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Both have working electrical generation plants contributing to their national grids. Primarily due to their fortuitous location straddling active volcanic zones.
But what about the United Kingdom? Such a stable location seems an odd location to take advantage of such an energy source.
However, plans are afoot to combine the abundant Icelandic geothermal energy with the rapacious power requirements of the United Kingdom.
Of course this will require two things. Increased generation capacity in Iceland (that's pretty easy) and a means of delivering the electricity to the UK (the tricky bit).
Unlike oil and gas, it's not feasible to package electricity up into nice bundles and load it onto a ship to be delivered to some far-off destination.
Instead, if the plan comes to fruition, sub-sea electricity cables of a length never- before-seen will be laid between Iceland and the United Kingdom to carry the energy.
If it comes off, this will deliver around 33% of the UK's electricity requirements, and best of all, it's entirely green - this is energy that nature is dumping into the environment already.
Such a project will also give fillip to other mooted projects in may other parts of the world, Australia included, where plans to drill deep boreholes into hot rocks will also produce energy (without the volcanoes!).
Unlike wind, wave and tidal projects, where the act of collecting the energy will have an effect upon the energy source and its downstream influence, geothermal projects are simply tapping into an energy source which is already being released into the environment.
There clearly must already be an energy plume rising above Iceland - this project simply serves to move that plume to other parts of the planet, and in the act of doing so will be reducing the fossil fuel plume elsewhere in the planet in the process.
