thanks. here's a post of mine from march 2012. funny eh?
on the geothermal potential, from the economist article:
Doug Hollett, who oversees geothermal policy at the US Department of Energy, is one such fan. He points to a project the department worked on with Ormat, a leading geothermal firm, in Desert Peak, Nevada, where EGS boosted the productivity of an existing field by 38%; it also became the first EGS project to supply America’s power grid. Mr Hollett calculates that EGS adds capacity to existing fields at a cost of 2-5 cents per kilowatt-hour; for low-cost natural gas the equivalent is 6-7 cents. The department reckons that with EGS techniques, geothermal could eventually meet 10% of America’s electricity needs.
how many GW is 10% of America's needs?
just to note, as a nation, we are currently exporting huge amounts of biomass and waste fuels to europe. those are fuels, available today and for the last decade, that could provide baseload generation. all you would need is the government to allow the green investment bank to go ahead and develop sites to do it, instead of promoting a new industry that may not have been needed.
the potential shortfall in generation is also an inherent failure of privatisation. its a consequence of the error of political dogma.
