Iceland's volcano power for British homes

Britain could be powered by Icelandic volcanoes in a radical solution to the green energy problem.

Charles Hendry, the energy minister, will visit Iceland next month to discuss a deal to harvest low-carbon energy from the country's natural geothermal energy.

The arrangement would involve laying the world's longest high-voltage cable across hundreds of miles of ocean floor. Hendry told a newspaper that the Government was in "active discussions" on the project and that Iceland appeared "very keen" on the proposal.

The scheme is expected to form part of a wider European renewable energy "supergrid" aimed at combining the wind and wave power of northern Europe with solar energy from the south of the continent and northern Africa.

Cables linking Britain to France and the Netherlands have already been built and this autumn a connection between Ireland and Wales will enable wind power generated off Ireland's Atlantic coast to be delivered to British homes. Further connections with Norway, France and Belgium are under construction.

The proposed cable to Iceland is one of five planned additions to the network, which ministers hope would meet a third of Britain's average power demand.

David Cameron has backed the wider project, which is viewed as crucial to meeting legally binding carbon emissions targets.

The scheme would make Britain dependent on imported energy, but Hendry said it was inevitable with the demise of coal power that the country would look abroad to meet its needs.

The high-voltage cables, known as interconnectors, would become "an absolutely critical part of energy security and for low carbon energy", he said. He added that the scale of the project could help reduce consumer energy bills by providing the cheapest available energy and overcome the problem of the unreliability of renewable energy, which is dependent on weather conditions.