So, I’m in Iceland with the family, ostensibly for the eclipse, although the weather ain’t looking great for tomorrow’s spectacle. Actually, it’s been a bit of a rough start to the trip with the railways around Manchester deciding to have a duvet day when we needed to get the airport, and then a couple of our bags arriving 3 days late. But, hey… it’s glorious now we’re here.

From a Sustainability point of view, the most obvious yet amazing thing is the geothermal energy. It’s only by being here that I realised that the hot water from the showers comes direct from the hot rocks down below (and has a slight whiff of sulphur as a result). Geothermal pipes and pumping stations are frequent companions along the highways.

In fact, I’m writing this at a holiday park which is 100% renewable – last night we tracked one of the geothermal pipes several miles up a stunning valley to the site of its borehole, but we didn’t need to go so far to see the hydropower as one of the four micro-hydro plants is right in the middle of the park. The park itself is very proud of this with the same interpretation panel explaining the system in detail at various locations. [I’m trying to get a geothermal expert on the pod to talk about its UK potential.]

Our Reykjavik youth hostel had a Nordic Swan eco-label, but given the energy system is inherently clean, only the extensive set of recycling bins set it apart – being a small, geographically isolated country, it wasn’t surprising the plastics had to go to Sweden for reprocessing. It did have a ‘swap shop’ for unwanted stuff – and there was another bus-shelter sized public swapping place was just down the road.

Also in Reykjavik, we saw the more controversial side of Iceland’s relationship with nature – Paul Watson’s anti-whaling ship Bandero impounded in the docks after rubbing the Icelandic establishment up the wrong way. A restaurant on the main shopping drag offered a “puffin and whale” set menu – which may put off more tourists than it attracts.

Transport is area where fossil fuels do dominate. There are chargers and a few Teslas, but I haven’t seen any of the Chinese EVs that are starting to dominate other parts of the world. Iceland famously doesn’t have any railways to electrify.

So that’s a bit of a first few days’ brain dump. I’ll put some more thoughts together next week.