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| Robert Barker/Cornell Marketing Group |
As Cornell considers geothermal heat to warm its campus, Icelandic engineer Thorleikur Johannesson told the story of how his country abandoned coal and set standards to achieve blue-ribbon blue skies in an Oct. 16 visit to Cornell.
In his keynote talk, “The Potential of Geothermal Energy: Lessons From Iceland,” Johannesson showed images of a grungy, sooty Reykjavik shrouded in smog. By the late 1930s, Iceland was beginning to change from heating with coal to tapping into Earth’s natural hot water. Scuttling coal removed the grime from Icelandic streets and restored the beauty of the country’s azure skies.
