Why would you want to go somewhere hot and sunny for your summer holidays? When you could take in the delights of a Scandinavian country, such as Iceland, which is what I did recently.

Although the weather wasn’t great, the scenery was incredible which more than made up for it. From glaciers to volcanic formations – I half expected Captain Kirk to show up and start a fight with a badly dressed lizard man.

Travelling around, you can’t help but notice the steam rising out of the ground, as well as waterfalls a-plenty. Therefore, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to learn that most of Iceland’s energy comes from hydroelectric plant and geothermal heat. In fact, 85% of their energy needs come from renewable sources (compared with 25% in the UK), with 66% of it geothermal.

Nine out of 10 houses in Iceland are heated geothermally. I suspect that this is largely helped by the fact that Reykjavik, where 40% of the country’s 320,000 population live, has a district heating system. The entire city’s hot water supply is stored in the Perlan at the top of town, where there are six hot water storage tanks, each with a capacity of 4M litres. From here, hot water is distributed all around the city.   

I also came across an unpronounceable hydroelectric station, called Laxárstöðvar, which was owned by another unpronounceable company - Landsvirkjunis, Iceland’s largest state run electricity generator. They have responsibility for 13 hydropower and 2 geothermal stations. The biggest hydro station, Fjotsdalsstod, has a huge 690 MW capacity. So the one I came across was a tiny in comparison, at just 25.5MW, but was still pretty impressive to see.