geothermal power

As speculated about in June, the US Department of Interior has indeed announced plans to free up 197 million acres of federal land in 11 western states plus Alaska for geothermal energy development. The initiative, says the agency

could increase electric generation capacity from geothermal resources ten times over.

Some 118 million acres would be managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The remaining 79 million acres would be under the National Forest System.

All of it will be available for geothermal leasing for the first time ever -- just as soon as the 12 US governors sign off on the plan and the BLM issues its "Record of Decision."

Google likes to tout Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) as "the sleeping giant" of clean power. The United States Geological Survey (USGS), it seems, would wholeheartedly agree.

This week, USGS scientists released the agency’s first assessment in more than 30 years of the electric power generation potential of the nation’s geothermal resource.

What'd they find?

If developed, geothermal could generate 556,890 MW of electricity in the United States. That’s more than 200 times the installed geothermal capacity in the nation today, which stands at 2,500 MW.

Give hot rocks a chance. That's all the geothermal experts have been saying.

And now, it seems, more and more nations are paying attention.

Take Australia.

By the end of '08, it will shut down the diesel-fueled generators in the southern town of Innaminck (population 12).

And in their place will come the nation's very first geothermal power plant.

With reporting by Molika Ashford

(Part 1 of 3 on Geothermal Energy)

As America’s love affair with coal cools off, geothermal energy is getting hot, hot, hot.

Why? Because the secret is out of the bag: geothermal is cheap and abundant.

For $800 million to $1 billion in R&D funding – spread out over 15 years -- geothermal could be deployed on a scale that would produce more than 100,000 MW of additional new (low-emissions) capacity in the US by 2050.

That’s less than the price of one 275 MW clean-coal plant and more than 360 times more energy.