Magma Energy Iceland with Asgeir Margeirsson

This last meeting took place almost next to Keflavik international airport, it was hard to find the office itself, because there was no visible sign. We were surprised to have a foreign energy company in Iceland, which makes use of experienced Icelandic engineers and other people. Magma Energy Iceland is less than a year old, see the News Release of the company.

Asgeir has studied civil ingeneering at Iceland university and worked for Reykjavik Energy (COO) and Geysir Green Energy (CEO) before. Magma Energy is a Canadian company and manages projects in the USA, China, Hungary, Chile, Peru, Iceland and some other places. He told us that basically only heating of buildings is a taks, whereas cooling rarely is needed in Iceland, except some air conditioning and ventilation, but often just the windows are opened.
The largest hydro power plant was built for Alcoa, a aluminium smelter company, in the East of Iceland. The amount of geothermal energy has increased a lot during the last years, but hydropower is an easier way to produce electricity, it's cheaperand it's also easy to foresee the power of a river, to calculate how much electricity can be produced at a specific site. To make use of geothermal energy is more complicated. Expensive explorations are needed, and only estimations are possible in the beginning of the use of an geothermal field, there's generally less knowledge about it. The building up of a power plant then goes step by step, because energy companies don't risk to exploit or empty a field. Due to large public acceptance for power plants, there are no fences around them in Iceland. The acceptance for aluminium smelter companies isn't that high though.

Another use of the energy would be welcomed, but what and how?

Asgeir reminds us of the large environmental impact of tourists, and tells us that geothermal power plants are easily removable, once the field would run out of energy. Usually, the required depth for drilling holes is between 500 and 1'000 meters.

There is a quality of life that goes along with the abundance of energy

Snow melting on the walkways in the city is health care prevention, so are the warm pools, the long and warm showers, to help the hard working people relax. Iceland is a rather harsh environment. Another quality is the possibility of lighting the settlements without remorse and producing food in greenhouses. The biggest Icelandic brand is the Blue Lagoon, it also sells medical and cosmetical products. There were some tryings to export mineral water, but it worked not that well.

Link: Magma Energy Corporation