The following speakers have been confirmed to speak at this year's Workshop. Photographs and biographies will be updated to the website shortly.

Guðmundur Ómar Friðleifsson - HS Orka hf

Guðmundur Ómar Fridleifsson studied geology at the University of Iceland (1975). During his PhD research at the University of Edinburgh (1983) he investigated the interactions between a high temperature hydrothermal system and its magmatic heat sources in the roots of a deeply eroded Icelandic Miocene central volcano, an analogue to the presently active high temperature systems within the Icelandic central volcanoes. Since 1999, Gudmundur has been leading the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (www.iddp.is), which is an ambitious research and development drilling program that aims to investigate if harvesting geothermal energy at supercritical conditions is a feasible addition to conventional utilization of geothermal energy. The first of three IDDP drillholes, IDDP-1, was drilled earlier this year (2009) – unexpectedly hitting magma at 2.1 km depth instead at some 4-5 km. At the moment, this IDDP-1 hole has the potential of becoming the world hottest engineered geothermal system, which was not the original plan. Nevertheless, within the next few years, the IDDP program intends to continue investigating the supercritical by drilling of IDDP-2 and IDDP-3 to ~5 km depth at the Hengill- and at the Reykjanes geothermal fields in SW-Iceland.

In 2007 Gudmundur became the Chief Geologist at the Hitaveita Sudurnesja (now HS Orka hf), the energy company that operates on the Reykjanes peninsula in SW Iceland, including the the Svartsengi field, with its Blue Lagoon, and the Reykjanes geothermal field at the tip of the island where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge emerges from the ocean. Currently the Svartsengi field has installed capacity of about 300 MW thermal for domestic heating purposes and about 75 MW electric. A 100 MW electric power plant was commission at Reykjanes in 2006, and the plan is to almost double that before 2011. The current plan of the Iceland geothermal industry at large is to increase its installed capacity by some 1000 MWe before 2015.

Doug was appointed Chief Executive in December 1998. Previously, he was Chief Executive of Power New Zealand Limited from 1991 to 1997. He is a Director of the Tuaropaki Power Company and of GeoGlobal Energy LLC, Chairman of the Rotokawa Joint Venture and an Executive Council member of the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development. The Government has appointed Doug to the Ministerial Advisory Group on the Sustainable Water Programme of Action. He is also a Director of K2010, the governing body for the 2010 World Rowing Championships at Karapiro.