Document Type

Honors Project - Open Access

Abstract

Although 100% of Iceland’s electricity comes from renewable energy sources, it still relies on fossil fuels for land transportation, marine transportation, aviation, and some industry. Understanding geographic nuances in oil use is critical to achieving Iceland’s goals of carbon neutrality by 2040. As the island has one primary urban center with two thirds of the population, information is lacking about oil use in non-Capital areas and a gap between state and municipal climate plans. Using newly available data of oil sales at the municipality-level in a Small Area Estimation model, we analyze drivers of oil sales across Icelandic municipalities. We find municipal income and the use category of the oil sale to be significant predictors of high oil sales. High unstructured spatial variability in the model suggests that local climate action plans are necessary to address municipality-specific energy needs and transition barriers. As other countries focus their efforts on renewable electricity grids, Iceland presents useful lessons about persistent barriers to decarbonizing the land and marine transportation sectors.

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