Philippines:

Under Their Feet: A Filipino Village Taps Geothermal Energy (Worldcrunch)

Locals used to cook their food in bubbling pools of steaming groundwater. Now a project is underway to turn it into electricity. 

Along a walking path is a bubbling pool of steaming hot ground water. People here used to cook their food in this, but now a project is underway to turn that same heat into power for Montelago and many other communities.

In the hills above the village, engineers from the company Emerging Power are lowering a drill deep into the rock. "This area is magmatic, not volcanic," explains project manager Fidel Correa. "There is lava underneath, at about 30,000 to 40,000 meters."

Nearby, chainsaw-wielding men are clearing patches of the forest. Here is where the turbines and other machines will be installed once geothermal energy production begins.

Correa explains that what I’m standing in front of is just a test well. "We would want to know what the temperatures would be at 1,000, 1,200 meters," Correa says. "That would give us an idea of how much power we could get. We were shooting for 40 megawatts to supply the whole of Mindoro Island with electric from geothermal power."

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