New Zealand and Iceland have signed an agreement to cooperate on geothermal energy development, with a particular focus on superhot and supercritical geothermal systems.
The formal Memorandum of Arrangement was signed at COP 30 in Belem, Brazil, by Climate Change Minister Simon Watts and Iceland’s Minister of the Environment, Energy and Climate, Jóhann Páll Jóhannsson, following discussions initiated by Mr Peters during his visit to Iceland last month.
The agreement will be implemented through joint research projects, industry workshops, and academic exchanges.
“This agreement builds on decades of shared expertise and paves the way for further collaboration to advance progress in this critical sector,” said New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters.
Both Iceland and New Zealand have already initiated efforts in the field of superhot geothermal. Just about a month ago, Iceland announced a joint effort between local companies for the drilling of the IDDP-3 well, which will be targeting temperatures of up to 400 °C at a depth of 4000 to 5000 meters. Iceland is also the home of the Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT) project which aims to drill into a shallow magma chamber in aid of research and technology innovation.
Before the end of 2024, the New Zealand government announced that it had ring-fenced NZD 60 million for research on supercritical geothermal systems. The initiative has progressed significantly since then, with the selection of a drilling site in the Rotokawa region announced about two month ago, as well as the formation of an international expert panel to support the project (incidentally including two Icelandic members).
Source: Beehive.govt.nz
