Australia, Germany Warm Up to Geothermal
by Anonymous - Jun 6th, 2008
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.
Sure, the small-town plant will only generate one kilowatt of electricity. But the company behind it, Geodynamics Limited, expects to expand the power station to 50 megawatts by 2012 -- enough to supply 50,000 households.
And that's just the beginning, reports The Maitland Mercury.
Geodynamics Limited has plans to grow the plant's capacity ten-fold by 2016 -- to 500 megawatts. The power it produces will be sent hundreds of miles via transmission lines that connect to the national grid. Meanwhile, three other companies have started drilling in the area, while 33 have taken licenses for exploration.
No wonder. The town of Innaminck sits on the South Australian Heat Flow Anomaly -- a geothermal goldmine, with the world's largest (and hottest) reservoir of hot fractured rocks within a depth of five kilometres.
Experts say that the region's Cooper Basin area could meet Australia’s total electricity demand for the next 450 years.
Meanwhile, geothermal electricity is already soaring in Germany -- thanks to a national geothermal energy tax credit there that's helped to spark a hot rocks construction boom, however modest.
The nation currently has four small geothermal plants in operation. Several more are slated to go online by 2010 in seven cities. And by 2012, there could be more than 100 operating plants.
In total, there are now 150 plants on the books. Here's one reason why:
Geothermal sources could supply all of Germany's electricity needs -- 600 times over.
In America it's the same story, but only more dramatic. From MIT:
The availability of the US geothermal resource base is 130,000 times the nation's current yearly consumption of energy.
The biggest hindrance to a global geothermal boom?
For one, there's a shortage of deep drilling equipment. That's putting upward pressure on already high costs. Coal is still only $30 per megawatt, while geothermal ranges from $50 to $80 per megawatt.
But coal's climate change costs are huge, and clean geothermal has zero dirty baggage.
Bets are that once carbon pollution gets slapped with a price tag per metric ton, geothermal will become cost-competitive with coal -- and an energy policy no-brainer for governments.
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