Brian Donnelly, Senior News Reporter
ICELANDIC volcanoes could be piping power to homes across the UK through a
Scottish subsea cable, under plans to be announced by the Prime Minister.
David Cameron is expected to announce the move to provide a “green battery”
through an electricity link between Britain and Iceland at the Northern
Future Forum in Reykjavik.
The multi-billion pound interconnector – involving 750 miles of undersea
cabling – would enable the direct export of hydro and geothermal-generated
electricity to be exported directly to Britain.
Previous plans have earmarked the north of Scotland as first point of
contact with the UK which would create jobs in construction and maintenance
at the place where the cable would come ashore.
A new UK-Iceland Energy Task Force set up to examine the feasibility of the
scheme will report back within six months.
Officials said the project, which would take between seven and 10 years to
construct, would provide a long-term, renewable source of energy increasing
Britain’s future energy security.
Currently, Iceland gets around 95 per cent of its electricity from
renewable hydro or geothermal sources.
Lang Banks, WWF Scotland’s director, said earlier that the plan could be
the forerunner of wider energy links allowing Scotland to share power with
other European countries.
He said that if “Scotland and the rest of Europe are to move to a 100 per
cent renewable future then greater use of interconnectors is a sensible way
forward”.
Mr Banks also suggested that as well as power from volcanoes, solar power
could be piped from the Mediterranean into the UK while Scotland could
export power from wind and wave generation to countries like Poland as
global energy prices continue to rise.
The cable between Iceland and Scotland would bring renewable power from
Iceland’s 200 volcanoes and 600 hot springs.
Previous costings put the price of the cable at £3 billion, and it was said
it could create enough electricity every year to power a city the size of
Glasgow.
Geothermal energy, sometimes called “volcano power”, is taken from the heat
stored in the Earth’s core and is abundant in Iceland and other parts of
the world close to tectonic boundaries.
Mr Cameron has held talks with his Icelandic counterpart Sigmundur David
Gunnlaugsson ahead of the main Northern Future Forum which joins the UK
with leaders from Scandinavia and the Baltic states.
Mr Cameron is the first British Prime Minister to visit Reykjavik since
Winston Churchill in 1941.
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