Well, I have been running down the list of potential energy suspects to which I am most curious and there are a lot out there. You have wind, water, coal-based fusion, nuclear, plasma-based fusion, solar, petroleum-based fuel, and geo-thermal just to list a few. I became interested in this assignment, when I read an article by Jeff Barnard about a town in Oregon who uses geo-thermal energy to run some of the town’s facilities, especially during the winter. Geo-thermal energy is heat from the earth, and when the conditions are right, like Klamath, Oregon, those areas are close to the surface, along with underground water reservoirs that are heated. The whole process works almost like a steam engine. The pumped water is conducted to a control house, where it is distributed to schools, houses, hospitals, small electrical turbines and yes, heat the sidewalks that we use to conduct everyday business.
The problem with this clean and hardly used energy source is that the only ideal spots on which to drill are on fault lines. Then you run the risk of manufacturing your own earthquake, scientists call this induced seismicity. Which they found out in Basel, Switzerland in January of 2007, while injecting water into the ground to widen the fractured rock to form a reservoir they manufactured a 3.4 earthquake. Since that quake, Basel has had at least 100 or more seismic shocks around the 3.0 magnitude. Basel was looking to become the first to generate commercial power using geothermal energy. Then in December of 2009 the Basel city government after considering the analysis from GeoPower Basel, halted the three-year project after it instigated seismic movement and caused several earthquakes. This incident has not deterred any of the other ventures in the Swiss community. While they are in less earthquake prone areas, Zurich has started preliminary drilling as of December 2009, and St. Gallen plans to do exploratory drilling sometime in 2010.
This source of energy isn’t new to Washington, since the 1970’s oil embargo the US government has been spending millions of dollars for research into this energy source. Since the growing interest in other forms of energy, the Obama administration has handed out 40 million a year in 38 states to validate this source of energy, through drilling, and exploration to see if it can be produced at an adequate price to the American taxpayer. While these other government-backed programs get started, the jewel of the geothermal test world rest in the hands of AltaRock Energy, Inc., of Seattle and Sausalito, Ca. AltaRock with investors such as Google are going to try to do what the Swiss couldn’t, generate commercial power without earthquakes. Their place of demonstration just outside the Newberry Craters National Park, well you can’t get any closer to the top than an extinct volcano. If they are, right this will put geothermal right up there with air and wind, the cheapest most natural energy source is from mother earth herself. As for the people of Klamath, they are stepping up to electrical power with their geothermal with help from Oregon Technical institute, the building of a geothermal generator. Looks like somebody’s electric bill will be coming down, and I hope we all can see that come to fruition some day.
References
Barnard, J. (2010). Oregon town uses geothermal energy to stay warm. Associated Press.
Clean Skies News: The Energy & Environment Network . (2009, December 11). Retrieved March 22, 2010, from Clean Skies TV Network, LLC: http://www.cleanskies.com
Swissinfo.ch. (2007, January 6). Retrieved March 22, 2010, from Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC): http://www.swissinfo.ch
