What Do You Think of When You Think of Geothermal Power? (RenewableEnergyWorld)
Why don’t people think of geothermal? Media, bloggers, even renewable energy advocates routinely omit the technology from discussions and news. The technology is proven, projects are in the pipeline worldwide – so why does geothermal energy struggle to keep up with solar and wind in the public popularity stakes? Surely it can’t be for the minimal, even negligible seismic susurrations that accompany it.
A geothermal company executive I spoke to a while back mentioned that, amongst the operational and technological concerns I had called him to discuss, he also perceived the lack of a robust approach to lobbying for geothermal energy in the United States compared to wind and solar. As I’ve mentioned before I believe that education and public perception is the alpha and the omega when it comes to where you get your electricity generation from, and we half-jokingly talked about how it might have to do with the name. Wind and solar: they are very easy to understand. Instantly you picture a wind turbine and a solar panel, sunlight coruscating from the latter in that now classic, easily marketed image. They are the runway models of renewable energy.
But what do you think of when geothermal energy is mentioned?
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