By comparison, the United States gets less than 15% of its power from renewable sources, while the European Union gets 20% this way. Canada is far better than both of those, getting over 60% of its power through renewable resources.
Hydroelectric power comes from water spinning a turbine. Geothermal power uses extremely hot fluid converted to steam to drive a turbine.
Pictured here is an open-loop station where the steam is ejected into the air after it's used, causing some harmful emissions to escape. Closed-loop plants condense the used steam back into liquid and send it back into the ground to be reheated.
Three-fourths of Iceland's energy is generated by the company Landsvirkjun via these two energy sources. The company is one of the largest producers of renewable energy in Europe, and its total amount of generated electricity in 2011 was 12,485 GWh.
