It would seem some people in Iceland aren't happy with so called "renewable energy."

[NNadir]

While driving Iceland’s national ring road, in a southerly direction from Reykjavík, one cannot miss noticing the steam coming up from an extraordinarily grey infrastructure covering a large piece of land around mount Hengill, approximately 30 km from the capital. Filled with roads, drills, pipelines, and a large powerhouse, this once untouched geothermal area is now the site of the Hellisheiði geothermal power plant, operated by the publicly owned Reykjavík Energy (“Orkuveita Reykjavíkur” in Icelandic, abbreviated “OR”), generating electricity almost entirely for aluminium production.

Geothermal energy is commonly praised as a “green” alternative to environmentally unfriendly power sources such as fossil fuels, coals and nuclear energy. As a result of “the development of what were once thought to be non-viable resources”, a glossy brochure from engineering firm Mannvit states, “more and more public and private entities are looking into geothermal power as part of their strategy to mitigate global warming while still meeting growing energy demands.” In a promotional text for the Geothermal Energy Exhibition at Hellisheiði, the plant is said to be a “striking example of how geothermal energy is harnessed in a sustainable manner in Iceland and a showcase for the rest of the world.” Additionally, Reykjavík Energy has not hesitated maintaining that “general public opinion of exploiting the geothermal resources in the Hengill region is positive.”

So many men, so many minds. Only about ten kilometres away from the plant stands the small town of Hveragerði, wherein one gets to hear a completely different story. “We cannot accept that OR will be permitted to continue polluting the atmosphere,” Hallgrímur Þ. Magnússon, clinical doctor in Hveragerði said to newspaper DV last June. A few days earlier he had voiced his worries to local newspaper Sunnlenska, encouraging the town’s residents to start taking magnesium and iodide supplements to counteract the health impacts of the power plant’s sulphur (hydrogen sulphide) pollution. “I maintain that the pollution is of such quantity that the human body needs those two materials in order to resist the effects,” Hallgrímur said to Sunnlenska.

http://www.savingiceland.org/tag/geothermal-energy/

By the way, on an entire planet called "Earth," which has an atmosphere collapsing at the fastest rate ever observed in 2013, despite 50 years of chanting by cults with a vast membership base about how so called "renewable energy" would save us, it hasn't.

As of 2013, geothermal, wind, and solar combined don't even produce 3 exajoules of the 520 exajoules of energy now consumed each year by humanity.

Don't worry, though, be happy. If you save up your salary for a long, long, long, long time, you might be able to buy one of those swell highly subsidized cars for millionaires and billionaires, the wonderful Tesla.

[mbperrin]

1. Of course, the real reason renewables haven't caught on is because of the huge

subsidies that the petroleum and nuclear industries receive from the government. Exxon got 4 billion last year alone, the poor infants.

But in spite of that, the number of electric cars is dramatically up, and Texas now has the largest wind production in the country. Two years ago, when all the incoming water lines froze to nuclear, gas, and coal plants, the only generators not affected were wind, and they produced 25% of all the power in the state for that time period, so no blackouts occurred.

And 3 new giant transmission lines will bring thousands more generators already built online, since the old infrastructure was overwhelmed by the amount of power produced by these wind farms.

Change of a deep kind is slow, but it comes. Took petroleum a century to kill whale oil for lamps in homes. It might take a century to kill petroleum, and the real move has only been on for about 40 years, so we're still in the beginning.

[kristopher]

2. Poor Nnads

Just as food for thought, here is the status of world final energy consumption by source.



This is the concept behind calls for energy efficiency (a strategy that is anathema to the coal and nuclear industry because it slashes their profits).

The energy wasted from thermal sources is a very significant factor in understanding the issue of what energy source is doing what. Primary energy measures the total amount of energy that a fuel source yields - no matter whether it is powering our lives (ie electricity or or propulsion for autos) or whether it is waste heat being transferred to our waterways from nuclear plants or heat causing NO2* emissions off the hot engine block of an internal combustion.

An alternative (and most say better) way of looking at the production and use of energy is to measure what is needed and consumed by the actual work being accomplished. For example, an average internal combustion engine (ICE) powered car ejects 85% of the energy content of the gasoline it consumes as heat and only uses 15% for motive power. When we look for alternatives to gasoline do we think biofuels, and duplicate the efficiencies of the gasoline powered ICE or do we focus on batteries and electric motors that have far better efficiencies - typically using 90% of the input energy for locomotion?

Writ large, what does that mean? Take a look at this flow chart and note that the "rejected energy" comprised 58.1 quads of the total 95.1 quads of primary energy used in the US last year. How much was actually used to do the work of the nation? Only 37 quads.



If we look more closely at the various sectors we can see where the major opportunities for energy efficiency improvements are to be found:

Sector: Gross - Useful Energy; Rejected Energy (proportion of useful to rejected)

Transportation: 26.7 - 5.6; 21.1 (21 : 79)
Electric Generation: 38.10 - 12.40; 25.70 (33 : 67)

In sectors where the heat value of the energy is useful we see much higher efficiency
Industrial: 23.9 - 19.1; 4.77 (80 : 20)
Commercial: 8.29 - 5.39; 2.90 (65 : 35)
Residential: 10.60 - 6.9; 3.72 (65 : 35)

Now let's look at the Solar, Wind and Hydro Subset of Electric Generation. These produce electricity directly with insignificant primary energy lost as heat in the generation phase, however they do incur line losses of about 7%.

SolarWindHydro: 4.07 - 3.78; 0.285 (93 : 7)

Let's compare that to
Nuclear: 8.05 - 2.62; 5.43 (33 : 67)

In the US, the our fleet of nuclear reactors (what is it, down to 99 and falling fast?) might have produced 8.05 quads of primary energy, but at about 35% efficiency at the busbar and a further 7% line loss, (8.05q x 0.35 = 2.82q x 0.93) that only equals 2.62 quads actually delivered to the end user for work.

3.78q > 2.62q

See also: http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.11788#utm_medium=email&utm_source=LNH+07-19-2013&utm_campaign=NAW+News+Headlines

Oh yes, and then there is this.

[Yo_Mama]

3. I read the whole thing

and I must say that the residents seem to have a legitimate complaint. The cited emissions exceed US standards, to be sure.

I had no idea that this could be a problem, and thank you very much for posting this item. I knew the stuff about the quakes, but not about the potential for heavy metal and sulfur contamination.

Sulfur dioxide is usually associated with coal plants:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sulfur_dioxide_and_coal

Well, you live and learn.

Coal plants are often now fitted with emissions scrubbers to reduce such pollution. I wonder if the same could be done for this plant and the others in Iceland also polluting?