Steaming geysers, dramatic waterfalls and icy landscapes lure millions of tourists to this country every year. Now its geology is fueling a computer tech boom. But the voracious electricity demand of Iceland’s proliferating data centers is testing the island nation’s environmental ethos. Iceland’s Nordic climate and the geothermal steam rising from the tectonic fault line that runs beneath it provide two things the computers that run world’s economy need in seemingly endless supply: cooling and electricity. Power Hungry Iceland uses the most power per capita in the world due to industrial demand. *Most recent year with verifiable statistics Sources: International Energy Agency (consumption per capita); Anders Andrae and Hans Jakob Walnum for Huawei Technologies and Western Norway Research Institute (data-center usage) By 2030, data centers and all internet-related activity—from streaming video to analyzing financial data to storing software, photos and emails—could use more electricity than all of China […]