101rvk

The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 6 — 2013
20
Boys were last in charge of our energy sector
Their plans went like this: A new Alcoa
smelter in the east, a new Alcoa smelter
in Húsavík, a new Rio Tinto Straumsvík
smelter beside the old one, an expansion
of the Century smelter in Hvalfjörður and a
new Century smelter in Helguvík. Amounting
to a total of 1.4 million tons of aluminium.
Each one of them needing energy
that could serve one million people in their
daily lives. Each one of them demanding
sacrifice of great natural wonders, wild rivers
and pristine geothermal areas.
“We enter a
boom after boom
and never learn
from mistakes.”
How did they fare The Alcoa Smelter in
the East has been built, with the destruction
of two glacial rivers, Lagarfljót and
50 km2 of highland beauty. The expansion
of the Rio Tinto smelter was stopped and
the Húsavík smelter did not go through,
however, a skeleton of the Helguvík smelter
is currently rising—with no power in sight.
The Alcoa smelter in the north would
have required all the harnessable power in
the northern part of Iceland, only excluding
Jökulsá á Fjöllum. Close to Mývatn,
we have the Krafla geothermal area. After
a long and often struggling forty-year
development period, the available power
from the area reached about 60 MW. Now,
the goal was suddenly to quadruple the
area’s energy production—expanding it by
150 MW in just a few years, and harnessing
the beautiful Þeistareykir area to its utmost
capacity—up to 200 MW. They also had
their eyes set on Bjarnarflag and Gjástykki,
delicate areas that should be regarded as
national heritage sites. All this was to serve
a new Alcoa factory they wanted to build
close to Húsavík, the famous whale watching
and fishing village in North Iceland.
Having done all that, however, the energy
production would still not reach the 600
MW that Alcoa really needed—the harnessing
of two more glacial rivers would have
been necessary: Skjálfandafljót with the
waterfall Aldeyjarfoss and the glacial rivers
running from Hofsjökull.
The interesting thing is not how crazy
this seems in hindsight, how extreme, how
mad this reality was — but that outsiders
did not see this plan as collective madness.
The scheme was praised in international
media as being a progressive plan for
"clean" energy, and we still have members
of parliament that regret that this did
not happen. And the fact that our labour
unions and politicians have referred to this
when they say that "nothing is happening"
in terms of business and job creation in
Iceland. Or that they refer to this when they
say “we have still only harnessed X% of our
energy.”
They are talking about this as a normal
feasible future state of Iceland.
Why are people so crazy Is it or was
it a good idea to indebt the nation by a
total of 5 billion dollars to place two Alcoa
smelting plants in the same constituency
To surround the Faxaflói bay, where 70%
of Iceland's population resides, with three
smelters The answer is simple: The mad
men still think so. One of the new Independence
Party MPs, Brynjar Níelsson, has no
regrets for the death of the river Lagarfljót
in service of Alcoa. He said it was apparent
that protectionists loved a few fish more
than they did people.
But you can still ask like a fool: Did
Iceland really have enough accumulated
knowledge and manpower to multiply
all our energy companies in the space of
ten years Was there never a doubt in the
geologist’s mind when he found himself in
a magical place such as the Torfajökull area
above Landmannalaugar, Kerlingarfjöll or
the steam areas around Reykjavík Did they
really want to do drill, pipe and harness
EVERYTHING, right away And do it all for
the sake of a single industry—the aluminium
industry. Did it have to be the role of a
marginalised group of a few activists to use
their spare time to criticise this
OF “REYKJAVÍK”
KNOWLEDGE
I was once at a meeting in Húsavík, where
I screened my film, ‘Dreamland.’ At that
meeting, the local geothermal plant
manager claimed he could easily harness
1,000 MW out of geothermal areas north of
Mývatn. I asked if it wasn’t correct that scientists
are concerned about overexploitation
of the country’s geothermal areas. The
scientists’ criticisms were quickly blown off
the table as “Reykjavík knowledge,” and in
that instant every alarm bell went off.
Now we understand that power is not
as plenty as the hype promised, and now
most Icelanders understand that energy
production on the banks of Lake Mývatn
in Bjarnarflag might just jeopardise the
ecosystem in that wonderful lake. But you
wonder if the people developing our most
delicate areas possess good enough judgement
to work close to natural wonders. It
seems like they are ready to take the risk, to
see what happens.
I found an interview with the aforementioned
plant manager from 2002. At
that time, he had drilled a big hole for 170
million ISK because a Russian company
potentially wanted to build an aluminium
oxide factory and a giant aluminium plant
in Húsavík.
If one sets aside minor ethical facts,
such as the Russian aluminium industry being
run by the mafia at that time, one is still
left to ponder the fact that almost no industry
in the world produces as much and as
toxic waste as aluminium oxide production
(or alumina, as it is called). Those that
followed the horrible events when a red
slush toxic lake in Hungary broke should
know what comes with an alumina refinery.
But this local hard-working man had spent
more than one and a half million dollars
looking into the feasibility of such a plant
in Húsavík. Things have been so good here
that people think they are untouchable.
Even though the companies engage in
malevolent practices in other countries,
they would never do that here. Sure.
THE HOLY LOCAL
It seems that for some reason the most
unbelievable hogwash gets promulgated
without any critical thought. We enter a
boom after boom and never learn from
mistakes. We can look further back in history
to see how madness is mixed up with
ambition, how extreme and unrealistic
views of the future are presented and taken