With global electricity demand set to grow strongly, new technologies are opening up the massive potential of geothermal energy to provide around-the-clock clean power in almost all count...
Geothermal makese sense on high latitudes (see Iceland for example) where heat is desirable even if electricity can’t be extracted.
Where you cannot drill deep enough (a Finnish company tried a 5 kilometer borehole and didn’t hit good enough heat) - artificial geothermal (thermal storage in large underground caverns) still makes sense, but not for electricity production. Just storing heat extracted from the environment during summer.
If drilling should get cheaper (e.g. those MIT guys declaring that they have a practical and reliable maser drilling rig), accessing good enough heat may be possible in places where it’s not worthwhile currently.
In some locations, production of geothermal energy can be combined with extracting dissolved chemicals - e.g. some borehole may produce a lot of dissolved lithium salts. No point in letting lithium back underground, better to put it aside.
Geothermal makese sense on high latitudes (see Iceland for example) where heat is desirable even if electricity can’t be extracted.
Where you cannot drill deep enough (a Finnish company tried a 5 kilometer borehole and didn’t hit good enough heat) - artificial geothermal (thermal storage in large underground caverns) still makes sense, but not for electricity production. Just storing heat extracted from the environment during summer.
If drilling should get cheaper (e.g. those MIT guys declaring that they have a practical and reliable maser drilling rig), accessing good enough heat may be possible in places where it’s not worthwhile currently.
In some locations, production of geothermal energy can be combined with extracting dissolved chemicals - e.g. some borehole may produce a lot of dissolved lithium salts. No point in letting lithium back underground, better to put it aside.