Iceland's Plan to Drill Into a Volcano to Test 'Limitless' Supercharged Geothermal Energy

In Iceland, 'a volcanic system has awoken after an 800-year slumber,' according to a multimedia CNN Special Report. 'But in another part of Iceland, scientists and engineers are hoping to harness magma's immense power to solve the planet's biggest problem...'

It all started in 2009 when Bjarni Pálsson, an engineer with Iceland's national power company, accidentally drilled into a magma chamber. 'Armed with new technology and know-how, he is going back in...'
The ambition of the geothermal experts and volcanologists that comprise the Krafla Magma Testbed is to convert the immense heat and pressure into a new 'limitless' form of supercharged geothermal energy — a tantalizing prospect as the world struggles to end its relationship with planet-heating fossil fuels. 'This has never been done before,' said Hjalti Páll Ingólfsson, director of the Geothermal Research Cluster, which developed the project....

If all goes to plan, the first borehole will be completed in 2027 and will mark the first time anyone has ever implanted sensors directly into a magma chamber... If the first drilling experiment succeeds, the team will move onto the second borehole, due to be completed in 2029 — and this could be the global gamechanger. It's here the team will attempt to harness the intense heat of magma to produce a new kind of extreme geothermal energy, many times more powerful than conventional...

If they succeed, the implications could reverberate around the world, Ingólfsson said. There are an estimated 800 million people living within roughly 60 miles of an active volcano.


The report includes a map showing volcano sites around the earth where similar drilling could theoretically unleash the same intense magma-powered extreme geothermal energy.

Iceland's plan is to drill down 1.2 miles — about 2 kilometers — into a magma chamber that's around 1,800 Fahrenheit (nearly 1,000 degrees Celsius). The engineering feat 'won't be easy,' the article acknowledges. 'But as humans heat the planet at record speed with fossil fuel pollution, there is increasing pressure to perform moonshot feats of engineering to save us from ourselves.'

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