Written by: Edwin Roald
2021
Between the glaciers, at a rare crossroads between ice and fire, spring-fed streams and hot steam exhaling from the ground, the off-grid Húsafell Resort and golf course have put their dynamic location to good use by drawing all of their required energy directly from local, renewable sources. Electricity is produced in three on-site micro-hydropower plants, whose turbines harvest power from two rivers.
Buildings are heated using two geothermal boreholes, from which hot water is channelled into Húsafell’s community of around two hundred cabins and on-site swimming pool. In the new Hotel Húsafell, the water is used for underfloor heating, in winter, spring and autumn. Furthermore, drinking water is drawn from springs along the lava edge, where around 20,000 litres of glacial melt per second surface after years of filtering through the lava. Of this, a tenth of one percent is used by the facility, including the golf course that has gone through entire years without any irrigation.