Comment by alexpotato
6 hours ago
In Michael Lewis book Boomerang [0], there is a chapter about Iceland and he mentions geothermal.
My understanding:
- b/c of geothermal, huge amounts of electricity are available for low cost
- Iceland being an island makes it VERY expensive to build/transport goods back and forth
- The above combo means that aluminum smelting is the only industry where the electricity availability outweighed the costs of transport and being on an island.
I have heard about the benefits of aluminum smelting there before.
We already have transatlantic fiber optic cables so I don’t see why “transportation” costs apply here though
Crypto mining was often mentioned too, but I seldom hear of icelandic Bitcoin miners these days.