The UK will revisit a plan to import some of Iceland’s vast reserves of geothermal and other renewable energy to power more than a million of its homes.
Prime Minister David Cameron announced last week that a task force would be set up to negotiate a financial aid package for the $7.7bn (£5bn) scheme, which would see a 1000-km-long cable that could carry 1.2GW laid under the Atlantic Ocean between the two countries, newspaper The Sunday Times reported.
UK and Iceland signed a memorandum of understanding in 2012 pledging to explore sharing power, but plans have yet to take shape.
Promoting the scheme is veteran financier Edmund "Edi" Truell, who was appointed this year as pensions and investment adviser to London mayor Boris Johnson.
He set up a company, called Atlantic Superconnection, to develop the power link, and proposes to finance the project elements, which would include developing more capacity in Iceland, laying the cable and connecting the supply into the UK grid.
Truell told The Sunday Times the link could power 1.2 million UK homes.
On its website, Atlantic Superconnection says the cable would be the longest subsea HVDC (high-voltage direct current) cable in the world.
Lying on the boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, Iceland is a literal hotbed of geothermal activity.
In 2014, roughly 85% of primary energy use in Iceland came from indigenous renewable resources, of which 66% was from geothermal, according to the country’s National Energy Authority.
Photograph: Eruption of the Strokkur geyser in Haukadalur, Iceland (Andreas Tille/Wikimedia Commons). Lying on the boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, Iceland is a literal hotbed of geothermal activity.
