As Iceland has discovered, there are great rewards in using hydroelectric power, and for our purposes, the Auburn Dam would replace much of the power lost when we shut down Rancho Seco, which on hindsight is appearing to be a bad decision as nuclear is clean energy once the waste is dealt with—though no small consideration.
ENERGY
High hopes for renewable power from Earth's depths
Icelanders' long experience will help Californians tap that source of heat.
By Elizabeth Douglass
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 12, 2007
What do Icelanders know about heat?
Quite a lot, it turns out. For 70 years, the chilly island nation has been tapping the Earth's warmth -- using geothermal energy to heat buildings and swimming pools, melt snow and generate more than a quarter of the country's electricity.
And now they've come to California to share the knowledge.
The effort will be formally launched today in downtown Los Angeles, where Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson and a handful of city and state officials will openthe new headquarters of Iceland America Energy, the company that will lead Iceland's geothermal push in North America.
"It's really kind of unusual when you have this small country that's coming in and helping the United States develop this resource," said Curt Robinson, executive director of the Geothermal Resources Council, a nonprofit educational and scientific group based in Davis, Calif. "But they've been using geothermal in applied ways for several decades, very successfully. . . they have a fully developed energy economy and we don't."
While California struggles toward its ambitious goal of deriving 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2010, Iceland has already accomplished that and more, albeit on a much smaller scale. The country is almost completely powered from renewable sources -- 73.4% of it hydropower and 26.5% geothermal.
Last year, the company signed a contract with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to provide the San Francisco-based utility with 49 megawatts of power from a geothermal plant to be built near Truckhaven in Imperial County. The California Energy Commission chipped in a $700,000 grant to help fund the first well, which will be drilled next week.
