considered. The
high-voltage, electrical cable would be the longest in the world by far and is
one of many international interconnectors that are proposed or in construction,
adding to the 15 or so which already exist in Europe. It is part of an
ambitious plan to have a highly networked European electricity super grid.
The potential implications of a pan-European super grid are
huge. Energy trading would become truly Europe-wide, with large-scale
electricity movement possible and prices varying on international levels of
supply and demand. There is a long-running debate in Brussels about how exactly
to build the EU energy market. The EU believes that ownership unbundling-
preventing a firm from having both power generation and transmission
assets- is necessary, but some member
states, led by France and Germany, are unconvinced this is the best option [1].
A large-scale international grid in Europe could help solve
the problem of unpredictable supply from renewable sources and lack of
electricity storage, as the market balances supply by trading surplus
renewable-generated electricity with other countries. By having a larger market
to sell to, problems like oversupply leading to working wind farms being
temporarily turned off could be a thing of the past [2]: this energy could
simply be sold to another country instead. This reduces the need for baseload
generation such as coal or nuclear plants, which generate at a constant rate.
The plan estimates that Iceland could export 5bn kWh of
energy each year, with a predicted return of $350-448 million [3]. The official
costs have not been released, but a 1980s study predicts it to be profitable,
even in the worst-case scenario of 1500km. A feasibility study has been carried
out for the Iceland cable, and failed to find any insurmountable technical
difficulties with the idea, although there are clearly engineering challenges
associated with laying an underwater cable that far. The race is now on between
North Sea countries to convince Iceland to route the cable to their shores. The
UK energy minister, Charles Hendry, is heading to Iceland in May to discuss
having the UK at the other end of the cable [4].
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