Iceland Power Plants

The Parliament of Iceland passed a legislation in 2011 which states that a Master Plan shall be kept that categorizes possible power plant options into three different categories; Energy Utilization Category, On Hold Category or Protection Category. In order to have a power plant option taken up for consideration one has to submit an application to The National Energy Authority (NEA) petitioning the Master Plan steering committee. The NEA then assesses whether the documentation supporting the application is sufficient for the steering committee to assess the option. Currently there are 18 power plant options in the Energy Utilization Category (EUC) with a combined capacity of roughly 1.4GW. The current capacity of the Icelandic power plants is 2.8GW which puts the EUC at 50% of the current capacity. The majority of the power plants in the EUC are geothermal power plants, or 865MW, 456MW are hydro and the rest, 100MW, is wind. The total estimated cost of these power plants is USD 4-5bn.