Iceland geothermal: Engineering calm in a volcanic storm

In this week's episode, we take a trip to the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland to visit the Svartsengi power Station. Located only several hundred metres from several active volcanoes, the 85 MW geothermal plant has withstood 12 eruptions over the past few years - only shutting down once when power lines actually melted.  

Richard sits down with HS Orka's CEO to find out exactly how this resilient power station kept running when lava was flowing down the mountainside and the local residents were being evacuated. Not least how the company upgraded the plant on time and under budget.

 Host: Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News
Guest: Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka

Editor: Oscar Birk
Producer: Sarah Knowles

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Transcript

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 0:06

Hello listeners, and welcome to Plugged In - the Energy News podcast from Montel, where we bring the latest news issues and changes happening in the energy sector. Just before Christmas, I took a trip to one of Iceland's top attractions. The Blue Lagoon. You will know this world famous site from countless travel programs and social media posts, which capture its famous turquoise water. What you might not know is that the blue in the blue lagoon is formed by the power plant, by its wastewater mixes with seawater. To form a silica rich lagoon, creating an unmistakable blue color. Now, on this occasion, I wasn't there to take a selfie or enjoy a dip. In this episode, I'm gonna talk about the remarkable story of the upgrade of this geothermal power plant to 85 megawatts. Remarkable because production only paused once during the refit, despite 12 volcanic eruptions over the last couple of years. Very close by. Thousands of locals were evacuated, making world headlines, but work at the plant went on unaffected. Before I sat down with the operator CEO, to explore how they coped under extremely challenging circumstances. I stood outside the power plant's entrance to take in the sights, the sounds, and the smells of this unique site. I'm at the Svartsengi Power Plant on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland overlooking the Blue Lagoon, one of Iceland's top tourist attractions. I'm actually standing on top of one of the barriers that prevented both the Blue Lagoon and the power plant from being overrun from lava flows. This area was witnessed to some of the most dramatic volcanic eruptions seen in Europe in recent years. We saw the evacuation of the nearby town and the constructions of these barriers on top of which I'm standing, which prevented the plant and the blue lagoon from being completely eradicated. Now let's hear from Tómas Már Sigurðsson, the CEO of HS Orka, the company that owns and operates the Svartsengi Power plant. I'm here in, at the offices of HS Orka. And joining me today is Tómas Már Sigurðsson, the CEO of the company. A warm welcome to you, Tómas.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 2:23

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 2:24

Tell me a little bit about HS Orka before we go into talking a little bit more about the the activity your company's seen in the past few years.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 2:31

Yeah, yeah, sure. Orka is a 50-year-old company. Today it's the largest privately held and operated energy producer in Iceland. It started 50 years ago as sort of a utility, a local utility in developing of primarily for hot water, for district heating for the area of Reykjanes, which is a 10% population of Iceland lives there. And we have an international airport in that area, and a NATO base. That was its foundation. But we, in the beginning they were drilling for hot water and geothermal steam. Pretty quickly started utilizing the steam as well for electricity, electrical production. And over the years we have grown the, you know, our electrical production profile built more geothermal power plants. And today we also own two hydropower plants and manage multiple small hydros across the country.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 3:17

What's the total capacity of the plants? So you operate

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 3:19

total capacity of HS Orka is one 50 megawatt. Again, electrical generation and about the same hot water production. But we also have a resource park which has developed over the years, which basically means companies that are directly connected to our geothermal power plants and utilizing the waste steam or brine, or any other resource that's come from the power production. The most famous example is the Blue Lagoon. The blue lagoon developed out of HS Orka. And it's an example where the egg has outgrown its hen.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 3:50

Exactly. Or it's nest even. Yes, exactly.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 3:53

Yeah. But we also have you know, multiple other companies. So it's as an aquaculture, there's a big salmon farming development happening near our power plant, $400 million investment. And also utilizing the steam in other companies to dry fish, which is a popular source of protein, particularly in Africa. So it has multiple other sort of offsprings, but our focus is the energy production and hot water product.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 4:17

Absolutely. And so obviously it's the first introduction that international travelers who tourists come to Iceland, they see, the, either the blue lagoon or the steam coming from the blue lagoon, and then they will see it when they land. Probably the, some of your power plants. Absolutely, yeah.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 4:30

They will actually fly over our power plants most likely when they land in Iceland.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 4:34

Absolutely. And I, I was just, now I want to, I was at the Svartsengi power plant just before Christmas. And it was, it's absolutely stunning. It's very striking in terms of the landscape. The lava flows that you've managed to stop them when these eruptions. Now I want to go into a little bit detail there, Tómas, about you are obviously very much impacted by the the volcanic activity, very close to the pipeline. Can you talk, talk me through some of that.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 4:58

I would say the risk of geothermal utilization, high temperature, geothermal utilization, which is Iceland is course on the boundaries of two tectonic plates, north Atlantic plates and the Eurasian plate, and they're growing in each direction every year. So we have our fair share of volcanic eruptions in country. And we are utilizing this, the steam, you know, generated by this magma. And that's the ha occupational hazard, is that we might have an eruption not far away from power plants. That does not happen often. It hasn't happened for 50 years and never happened to us. But now over the last three years, we've had 12 volcanic eruption, clove eruption, 12 eruptions close to the plant, three a bit further out, like three, seven kilometers away. But, nine. Quite close to the plant.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 5:41

How close did the lava get, for example,

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 5:44

the lava? Actually we, the government built the embankments or barriers, lava barriers, which we saw to protect the plant. So we would be under lava today. Had that not been done. So the fissure, which erupted from, was maybe three kilometers away from us, but the lava flow reached the plant and bypassed the plant. But the barriers secured it, that it went past the plant and two different, two different areas. So that happened for those nine eruption that happened, closed to us. Three of those lava flows came quite close to the plant. So maybe just within a few hundred meters. And, but all our portholes, we drill, two to three kilometers into the ground to collect steam and fluid under pressure to generate the electricity. All the bottles were safe and all our infrastructure, equipment power plants were safe. So no people got injured. So we were safe from that. But obviously during eruptions we had scare from lava flow coming close to the plants, cutting off roads, pollution coming over the power plant,

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 6:44

poisonous gases,

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 6:46

stuff like that. So that, there were bunch of interruptions. So during this period, we were actually constructing a new power plant inside Svartsengi Key, which you saw probably

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 6:55

Yeah, I did. Yeah.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 6:56

A new 50 megawatt turbine.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 6:58

It was not just you, sorry to interrupt that, Tómas, but you not just, were you keeping a plant operation, you are actually building a new power plant there itself, which came online what, in November or?

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 7:08

Yeah, end of November. Yeah, end of November. And we were being a 50-year-old. Site, so I think is the foundation of our company. There were a lot of older power plant older equipment, which were obsolete. So we were decommissioning those and inserting a new, bigger power plant instead, or bigger turbine. And that was ongoing when this happened. And all in all, due to eruptions, I think we had over four months of interruptions if we combine everything due to lava flows and pollutions and things like that. But still we know with some interesting and good, insightful strategies assembling equipment and things offsite and things like that, we managed to catch up and delivered it on time. So that was quite astonishing.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 7:49

And I heard also under budget, or

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 7:51

Yes, we did. It was,

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 7:52

that's a, I think, elsewhere in Europe, that doesn't happen very often with these big projects, but maybe, oh, it's different size. But this is about 55 megawatt, is it?

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 8:00

Yeah, turbine is 55. It's gonna generate to begin with somewhere around 25. We need to drill more holes to get it up to the extra, 30. That's the capacity it has. But we are decommissioning, we de decommission. Probably 15 megawatts worth of generation capacity. And we get an extra 15 to 20 with this new one, just using the new equipment, using the same steam. So, all in all, it brings the plant up to 85 megawatts. It was, in 60 before.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 8:28

So it's quite a big upgrade. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 8:29

Big upgrade just with the, new equipment.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 8:31

And while this volcanic activity was ongoing, did you cut the power supply or the district heating supply at all?

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 8:39

For one the power supply, one of the lava flows actually took down power lines. Okay. So power supplies was off. Power generation was off for a week, that was because of the distributor, Lance net, their power line went off and they had already built barriers around the mast, but the lines themselves melted. So that, that was, but they managed to reconnect us in a week, and then we had for three days interruption of delivering hot water to the community. Which was quite a scary situation because it was in the middle of January winter. It was minus 15 degrees Celsius outside. We heat our houses with hot water from that power plant. So during the course of two and a half to three days, we were just revetting new pipes built. It was a massive undertaking. Got connected again and nothing really no big injury, no big damages to homes which we were trying to protect. Homes and companies, of course, in the whole area. We of course had our fair sphere of, the pipe burst and stuff like that. But but all in all, I would say. Surprisingly little damages both to our plant and to any other facilities in the area.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 9:43

And it's quite eerie when you drive through Grindavík now 'cause it's, mostly it's the people were forced to evacuate. But it's almost like a sort of ghost town, isn't it? It's and you can see some of the damage that has been done by the lava. It is very striking, especially the lava over the roads,

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 9:58

one of them when we talk about eruptions, what, what triggered all these activities were was a massive earthquake and basically Grindavík the town of Grindavík, basically a fisure ruptured open right underneath and through the town. The sports facility just had a big deep fissure going through it. And so some of the houses are just risky because of that, because there's big void underneath. But having said that, I think the authorities have done a great job, trying to secure the area. There is more and more activities happening there. The companies are back because there's a big. This is a very active fishing area. This is short, shortest basically distance to the most fertile co grounds outside of Iceland. Fishing is starting to grow again. I think now like 20% of people are moving back and just recently spoke to the mayor and there. Hoping that they can bring the schools up. Hopefully being able to receive people again in the community and grow it again because it's a, it's one of the foundation, old Icelander communities.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 10:56

Absolutely. It's a very important town. What about the Blue Lagoon? Was that

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 10:59

yeah, they had to shut down a few days as well. I think that they had a, they showed, exceptional resilience in my view as well. Because they had they run a hotel, they have a thousand people there, in the blue Lacoon, and they had evacuation plans and things like that and had to evacuate, and we were shut down many times, especially early on the first disruptions, understandably, people they're more nervous now. It's pretty, we all, we pretty much know where the lava will come up. We know how it'll, you know what's safe and what's not. But in the beginning, they had to shut down the operation. But for months. But now the latest eruption came and I think they shut down for 36 hours and then opened again.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 11:39

That's, that's incredible. Just, yeah. And the Bryggjan, just to reiterate, you mentioned it earlier on Tómas. Tómas, but it's actually, it's formed by the waste water from the Svartsengi power plants.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 11:48

It's brine when we drill into the ground, we collect brine under a lot of pressure, geothermal brine and steam and the brine. So it's seawater, it's whether it's in salts and minerals and silica and that's what they utilize and have turned into, it has proven health benefits and and that's what we bathe in when we go there. And I regularly go there. I like it.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 12:06

No I'm going there in a few days, but I was there in the early eighties when it looked very different from what it does now.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 12:11

It did. There were some really smart people that sort of spotted the. We have benefits and started developing this area as a tourist said, and to, and today I think it's, yes, we were critical for building the barriers because we were supplying the entire community with hot water and electricity. But every other tourist visits pool lagoon. For a country that has, over 2 million tourists a year, this is an important, very small country. This is an important infrastructure for tourism. There was also a good justification for protecting the area.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 12:42

Absolutely. And it started, how close it is you it's hard to imagine how, so just a few hundred meters away from the, when the barriers and the lava flows, it's quite remarkable. Is there still, what kind of activity going on? Are you expecting maybe more eruptions and could they have a kind of impact on the infrastructure, the power plants and

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 12:58

one of the things that we know more and more, there's, there are a lot of measurements happening in the area about the lava intrusion below us, and that's slowing down. It was almost to a point they could estimate early on when the eruption would happen because the ground was rising right underneath my office, for example, was like 30 centimeters higher at a few instances. And then he erupted and, the elevation of the area, the plant and everything went down by 30 centimeters up and down. Now it's much slower and there's more space for the lava to go into fissures and things like that. But. The intrusion from way deep into the Lava magma chamber is much slower now. We might see an eruption somewhere end of February, beginning of March, according to the sciences, but this might also be the end. I said that also last summer and then there was an eruption in July. But since then we haven't had any, and I'm pretty confident that, if this happens again, it's gonna be, smaller and further away, and our departments are gonna be able to, with withhold all lava flows.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 14:01

It's not no nonchalance or something. You know what to expect. And you're fully aware of all the dangers as well here. Yeah.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 14:06

And also when you build the geothermal power plant in a high temperature zone like ours, you can expect this. There are a lot of geothermal opportunities across the Europe, for example. And they will not have this risk. You might have it in Italy, in Turkey maybe in the Canary Islands, where you have volcanic activities active volcanoes, but not normally

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 14:26

a hundred meters or so away from the plants. That's quite stunning. Yeah. I think let's talk a little bit about the Icelandic power market. You said your, your company is a hundred percent privately owned, one of the only ones in Iceland. What's happening in the Icelandic power market? Tómas, it's obviously a small country. It's isolated. It's not interconnected with any of its neighbors. But still, but there's still, there are things happening here on, are there not

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 14:47

Yeah, There are things happening and we're a small nation, and we would never have afforded to build up our over the decades our grid and our power stations, if we weren't, wasn't for big users. Iceland, the power infrastructure group by servicing aluminum smelters. We have three in Iceland. We meaning Iceland has three power large large aluminum smelters. We have, there's a federal silicone plant, there were silicone plants. There are, and now so all of these industries use maybe 80% of our power. Over the past nearly eight years the data center industry has been growing quite a bit and it's, obviously with all the discussion about hyperscalers and all that and data centers. The demand is really strong from the data centers. And so there's, the demand is there, but at the same time, there haven't been many new projects over the last nearly 20 years, 18 years. The last big one was built for an Alcoa aluminum smelter in East Island where I was the CEO 18 years ago. So I know it intimately, but that was like a 600 megawatt power plant.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 15:50

I visited it.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 15:51

Yeah. But after that there was a, I would say, we had our economic collapse, economy wasn't ready for more, big projects. And then, following that, the government was very much subsequent governments were very much green left leaning, and the focus was not on developing the further the energy industry. I think we have a change. We've had a change over the last few years. We have built, now, this is the second geothermal power station we commissioned in four years. So we've built two, they're not big, you 30 and 30 to 50 megawatt scale, but they're still, those are the new, the newest projects in the country. I think there are four data centers in country. They all wanna grow and they all have opportunities to grow with one of the hyperscalers. So I'm confident that there will be more increased demand I'm promoting on our end. We should move away more and more from fossil fuel driven economy to a electrical driven economy. As a country, we do have the resource. We just need to deploy projects and and take strategic decisions. There's no reason why we shouldn't all be driving electrical cars. We shouldn't have a strong electrical infrastructure around the country. Why? Small boats shouldn't be electrically driven. It's technically possible that would save, the country on importing fossil fuels. And we could be a prime example of how you. Drive an economy based on electrical, electrically powered infrastructure.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 17:09

Yeah. Though Iceland isn't connected with its neighbors through cables, there is a strong competition in attracting the big, you've mentioned the big industrial companies. Yeah. And also data centers. So that's where Iceland can compete with, say, Norway, Sweden, and Finland in terms of the price of electricity. Iceland remains competitive, would you say?

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 17:27

I think, there's been a lot of discussion over the last two decades about an interconnection, basically electrical cable to the UK, which is massively expensive. Something in the order of magnitude of five or 6 billion euros. My view is that we don't need it anymore because we have the data cables, we have bunch of opportunities growing in the data centers, and the prices are competitive, but they're still really good. The data centers, our ability to pay is higher than the old industry, even if we like that industry as well. Good healthy mix is good, but I think with, with the AI boom and everything that's going on in the data center industry, we have had opportunity to basically get more value for our power and develop projects. And we can now develop projects, which probably would not have been economical for the aluminum industry or silicon industry because they need low prices. And we have probably developed most of the cheap projects. But the new projects, for servicing the data industry. They are probably, they're more expensive, but the data, the customer can pay for that. And so I think our prices are still competitive globally, but there's also good for us because we want our power companies, and especially because they're the state, don't, the government relies on it, on the dividends from them. So I think this is all in all positive for the economy and positive for the way the government wants to move.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 18:46

So if that's demand side, what about the supply side? If you can you get more supply on stream or you said that you've struggled over the last 20 years to build new supply. Iceland is notoriously windy, Tómas, but is that something

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 18:57

I can tell you, we have a few wind sites and we've been doing wind measurements where exactly we would set world lack records on land here if we developed wind and I would, I'm all for it. I don't believe we should be doing it all over the country. But I think strategic locations where, and we do have and then I say, when I say we, Iceland, I'm not meaning it Orka, our primary it Orka. Primary power production is baseload because we have geothermal. But the country has bunch of good reservoir installed capacity and opportunities. I think we should develop those, and I think we could have massive opportunities on wind, on shore,

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 19:32

maybe, and co-locate with batteries or something. So that, but there's very few occasions where it's not windy in Iceland, so maybe,

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 19:38

fortunately that's, yeah that's for us living here, it's always windy, so I think we, we have great opportunities.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 19:45

Yeah. And how about in terms of how's the market organized in Iceland? Is there, there's a wholesale market, I heard there's also competing power exchanges. Could you run me through that, Tómas?

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 19:53

Yeah. There's a wholesale market and there are big, like I said, there are few big consumers, industrial consumers, and then there's for the SME companies, size companies and what we call SME and here because there, that's an active market for those retail market for those and an active market in many players selling into households and small companies and mid-size companies are, our fishing industry is largely capable, on land. The fishing factories and things like that are largely capable in freezing plants of utilizing electricity. And they are becoming very big as an industry. And it's an active market, but I would always criticize it because it's so much big part of it is owned by the government or municipalities. So it's biased towards that. And it doesn't it, it's not in my political beliefs, but I know the country doesn't want to change from that, because the politicians like the fact that these utilities are owned by the state or the municipalities and they wanna be, reap the benefits because this is a good industry.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 20:53

Yeah. That's a policy I think that's shared by other Nordic countries as well. It matter when it's a matter of national resources. Yeah. We want to maintain that kind of control,

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 21:00

but I think, I think in our case, we do have an example from the fishing industry where the fishing rights are mostly all of them are more or less privately held. I think that has been very successful in terms of generating a sustainable fishing industry. But I believe that the power industry, because of the fishing industry, will be public. Yeah. Owned by public companies. Whereas we have been. Allowed to play, in 10% or so. Seven to 10% of generation privately, and that's fine. We're owned by the pension funds mostly. So every Icelander owns us in indirectly. But I think when we spoke about few projects in the past, we have implemented rules and regulations that have been are simply been too cumbersome to get the project from, the drawing board to execution has just taken years and years. And recent governments wanna change that. And I know with the new government they have much focus, put a lot of emphasis on simplifying the regulations, the national framework plan, the environmental impact assessment, operating permit planning, permissions, building commissions permissions. This has taken up to 20 years sometimes. It's long and it's manmade. I don't, I'm not promoting to give a discount on environmental, regulation. Just make 'em quick. Either

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 22:11

expedite them, make, accelerate them,

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 22:12

just gimme a red light immediately. If it's a red light, not let me be stuck on a yellow light for 20 years. Yeah. But I don't know what to do.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 22:19

Absolutely, that's crucial. And if we, it can stay with regulation. Tómas what's, the relationship with Europe or with the European economic area? There was a trouble, there was a little bit of trouble a few years ago with the third energy package that took a while to get through. What's the status now in the relationship with Brussels and with the

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 22:35

in principle, we implement everything that EU implements. And we have done energy. The first and second and third energy package has been implemented. Total separation of generation and sales and, distribution and is always separated from generation and sales. So I think we have implemented all of it. We talk about gold plating a lot in Iceland because we tend to implement it to the highest possible standard. And be proud of it, even to a point where we have started talking about lead plating because it's so heavy. So if you want to implement or develop a waste water cleaning facility for a municipality of two or 3000 people, they would have to go through the same regulation as Frankfurt. We have to simplify those things because we have just different environment and the ability to file a complaint and stall projects and put those projects to court. We have allowed broad definition of that. That's why projects have been stuck for 20 years. Best example is the power, and I told you about the power and we had only one single power line to Svartsengi and which melted there has been a power line in development for 20 years to secure delivery from that power plant, second power plant, and it's still being held at the courts because of landowner disputes and things like that. Yeah I think we have basically the same implement. We've implemented everything that the EU has implemented up to the third energy packets. And we have tended to go to literal when we implement these rules and regulations. And I think present government is actually trying to change that.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 24:10

I think there are governments across Europe as well that are trying to e expedite the process and overrule some of the local opposition to especially these infrastructure products. 'cause as you say these can become a just a bureaucratic nightmare with the NIM one, NIMBY versus another nimmi or and certain local councils in opposition. But a final question really, Tómas. I'm sure you are involved in the guarantees of origin markets. It's just Orka. And what do you make of the kind of plans on the table by the Greenhouse gas protocol? Have you had a look at that at all? And 'cause this would, that would stop the sale of guarantees of origin outside of Iceland, effectively, because you'd have to prove you'd either sell it within the same price zone or if there's an interconnection with another one.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 24:50

Yeah. I don't pretend to be an expert on this. But personally I think by doing that, it defies the purpose of a single market. And I think we have sold geos and we have used that party to fund our growth of green sustainable projects. And that's the whole purpose. And we are in the same single market. So that's why I think this, these latest moves are wrong. Totally wrong because. We are exactly, and we are probably a poster child of what we should be doing with the benefits of a green origin. You should be reinvesting it into new green projects and we have built three new green power plants in the last six years. Yes, we have some revenue from the geos. It's not massive, but it's part of the founding of a new green project. And now we have great 200 megawatt geothermal power plant, which we have already started exploratory drilling. One that's totally green. We are an expansion opportunity in Svartsengi, totally green, more geothermal because we have space basically for more generation. And we have a hydro project in the north 55 megawatts, totally green. And I think Geos, benefits from the Geos should go into developing more green energy. In a single market we're competing about for data centers. We're competing for industrial, facilities. Salmon, land-based salmon farming uses a lot of energy. That's just a green source of protein. So I think if I understand the move correctly, I think it's wrong. I think it defies the purpose of a single market you apologize if my English isn't perfect, but but to describe it, but I think we have been doing, using the market in the right way. We are basically being, getting the benefits of developing or having a green pipeline developing new projects. And that's what we're doing.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 26:30

I think your opinions will be shared by many power companies across the Nordic region at least,

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 26:34

yeah, yeah. I hope so.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 26:36

Tómas, thank you very much indeed for being a guest on the Plugged In.

Tómas Már Sigurðsson - CEO, HS Orka: 26:39

My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you very much.

Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel News: 26:42

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