The Government of Greenland sees the permission to exploit a river in South Greenland as part of a larger strategy to take advantage of its water and ice resources.
Greenland is a big country with many natural resources, and for many years, its government has been trying to exploit them.
To name just a few: Gold and ruby has been mined for some years, there has been talk of oil and natural gas extraction, and a uranium mine in South Greenland has sparked particular controversy.
But now, the government’s eyes have been set on the country’s perhaps most obvious and plentiful natural resource of all: the water that flows from its melting ice sheet.
The Greenland ice sheet contains around 6,5 percent of the world’s fresh water, and this year, the government of Greenland granted permission for a fraction of this water to be exploited and potentially exported elsewhere.
The permission has been granted to a startup named Arctic Water Bank which intends to build a dam, and ship meltwater across the world in bulk water carriers powered by electricity produced by the dam itself.
An ambitious plan, to be sure, but the founders, who are also behind a scheme to sell glacial ice to cocktail bars in the UAE, are certainly not lacking in confidence.
“This is some of the cleanest water in the world. Anyone who has tried Greenlandic water knows that it’s pure, white gold,” Samir Ben Tabib, cofounder and head of international relations at the startup told WIRED.
The WIRED article was written by Polar Journal AG’s own journalist, so this article contains additional quotes and information from the research.
First of its kind
Arctic Water Bank promises that their dam will be a “100 percent green site”, and expects its total cost to be around 100 million dollars. According to Samir Ben Tabib, he and his three Greenlandic co-founders are currently considering several interested investors, many of them Greenlandic but some of them also foreign.
Once everything is in place – dam, shipment port, and bulk water carriers powered by hydrogen fuel created on-site – Arctic Water Bank will be a first of its kind, according to Samir Ben Tabib.
“We will be the first company to combine water export with Power-to-X fuel technology,” he said.
Specifically, the company has been granted the rights for the next 20 years to use all water and ice from a river near the town of Narsaq in South Greenland. On average, according to Samir Ben Tabib, this river produces 21.3 billion liters of water each year, and its source is almost entirely meltwater from the Greenland ice sheet.
Subject to EIA
Arctic Water Bank expects to be able to build the dam in four years, but before any ground can be broken, the company is still waiting for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
For this reason, Naaja H. Nathanielsen Greenland’s minister for Industry, Trade, Raw Materials, Justice and Gender Equality, did not want to comment specifically on the dam planned by Arctic Water Bank, calling it “early days”.
“I can’t answer for the specific project as they are not that far along in their plans as far as I know. But in general, a dam will only be established after an application, further clarification in the form of an EIA or a nature impact assessment and a consultation on this,” Naaja H. Nathanielsen said.
This was confirmed by Karl Zinglersen, head of the Department of Environment and Minerals at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. His department is often involved in environmental assessments of mining projects but for large infrastructure projects the assessments are usually carried out by private consultant firms.
According to him, an EIA in Greenland will typically survey an area to see if any ‘red-listed’ species might be affected by a construction project. In South Greenland, where the site is located, this could be reindeer, various bird colonies, and rare plants like orchids. If a red-listed species is found, the company behind the project will be required to plan for ways to keep these species at their baseline frequency in the area. A process that rarely stops a project, Karl Zingerlsen said.
“The EIA’s are quite thorough and take many unlikely scenarios into account so, if a project has been approved, we can be quite sure that it is environmentally sound,” Karl Zinglersen said.
One of the finest resources in the world
While it is still early days for the ambitious Arctic Water Bank, it is no coincidence that the Government of Greenland has granted it a permission. According to Naaja H. Nathanielsen, it is part of a larger government strategy.
“In general, the Government of Greenland is working to diversify our economy. Like any other country, we play to our strengths, and in our case it’s our natural resources in the form of fisheries, tourism, raw materials, and water and ice,” she said.
And in the water and ice sector, her government is finalizing a new strategy; a strategy that the Arctic Water Bank project falls perfectly in line with.
“We have one of the world’s finest resources in this area and plenty of it, and we want to push that message out to investors and potential markets. Of course, we always hope that the projects we license under the law are also successful in bringing their projects to new markets,” she said.
According to a government website, there are currently 17 active permissions to exploit water sources in Greenland, but only one of them is an exclusive one, none of them include a dam specifically for water extraction. Arctic Water Bank’s permission, which as yet does not feature on the website, is also exclusive.
Making money for the national treasury
In the past, Greenland has struggled to take advantage of the many natural resources available in the country. For Naaja H. Nathanielsen part of the explanation for this is the country’s small population of just 57,000 people.
“We often get hit on production costs in terms of whether projects can go from a good idea and a good product to actually hitting the shelves. We are a country with a small population and we don’t have a large production apparatus in the country,” she said.
“Therefore, we often have to make money on the first link of the value chains as we don’t have the rest of the value chain present in the country. So in the end, it’s also about demand and project owners being able to make their business cases make sense,” she said.
Whether Arctic Water Bank will be able to achieve this remains to be seen. A lot of things still need to fall in place before the start-up can start making money and pay it back into Greenland’s national treasury. For both Samir Ben Tabib and his cofounders and for Naaja H. Nathanielsen, this was an important goal.
The Arctic Water Bank founders, three of them of Inuit origin, specifically mentioned that more money made in Greenland makes a future with an independent Greenland more likely. Naaja H. Nathanielsen, whose government includes a ministry of independence, did not say so explicitly.
“The goal [of our new strategy for ice and water] is twofold and is about both new sources of income for the national treasury and local business development and the associated creation of jobs and tasks for the local business community,” she said.
Ole Ellekrog, Polar Journal AG
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