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Comment by kvetching | Hacker News Reader

Actually this is already being done in Iceland. "Geothermal energy is a major source of energy in Iceland, with about 25 percent of the country's electricity generated from tapping the Earth's heat, according to the National Energy Authority of Iceland. About 90 percent of Icelandic households are heated with geothermal energy."

Source: https://www.livescience.com/57833-scientists-drill-volcano-c....

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Obviously geothermal is possible. Equally obvious: it is not economically viable as a global replacement for fossil fuels or it would have supplanted them already, especially in Iceland.

It definitely has supplanted them in Iceland. Even the most remote places that used to use oil are generally switching to geothermal for heating. Converting the heat to power isn’t always worth it because the island has so much plentiful hydro power. Fossil fuels account for basically 0% of Icelandic power.

FWIW, about 12.8% says https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/iceland#how-much-o... . (Wikipedia says 15% at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Iceland but that uses a 10 year old source.)

That's energy, OP referred to power, which normally means generated power in these discussions. All of the fossil energy is oil, none is coal, and I believe that's all used in transportation and a tiny bit of heating in the hinterlands.

I wonder how the flying in and out is accounted for in these sorts of figures, if hydrocarbons are ever replaced in aviation it will be dead last after everything else.

Okay. OP' parent referred to "global replacement for fossil fuels or it would have supplanted them already".

I found Iceland's "Fuel Use Forecast" at https://nea.is/fuel/forecast/nr/132 , which appear to be from 2007. It shows aviation as the biggest - and growing - consumer of fuel.

Iceland has so much access to power that they're likely to be the first country to export net negative carbon in some fashion: aluminum I'd guess, we always need that.

This won't involve burning less jet fuel and resembles a Papal indulgence, but maintaining an industrial civilization while decarbonizing industry is impossible without this kind of accounting.

Iceland also had the first magma powered electric generator back in 2009. Was an accidental result of a research drilling project though. Scishow made a video about it back in 2014 [0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jARDdWuFpK8

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