Power-Intensive Industries in Iceland

The largest manufacturing enterprise is an aluminium smelter, located near Reykjavík,with a production capacity of about 90 thousand ton a year. It is owned by the Icelandic Aluminium Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Alusuisse of Switzerland.

Negotiations have been conducted by the Icelandic government and the aluminium producers to build a new 230,000 tons aluminum smelter in Iceland. This project has been postponed indefinitely due to a decline in world market prices of aluminum.

On the west coast there is a ferrosilicon plant owned jointly by the Icelandic government, Elkem A/S of Norway and Sumitomo Corp. of Japan.

Geothermal steam has been used very successfully in the processing of diatomite from the bottom of Lake Mývatn in northern Iceland. The plant is owned jointly by the Icelandic government and the Celite Corporation.

Five medium-sized manufacturing enterprises, a fertilizer plant, a cement plant, a rock wool plant, an algin plant and a salt plant use locally available raw materials and domestic sources of energy in their production.

Today the installed hydro-electric power base is 4,200 GWh, of an estimated exploitable hydro-electric potential of 45,000 GWh. In addition, there are enormous geothermal resources, already extensively used for communal domestic hot water, heating of buildings and greenhouses, offering large quantities of medium-level (80-200°198°C) heat as water or steam. There are 44.6 MW of installed geothermal steam generating plants, of an estimated 15-20,000 GWh potential. The main industrial uses of geothermal heat are for drying, with one plant drying seaweed for alginate and another drying diatomite. Research is being directed towards developing new industrial uses for natural heat.

The Ministry of Industry and Commerce is actively promoting further development of power-intensive industries in Iceland. To this end the government is interested in co-operating with international corporations to establish new facilities producing energy intensive products.

The government is at present carrying out a feasibility study of a project whereby electricity would be exported through a submarine cable to the UK or the continent of Europe.