“We didn’t know it was green. It just made sense,” said City Manager Jeff Ball. A combination of hot rocks and natural underground water sources similar to the ones that make the famous Yellowstone geysers steam have kept Klamath Falls, Oregon’s sidewalks clear of snow since the early 1990s. The same geothermal heat sources warm everything from downtown buildings to kettles at the local brewhouse to greenhouses all over town and power the lights at a local college campus.
The town of 20,000 is one of the most ambitious domestic examples of how geothermal wells can be used to generate green energy with a minuscule carbon footprint. With $338 million in stimulus funds being poured into green energy and more than 100 projects nationwide devoted specifically to developing geothermal resources, a handful of western towns like Klamath are demonstrating what can be done if geothermal energy is put to good use.
Until recently geothermal hasn’t been in wide spread use because it has been limited to areas where the three essential ingredients occur naturally – hot rock relatively close to the surface, water and cracks in the rock that serve as reservoirs for that water. A new innovation called Enhanced Geothermal Systems, or EGS, may change that. Though the technology is still more conceptual than practical, some estimate that by 2050 geothermal could be providing a significant amount of the United States’ power.
But for now the process, which involves drilling thousands of feet into the Earth to find hot rock and pumping water down these deep wells to create reservoirs then pumping it back to create hot water or steam to generate electricity, is still too unstable. Literally. It creates earthquakes. Pumping water deep into the ground to open tiny fractures in order to create the necessary reservoirs generates what scientists call induced seismicity. An earthquake put a stop to the EGS project in Switzerland last year.
But that hasn’t put researchers, or the Obama administration, off attempting to tame the technology. If they can do it, and do it at the right price, geothermal may revolutionize the future of energy production.
