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Tuesday, September 24, 2019

New Zealand: Tapping "Supercritical" Geothermal Fluids Could Deliver 10 times More Energy than Conventional Geothermal Energy

Deep geothermal: Is this NZ's clean energy future? (New Zealand Herald)

Dr Isabelle Chambefort
Photo / Margaret Low
The key to driving New Zealand's emissions to net zero by 2050 may lie not above us but kilometres beneath our feet, a top geothermal geologist says.

A new project will explore how tapping deep and hot geothermal resources could yield an unlimited source of clean energy for the country, at a time it's searching for bold ways to decarbonise.

What's called deep geothermal - "supercritical" fluids trapped far below the Earth's crust - packed the potential to deliver 10 times more energy than conventional geothermal energy, GNS Science's Dr Isabelle Chambefort said.