Geothermal Energy: Past, Present, and Future (SSPP Blog)
by Ethan Goffman, Associate Editor of Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy.
Geothermal energy has long been called “the forgotten renewable,” as I explained three years ago in an article in E: The Environmental Magazine, then promptly forgot about it. Okay, I did not actually forget, but was concerned with other issues, such as the rise of fracking, which has led in the intervening years to a huge natural gas boom that has rapidly brought the United States closer to energy independence.
Fracking shares many qualities with geothermal energy; both require lots of cash in an early, risky exploration phase; both rely on drilling beneath the Earth’s surface; and both provide reliable baseline power that can be counted on 24 hours a day, which works synergistically with such intermittent energy sources as wind and solar power. Yet, natural gas has also been charged with polluting groundwater, causing earthquakes (through the storage of fracking water), and releasing the powerful greenhouse-gas methane (the amount varies greatly depending on the study—we really do not know).
So why have we gone with environmentally problematic natural gas rather than far safer geothermal, which has been operating for over a hundred years (the first plant was built in Italy in 1913) with close to zero pollution and greenhouse emissions?
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