Sounds like a nearly perfect system. I mean, as a Norwegian I knew Iceland had geysirs and was volcanic and so on, but I never had anyone explain to me just how much you could do with that before. This just blows my mind.,(reply>), @Hubert Blastinoff "Fernwärme" (remote heat? :D) is quite common, not just in east Germany. A lot of big (and small) cities have it. Sometimes power plants (coal, gas, whatever) or in at least one instance the nearby swimming pool supplies it to the nearby (5km radius or so) houses additionally to their own heated pools.,(reply>), @hedgehog3180 Did you mean to say no other country 'outside the Nordics' has adopted it widespread? (and even that is not really true) All nordic countries, especiallyu Finland/Sweden have district heating systems in place everywhere, utilising waste heat, biomass and sidestreams from industries. Even in smaller towns this is common. It makes a lot of sense to build when every house requires three times as much heat in comparison to more southern European households.,(reply>), @hedgehog3180 District heating was/is very widespread in East Germany. The Plattenbau did not have fireplaces like the older hosuing but East Germany tried to fulfill its power needs with domestic lignite, so district heating was the natural solution for that...,(reply>), Denmark has the same system but just using waste heat from power generation and industry, it's always baffled me that no other nordic country has adopted it as it seems like an obvious must have in our climate.,(reply>), Iceland is one of the largest producers of aluminum. Turns out you need <b>lots</b> of energy to produce aluminum from bauxite. And Iceland has lots of energy...