[1] Iceland wants to be the world’s first carbon neutral country
Top Gear : [2] Iceland has been blessed by nature. The Land of Fire and Ice (a tag applied here well before it was slapped on Game of Thrones) puts those resources to good use. When the ice melts, water flows. Hydro-electric accounts for 70 per cent of Iceland’s electricity. Holes bored into the ground near volcanoes bring up heat and hot water. Geothermal energy heats 85 per cent of the houses here and produces almost all the rest of the electricity.
[3] Plenty of electricity. Plenty of reason to switch to an electric car. Many people here already have: in 2020, EVs and PHEVs (electric cars and plug-ins) accounted for 45 per cent of new cars sales, the second highest penetration rate in the world behind Norway (which recently topped 90 per cent).
[4] But EV adoption globally depends on government incentives. For instance, Britain is the world’s second biggest market for the Porsche Taycan (behind China, ahead of either the USA or Germany) currently, solely due to the tax incentives available to business users. It’s the same in Iceland or Norway – government policy directly affects take-up. People do not buy green if it’s going to cost them more.
Iceland initially set up a fund to invest in infrastructure. The result of that is a network of EV charging points the whole way around the island and expanding all the time. With that set-up, the focus is now shifting to incentivising buyers to make the switch. Which cuts both ways. EVs are now cheaper to buy and run, plus easier to charge, but battery range in this harsh, cold climate suffers hugely.
But this is a bigger story than just cars. The intention, according to Hordis Kolbrun Gylfadottir (the Minister of Tourism, Industry and Innovation when I interviewed her in November, but recently appointed to Foreign Affairs), “we want to be independent from usage of fossil fuels by 2050. My ambition is that we will be the first in the world totally independent of them”.