Hey, let’s pour water in a volcano and see what happens:
Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in central Oregon this summer to demonstrate technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise.
They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn’t dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes — without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.
Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas, weak demand for power and lack of political concern over global warming. Efforts to use the earth’s heat to generate power, known as geothermal energy, have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes.
Even so, the federal government, Google and other investors are interested enough to bet $43 million on the Oregon project.
The rest here.
"Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas, weak demand for power and lack of political concern over global warming." I'm guessing that their honesty is accidental, but they've identified the 3 key ingredients for green energy to succeed: exorbitant costs, shortages and political pressure. (Carteresque) So, if green subsidies and slowly killing oil, gas and coal still aren't enough political pressure, how bad is "green" energy, anyway?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat sentence jumped out at me as well -- the subtext seems to be "even though this makes no economic sense, politicians are going to do it anyway."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWait, so Hydraulic Fracturing is EVIL but Hydraulic Shearing is A-OK because its for green energy?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDoes anyone else think this is a bad idea? I envision some mad scientist from a 1950's B sci-fi movie saying "what's the worst that can happen?" before a giant hole in the Earth opens up. Oh, the humanity!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhere are they going to find the billions of gallons of water to do this on a regular basis. One of the main environmental problems in the West is a lack of water.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere is a pipeline, four feet in diameter that runs underground past the end of my driveway. It carries treated waste water 40 miles from Santa Rosa, CA to The Geysers geothermal plant where the waste water is injected into the ground. This was done to avoid fines for putting waste water into the Russian River. I don't know if it makes economic sense, but there are sources of water even in the West.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseC'mon Greg! Lol! Be nice to Jonah! Everyone knows that it's Rube Goldberg-esque!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt may or may not become a viable source of energy, but that sort of geothermal is no more "renewable" than gas produced via fracking. Once the fractured volume of rock has produced energy for a while it will have cooled down. To continue production of energy from the same well more volume of rock will have to be fractured. Or a new well will need to be drilled into rock that is still sufficiently hot.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA little late, like 135 years.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJules Verne used this premise, and its result, as the concluding chapters in the saga of Captain Nemo as "The Mysterious Island".