Heavy Industries in Iceland

Iceland is the only country in Western Europe that still has large resources of competitively priced, renewable energy remaining to be harnessed. Although electricity consumption per capita in Iceland is second to none in the world, it is estimated that by 2010 only a third of the country's energy potential will be tapped. Setting Iceland apart from most, if not all other countries, is that its electricity is produced using exclusively hydropower- and geothermal energy.

These are sustainable, environmentally friendly, 'green' resources, without the atmospheric emissions of fossil fuel. The energy infrastructure is state-of-the-art, using the latest technology, with great reliability and efficiency, and is ranked #1 in the world according to the IMD.

Total viable electric power potential is now estimated at 50,000GWh/yr. In early 2002 some 8,000GWh/yr of this power had been harnessed or only about 16% of the total electric energy potential. In addition, geothermal steam with pressure up to 20 bars and temperature up to 250°C is still to be harvested, a huge potential for steam consuming industries to come.

In the case of aluminium production, using electricity generated by hydropower instead of coal, will typically cut total emission of CO2 by some 90% per ton of production.

The first aluminium plant was built in Iceland late ‘60s by Alusuisse. In the ‘70s the build-up of the next large industries continued with construction of the ferro-silicon plant of Icelandic Alloys Ltd. Since 1995, numbers of new large-scale industrial expansions and projects have taken place. The capacity of the ferro-silicon plant was increased by 60%. The Nordurál smelter was built in a record time and in 2001 its capacity was increased to 90,000 metric tons per annum. The Alusuisse Smelter, now owned by Alcan, was expanded by more than 60%.

The information above is from Invest in Iceland

=>> For more information click here