Canada:

Drilling Down to the Economic Realities of Geothermal Power (Business in Vancouver)

Ross Beaty (Courtesy Alberta Oil,
Illustration Enrico Varrasso)

When someone who has just completed a series of mining asset sales totaling $1.6 billion chooses to share some frank thoughts on geothermal power, you have to respect the source.

Geothermal bubbled up in the news in May as a lost opportunity for BC Hydro in the Joint Review Panel's thumbs-sideways assessment of the Site C dam project.

Lumina Copper founder Ross Beaty knows something about copper – enough to complete the company's sale to First Quantum Minerals earlier this month for $470 million. Beaty is also passionate about renewable energy, which led him into a geothermal power investment in 2008, only to come out of the experience somewhat sobered.

“Geothermal energy is free, global and almost limitless – in fact, the heat in the first couple of kilometers below the earth's surface contains enough energy to supply the world for over 100,000 years!” he writes in an unpublished report.

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