The people of Iceland awaken to a stark choice

[phantom power]

Icelanders discover that there is no such thing as risk-free energy.
(BTW, this is a 12 page article)

In any event, the national power company was spending 1.5 billion dollars on the hydroelectric part of the dam-and-smelter project, most of it borrowed from international banks—the biggest construction investment little Iceland had ever undertaken and probably ever would. The energy expected to be generated annually (4,600 gigawatt-hours) was about half what the entire nation was then using, and the scale of it was intoxicating: a huge tangle of dams, tunnels, power stations, and high-tension lines, including one rock-and-gravel dam 650 feet high.

All this to service the single aluminum smelter being built on the other side of the country from Reykjavík, in the eastern fjord town of Reyðarfjörður, which is pronounced something like “radar-f ’your-dur.” There’s an unremarkable mountain out there named Kárahnjúkar, and that’s where they got the name for what they were doing: the Kárahnjúkar Hydroelectric Project. You say it “KAR-en-yoo-kar.”

As the project progressed, it gradually became clear that Kárahnjúkar was bigger than anyone had imagined. Even Jóhann Kröyer, project manager for the dams and tunnels, remarked over dinner at a work-site canteen: “I think maybe people didn’t realize how huge this project is.”

But as the months passed, a growing and significant minority did realize it, and a kind of national family feud erupted—ostensibly framed around the irreversible impact on the land of the gigantic dam, the blocking of two glacial rivers, and the resultant flooding of the highland wilderness for the reservoir. Iceland had obtained an exemption from the Kyoto Protocol pollution limits, which would expire in 2012, adding an element of urgency, and future smelters and expansions were on the drawing board. Was the government going to take one of the world’s cleanest countries and offer it up as a dumping ground for heavy industry?

Did the people really want this—did they even understand what it meant?

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/iceland/del-giudice-text

[Hekate]

1. 4 Recs already, needs a Kick

:kick:

[formercia]

2. I thought the Icelandic people were smarter than that

They should know better. Aluminum smelters are ecological disasters.

[NNadir]

3. Smarter than whom?

Iceland is a renewable energy powerhouse.

When Iceland exports aluminum, it is exporting electricity, something it couldn't otherwise do.

I note that Iceland also has the world's largest geothermal capacity.

Unless you are for banning aluminum metal, it is wise to make in a place where it had the lowest possible external cost. How else are we going to make aluminum frames for our brazillions of solar roofs going up all over California?

I once did a calculation here showing that while Iceland could never be the "Saudia Arabia" of renewable electricity, it could be the "Ecuador" of renewable electricity.

[AlecBGreen]

4. thats a neat way of thinking of it NNadir

"When Iceland exports aluminum, it is exporting electricity."

[hunter]

5. Gasp! First world people who use aluminum should have to put up with this mess?

Why couldn't they put this plant in Nigeria or somewhere else like that?

:sarcasm:

[speedbird]

6. the article is incorrect, Iceland is not exempt from Kyoto

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/global.warming/stories/treaty/index4.h

[Javaman]

7. The spawned bjork. nt