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A comment on 'Energy independent' Uruguay runs on 100% renewables for four straight months. Parent comment

Re:'Energy independent' Uruguay runs on 100% renewables for ... by alwa on Friday November 17, 2023 @02:51PM (#38309073)
I’d always lazily imagined Iceland’s renewable production to involve mainly their geothermal resources. I was surprised to learn that a phenomenal amount of hydro came online in a pretty quick period in the ‘00s [0].

A casual shufti suggests this was part of a broad policy push, but that it was mainly to do with a series of purpose-built hydro projects specifically to support Alcoa’s smelting facility. [1]

It smells like there’s a story of a few strong personalities with ambitious visions somewhere in the mix here. Would any of this crowd know where I might turn to find that story?

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kárahnjúkar_Hydropower_Plant... (with a fair bit of Wikipedian NIMBY-ish color commentary in the mix there)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:'Energy independent' Uruguay runs on 100% renewables for ... by masklinn on Saturday November 18, 2023 @07:52AM (#38318979)
The overall energy mix leans much more heavily on geothermal, but it’s used a lot for direct heating.

And Kárahnjúkar is not a case of the NIMBY, to an approximation there’s no one living in the highlands. It’s large scale environmental destruction for the benefits of a large company which the people of Iceland objected to.

[ Parent | on HN ]