Author: Grace Li | Major: Chemical Engineering | Semester: Summer 2025

Kolugljúfur, en route to Akureyri

Góðan daginn! This summer, I spent six weeks learning about energy and resource management in Iceland. Iceland has earned the moniker “land of fire and ice” for its volcanoes and glaciers, and it is full of other contrasts. We took a ferry to the Westman Islands and saw puffins flock on green hills and seaside cliffs. On the return trip, the water was rough enough to set off car alarms in the ferry hold. Fermented shark pops your sinuses with ammonia vapor halfway through chewing a bite, but one can also pick up fresh halibut from the dockside fishmonger for dinner. Mount Esja is a scenic walk on a sunny day, but moody weather once sent us retreating down the mountainside with 40 mph gusts of wind blowing the rain sideways. Rewind one year, back to when I was simmering in the Virginian humidity analyzing nitrogen dioxide and ozone measurements. That was my introduction to air quality research, and I wrapped up the project in April 2025. This summer was my last undergraduate semester, so I capped it off with one last environmentally focused project. Iceland has a unique energy profile: nearly all of their electricity is produced by geothermal and hydropower stations. A notable exception is the Westfjords, which uses backup diesel generators due to its geographical isolation and low geothermal gradient, but the majority of Iceland enjoys bountiful geothermal heating and clean electricity. A combination of lectures and site visits gave me a primer on the technology and policy that enabled the Icelandic energy transition–a transition that the rest of the world will also have to pull off in the coming decades. While geothermal power is renewable, it still has human health impacts through air quality. Before the implementation of scrubbers, hydrogen sulfide releases from geothermal plants on the Reykjanes peninsula could be detected in Reykjavik. TheEnvironmental Agency of Iceland reports air quality measurements from 62 monitors stationed across the country. One of these monitors is located near the Svartsengi geothermal plant, so I designed a research project which included looking at hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide levels. I made API calls to retrieve their hourly records over the past ten years, and found that hydrogen sulfide levels stayed within the recommendation of the American Council of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. However, there was a huge, sudden spike in sulfur dioxide 17 times larger than the EU ambient air quality limit in March 2024. Volcanic eruptions are another source of sulfur dioxide, and there is an active system, Sundhnúkur, near the Svartsengi plant. The magnitude of the sulfur dioxide spike suggests its volcanic origin, and the Icelandic Meteorological Office reported an eruption which coincided with the spike: the geological activity that allows for energy extraction at Svartsengi breaking through the crust. We visited the aftermath in Grindavik, a town which evacuated due to the most recent Sundhnúkur eruptions. Fields of fresh basalt encircle empty neighborhoods, standing as a reminder of the awesome power flowing underfoot. Our group of 25 bounced around western Iceland for six weeks. I spent that time in geothermal pools, scrolling Stack Overflow, and attempting to engrave the landscape in memory. One of my favorite memories, however, has less to do with the splendor ofIceland, and more to do with our cohort. After a morning spent at lakes and lava fields, we funneled into a cabin for lunch. A piano on one end of the long dining room and pianists capable of playing by ear combined to form my fond association between Chappell Roan, 25 voices, and near-constant daylight filtered through gray clouds