What can you do to promote a new green energy technology that the general public, bankers and governments do not yet take seriously enough? A giant volcanic eruption to stop half the air flights in Europe at the same time as the World Geothermal Congress (WGC) was a stroke of genius.
Here is the power to stop the world, or to make it go without carbon emissions or use of fossil fuel. The choice is ours. But so far we have understood the potential of geothermal but not realized it.
The market leader in terms of reserves is Indonesia , which has only used 4 percent of its identified geothermal resources.
But little Iceland has made great efforts to make full use of its geothermal resources.
Now Indonesia wants to develop 4,000 MW of geothermal energy urgently, having only developed 1,200 MW previously. But the road to disaster could be paved with good intentions. How to make sure Indonesia can deliver?
So when tall white-haired President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson of Iceland opened the 2010 WGC on the magical and mystical island of Bali then the bearded bards of green and clean energy, burgeoning geothermal bureaucrats and busy businessmen bowed before a chief druid whose volcano was the biggest and best.
A world stopper and a geothermal publicity whopper.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who opened the congress with President Grimsson, admitted that Eyjafjallajokull, the name of the volcano, was utterly unpronounceable.
But President Grimsson was quite right to point to the upside of the volcanic eruption. Now the world would understand the power of geothermal energy which already provides area heating to all of Iceland and between a third and a quarter of all its electricity.
So the world congress of hot and steamy geothermal technology came to hot and steamy Bali to convince us all that this misty if not mystical and mysterious technology, with its great big steaming pipes and condensers has suddenly become big business.
It is already generating 10,000 megawatts (MW) or 10 Gigs (GW) globally of electrical power, out of the 70 GW or so of its current global potential.
So when the great druid from the Arctic North spoke on the Indonesian equator he commanded the full attention of the geothermal community. He told them that “Never before in the history of geothermal power have we faced such a challenge, an epoch of fundamental transformation”, with climate change and environmentalism driving geothermal energy from being good to being great.
He reminded everyone that Iceland had been a developing country inside Europe in the 1970s when I had worked with him helping to introduce international relations at the University of Haskoli Islands in Reykjavik .
President Grimsson explained that geothermal energy in Iceland started with initiatives by local communities as well as by national government and with the support of Icelandic scientists, engineers and experts, whilst keeping the price of electricity fairly low for consumers and industry.
Icelandic geothermal energy evolved a development model that was socially, technically and financially viable, driven by community support and local know-how, based on local financing and fabrication, providing heat and power for people, the aluminium industry, greenhouses and tourism. But all this had to be learned from the 1930’s until now.
And much of global geothermal development is still obstructed by lack of adaptation of regulatory frameworks with no easy viable financial model for development by Independent Power Producers (IPPs) who cannot easily take on such high front-up costs and risks of exploratory drilling.
For this green and clean geothermal technology works like oil and gas, takes longer, and costs more, with higher risks, not like hydro, or biomass, wind or solar.
President Olafur Grimsson was right to say that change was in the air, alongside the ash from Eyjafjallajokull. “A truly global transformation in the world in the next 5-15 years could see a fundamental breakthrough for the global geothermal industry”.
And if there is a breakthrough for the global geothermal industry to exponential growth and onto the world stage as a big-time player then great big Indonesia has to achieve the lions share, perhaps inspired by what little Iceland has already done.
Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.
