These include recent interest-and investments-by the oil and gas industry, and work toward new drilling technologies that can reach much deeper into the Earth where the bulk of the geothermal resource is stored. Speakers also named several specific trends that are shaping the industry. Let’s Switch It On” was organized by Baseload Capital, an investment firm in Sweden focusing on geothermal projects.Īmong the experts’ conclusions: to maintain interest in geothermal, the industry must do a better job of explaining the resource and sharing its vast potential. How can the growing industry jumpstart that interest, and what other trends are affecting a resource that many believe could power the planet and move the world away from the fossil fuels that contribute to global warming? Eight industry experts, including the CEO of the company featured in Rolling Stone, addressed those questions in a virtual seminar on Feb. So, the heat beneath our feet, as geothermal energy is sometimes called, seems to offer one of the most sustainable clean-energy options available. Geothermal power plants also consume less water on a lifetime energy output basis than most conventional generation technologies.
Furthermore, lifecycle analysis conducted by the Argonne National Laboratory, which accounted for emissions released during plant material fabrication and construction, among other things, found that GHG emissions from geothermal plants are four times less than solar PV and up to 20 times less than natural gas-fired power generators. Modern closed-loop geothermal power plants emit no greenhouse gases (GHGs). Geothermal power plants are also generally compact, using less land per GWh (404 m 2) than coal (3,642 m 2), wind (1,335 m 2), or solar photovoltaic (3,237 m 2) power plants, according to a study cited by the DOE. Among them is that geothermal energy can provide baseload power, regardless of weather conditions. Department of Energy (DOE) lists a number of benefits offered by geothermal resources. Evidence of geothermal’s coming-out party can be found in the pages of the long-time pop culture media outlet, Rolling Stone magazine, where geothermal energy was the focus of a story late last year. After years of relative obscurity compared to other renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, geothermal energy is starting to gain a following.
Although geothermal energy supplies a very small percentage of the electricity used around the world currently, geothermal advocates aren’t letting the seeming insignificance of the existing power generation capacity detract from their enthusiasm about the future.
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