Plug us into Iceland, it will be cheaper than a nuclear plant. Iceland's parliament is poised to approve the next phase of an audacious plan to lay 1,000 miles of cable under the Atlantic to send geothermal and hydroelectric power to Britain. The idea of plugging into Iceland's energy plants has been knocking around for more than half a century. Thanks to newly available green subsidies from the British government, technological advances and the need to replace the legions of coal plants set for closure, it's an idea whose time may finally have come. Edi Truell, the City financier appointed by Boris Johnson to run the capital's £4.2bn local authority pension scheme, has set up Atlantic Supergrid to bring the project to fruition.

National Grid is also studying the plan, along with at least four other interconnectors to Denmark, Ireland, France and Norway. The goal is to spin a web of high-voltage lines with the UK at its heart. That vision would remove the need for pricy offshore wind farms and atomic power stations. Truell wants to lay a cable to transport 1.2GW of electricity, enough to power more than 2m homes, mainly from Iceland's under-utilised geothermal sources.

National Grid envisages two cables that would draw power primarily from the country's excess hydroelectric capacity. Truell reckons that it would cost households less, on a per-megawatt-hour basis, than the government's deal to bankroll the first new atomic reactor in 20 years at Hinkley Point in Somerset.