Science continues to advance, and as the resources become more abundant, the experiments in this regard are even more ambitious. But what is about to happen in Iceland defies all the logic we had known until now, although theory in hand, what is going to happen has all the logic in the world.

The truth is that a group of researchers has the objective of drilling into the ground until they reach an active magma chamber with the aim of being able to take advantage of the immense heat that exists beneath the surface of the Earth.

And all this has a single objective, which could completely change electricity production, access an extremely powerful energy source and convert a single well into what would be equivalent to several conventional geothermal power plants.

The chosen space is the Krafla volcanic caldera, located in the north of Iceland, and which aims to demonstrate that heat can be extracted from areas whose temperatures reach 900 degrees.

If everything goes according to the theory and the studies carried out, the leap in the generation of renewable electricity will take a leap like never before in history.

The energy of magma

It is not new that Iceland takes advantage of geothermal resources to generate electricity or heat homes, but many scientists are convinced that there is a much broader potential than is currently being exploited.

All of this has a starting point, the year 2009, when drilling was taking place in the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP). The idea was to go as deep as possible, but unexpectedly, one of the drill bits pierced a pocket of magma, leaving the team covered in solidified volcanic glass.

This showed that they were closer to the heart of the volcano than they themselves believed, and what for some was a failure, for this group of scientists became an opportunity that allowed them to study the extreme conditions inside the planet.

And they found a revealing fact that gives life to the current project: the supercritical fluid, generated near the magma, has between three and four times more energy than the steam used in geothermal plants.

And that did not remain an anecdote. That accidental well, named IDDP-1, became the hottest ever drilled: it spewed steam at 450 degrees with such force that, from a single hole, it was calculated that it could generate about 35 megawatts. To give you an idea, a normal geothermal well in Iceland is around 5.

The current project is led by Krafla Magma Testbed (KMT), and its objective is to go further, and instead of avoiding the magma, the objective is to get closer to the magma chamber that allows it to install sensors and understand how to behave in extreme environment, which has not been attempted in a controlled way so far.

Behind the KMT there is not a small group of enlightened people, but an international consortium that brings together more than 40 institutes and companies from eleven countries, with the idea on the table since 2014. The first well, the KMT-1, is planned for 2026 and will go down to about 2,100 meters, just the point where the magma surprised everyone in 2009. The difference is that this time the sensors will be placed directly inside the magma.

Energy higher than that of a geothermal well

If the estimates are met, the results would be brutal, and they indicate that, if the power in a high-temperature geothermal well can generate up to five megawatts, one located next to the magma could generate 10 times more, about 50 megawatts.

That is, with just one borehole, there would be the possibility of producing as much energy as ten conventional wells, and this means fewer facilities to supply entire cities.

But bringing the research to reality represents a technical challenge unprecedented to date, of great difficulty. Because as they get closer to the magma, the temperature gets higher and higher, reaching 900 degrees, and these temperatures are too high for many of the materials commonly used in industry, they could be destroyed.

So the new project not only aims to obtain energy, but also to develop materials that are capable of withstanding such extreme temperatures. If achieved, this could be expanded to other volcanic areas around the planet, but step by step, first we have to optimize this first project.

And as for the phases, in the first one they want to dedicate themselves to studying the magma by installing measuring instruments very close to the rocks themselves. The next phase, which will last one or two years, is when we will try to take advantage of that heat to produce electricity.

The future of renewable energy

The world of renewable energies is much newer than many might think, the path has just begun, the alternatives are enormous, and as progress is made, it becomes clear that there is much more behind what was believed.

And in the case of electricity, who would have thought a few years ago that the solution to the high demand, increasing, and at the same time, to the reduction of emissions, was going to be beneath us, and that, in addition, it could generate constantly, something that, for example, cannot be done with either solar or wind energy.

This is not the only project with similar characteristics underway, in the United States, something similar is being carried out, projects that can completely change the conception and that can represent a change forever in the way of obtaining electricity.

That project has a name: Mazama Energy, on the Newberry volcano in Oregon. In 2025 it broke the record for the hottest artificial geothermal system in the world by reaching 331 degrees underground, and for 2026 it is preparing a new drilling phase seeking to exceed 400 degrees, with a first pilot of 15 megawatts that aspires to grow to 200.

There is an important nuance, yes. Newberry does not drill into the magma like Krafla, but rather exploits the so-called “superhot rock” that surrounds the chamber, at great depth. The philosophy is the same—extreme heat to extract much more power from each well, with far fewer facilities—but the method is different. Backed by funds from Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures, Mazama also looks askance at the big client of the moment: artificial intelligence data centers.

The potential, if it can be tamed, is difficult to exaggerate. The International Energy Agency estimates that superhot rock geothermal energy could go from providing less than 1% of the world’s electricity to 8% in 2050. It is not a promise for tomorrow, but for the first time the energy we look for in the sky, in the wind or in the sun is also beginning to come from where we least expected it: right under our feet.