Monday, February 03, 2025

 The Geopolitics and Energy Potential of Greenland


By Felicity Bradstock - Feb 02, 2025

Greenland boasts significant hydropower, rare earth elements, and potential oil and gas reserves.

The island's future energy development is uncertain due to a moratorium on fossil fuels and environmental considerations.

The US interest in acquiring Greenland for its resources and strategic location faces political opposition.


Most people aren’t very knowledgeable about the geography, history, and politics of Greenland, given its reputation as an icy landmass with a small population of fewer than 57,000. However, since President Donald Trump announced plans to take control of Greenland, global interest in the Arctic country has grown. So, what’s Greenland’s energy potential; what is the likelihood that the U.S. will take control of the country; and what are the possible risks of developing its energy sector?

Greenland is the world’s largest island, lying in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, although its national government is responsible for most domestic affairs. Two-thirds of the island lies within the Arctic Circle and the country’s population is largely Inuit, owing to the harsh, icy terrain, which is difficult to inhabit.

Greenland's electricity generation totaled around 600 megawatt-hours in 2021. Hydropower contributed approximately 83 percent of the country’s electricity mix in 2021, with oil accounting for the rest. The Government of Greenland says, “Greenland’s enormous untapped hydropower resources exceed our domestic demands many times over, and Greenland has the potential to become a net energy exporter.” The country is currently developing new hydropower plants to eventually reduce its carbon emissions to net-zero, as one of the countries most affected by climate change.

There is significant potential for rare earth elements (REE) mining in Greenland, as the global demand for REEs grows. The global demand for critical minerals is expected to quadruple by 2040 as they are widely used for the production of batteries for electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels. A 2023 survey of Greenland’s resource potential suggested there were deposits of 38 raw materials on the island, including the REEs graphite, niobium, platinum group metals, molybdenum, tantalum, and titanium. However, it remains unclear whether mining for critical minerals in Greenland is economically viable due to the expense associated with drilling into ice, not to mention the potential environmental repercussions.

Greenland is also home to significant quantities of oil and gas. The Arctic Circle may contain as much as 160 billion barrels of oil and 30 percent of the planet's undiscovered natural gas, including Norway, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, the U.S., Canada, and Denmark / Greenland, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. However, in 2021, the Inuit Ataqatigiit-led government signed a moratorium to ban all future fossil fuel extraction. The government said in a statement, “The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and, in that respect, we have much more to gain.”


In December, then-President-elect Donald Trump stated that U.S. ownership of Greenland was “an absolute necessity.” He had previously stated aims to take over Greenland in his first presidency, although this was overshadowed by other policy aims. Trump deems ownership of the Arctic country necessary for U.S. security. Greenland is located closer to the U.S. than to Denmark and is viewed as strategically important to ward off any threat from Russia. However, it is important to note that the Danish government, with support from the EU, has emphatically rejected Trump’s push to acquire Greenland, and a recent survey suggested that around 85 percent of Greenlanders oppose the move.

This is not the first time the U.S. has shown interest in Greenland. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson bought Alaska and considered purchasing Greenland. Meanwhile, after World War II, the Truman administration reportedly offered Denmark $100 million for Greenland. While neither attempt was successful, a 1951 defence treaty provided the U.S. with the Pituffik Space Base air base, in northwest Greenland, halfway between Moscow and New York.

In recent years, China and Russia have expanded their influence in the Arctic region, with Russia having reopened former Soviet military bases across the Arctic since 2015. Kalus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London, stated, “Greenland is almost a kind of ground zero for how the Arctic has become more and more geopolitically and strategically significant.”

However, it is not only foreign security that is driving President Trump’s interest in Greenland. An analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey suggests that Greenland “contains approximately 31,400 million barrels oil equivalent of oil” and other fuel products, including around 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. While there would be technical difficulties in extracting the fossil fuels, if these reserves were discovered anywhere else in the world there would be great enthusiasm around potential development.

Other than obvious geopolitical concerns, environmentalists fear what a U.S. takeover of Greenland could mean for climate change. The International Energy Agency has repeatedly stated that there must be no new oil, gas, or coal development if the world is to reach net zero by 2050. Much of Greenland’s ice is already thawing at an alarming rate, leading to rising sea levels and harm to flora and fauna. Any new mining or fossil fuel projects would have an extremely detrimental effect on both Greenland and the rest of the world. However, with Trump’s promise to “drill, baby, drill”, when it comes to oil and gas, it is unlikely that the President is concerned about the potential repercussions of developing Greenland’s fossil fuel sector should he take power.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com



Cracks in Greenland Ice Sheet grow more rapidly in response to climate change




Durham University
Crevasses at Store Crevasses at Store Glacier 3 

image: 

Crevasses at Store Glacier, a marine-terminating outlet glacier of the western Greenland Ice Sheet.

view more 

Credit: Tom Chudley (Durham University)





-With pictures-

The Greenland Ice Sheet is cracking open more rapidly as it responds to climate change.

The warning comes in a new large-scale study of crevasses on the world’s second largest body of ice.

Using 3-D surface maps, scientists led by Durham University, UK, found crevasses had significantly increased in size and depth at the fast-flowing edges of the ice sheet over the five years between 2016 and 2021. 

This means the increases in crevasses are happening more quickly than previously detected. Crevasses are wedge-shaped fractures or cracks that open in glaciers where ice begins to flow faster. The researchers say that crevasses are also getting bigger and deeper where ice is flowing more quickly due to climate change, and that this could further speed up the mechanisms behind the loss of ice from Greenland.

They hope their findings will allow scientists to build the effects of ice damage and crevassing into predictions of the future behaviour of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

The research is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Greenland has been behind approximately 14mm of sea level rise since 1992. This is due to increased melting from the ice surface in response to warmer air temperatures, and increased flow of ice into the ocean in response to warmer ocean temperatures, which are both being driven by climate change.

Greenland contains enough ice to add seven metres (23 feet) of sea level rise to the world’s oceans if the entire ice sheet were to melt. Research has shown that Greenland could contribute up to 30cm (one foot) to sea level rise by 2100.

For this latest study, the Durham-led researchers used more than 8,000 3-D surface maps, created from high-resolution satellite imagery, to identify cracks in the surface of the ice sheet and show how crevasses had evolved across Greenland between 2016 and 2021.

The research found that, at the edges of the ice sheet where large glaciers meet the sea, accelerations in glacier flow speed were associated with significant increases in the volume of crevasses. This was up to 25 per cent in some sectors (with an error margin of plus/minus ten per cent).

These increases were offset by a reduction in crevasses at Sermeq Kujalleq, the fastest-flowing glacier in Greenland, which underwent a temporary slowdown in movement during the study period.

This balanced the total change in crevasses across the entire ice sheet during the study period to plus 4.3 per cent (with an error margin of plus/minus 5.9 per cent). However, Sermeq Kujalleq’s flow speed has since begun increasing again – suggesting that the period of balance between crevasse growth and closure on the ice sheet is now over.

Study lead author Dr Tom Chudley, a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Geography, Durham University, UK, said: “In a warming world, we would expect to see more crevasses forming. This is because glaciers are accelerating in response to warmer ocean temperatures, and because meltwater filling crevasses can force fractures deeper into the ice. However, until now we haven’t had the data to show where and how fast this is happening across the entirety of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

“For the first time, we are able to see significant increases in the size and depth of crevasses at fast-flowing glaciers at the edges of the Greenland Ice Sheet, on timescales of five years and less.

“With this dataset we can see that it’s not just that crevasse fields are extending into the ice sheet, as previously observed – instead, change is dominated by existing crevasse fields getting larger and deeper.”

Increased crevassing has the potential to speed up the loss of ice from Greenland.

Study co-author Professor Ian Howat, Director of the Byrd Polar & Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University, USA, said: “As crevasses grow, they feed the mechanisms that make the ice sheet’s glaciers move faster, driving water and heat to the interior of the ice sheet and accelerating the calving of icebergs into the ocean.

“These processes can in turn speed up ice flow and lead to the formation of more and deeper crevasses - a domino effect that could drive the loss of ice from Greenland at a faster pace.”

The research used imagery from the ArcticDEM project, a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and National Science Foundation (NSF) public-private initiative to automatically produce a high-resolution, high-quality digital surface model of the Arctic. ArcticDEM imagery was provided by the Polar Geospatial Center.

Professor Howat added: “The ArcticDEM project will continue to provide high-resolution Digital Elevation Models until at least 2032. This will allow us to monitor glaciers in Greenland and across the wider Arctic as they continue to respond to climate change in regions experiencing faster rates of warming than anywhere else on Earth.”

The research team also included Dr Michalea King from the University of Washington and Dr Emma MacKie at the University of Florida, both USA.

The study was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, NASA, and the National Science Foundation Office for Polar Programs.

ENDS

Crevasses at Store Glacier, a marine-terminating outlet glacier of the western Greenland Ice Sheet.

Photographs taken from a helicopter in 2006 of crevasse fields on Sermeq Kujalleq, Greenland, the world’s fastest glacier.

Credit

Prof Ian Joughin, University of Washington


chudley_store_crevasses_3 [VIDEO] 

Deep crevasses form in fast-flowing ice at Store Glacier, an outlet glacier of the west Greenland Ice Sheet.

Chudley_Store_icebergs_2 [VIDEO] | 

Icebergs originating from the Greenland Ice Sheet make their way down the fjord near the Greenlandic town of Uummannaq.

Credit

Tom Chudley (Durham University)

Dr Tom Chudley, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Department of Geography, Durham University, who led on the research.

Credit

Durham University (North News & Pictures)

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