Along with earthworms, rocks, and the occasional skeleton, there’s a massive battery right under your feet. Unlike a flammable lithium ion battery, though, this one is perfectly stable, free to use, and ripe for sustainable exploitation: the Earth itself.
While temperatures above-ground fluctuate throughout the year, the ground stays a stable temperature, meaning it’s humming with geothermal energy that engineers can exploit. “Every building sits on a thermal asset,” said Cameron Best, director of business development at Brightcore Energy in New York, which deploys geothermal systems. “I really don’t think there’s any more efficient or better way to heat and cool our homes.”
At the start of June, Eversource Energy commissioned the United States’ first networked geothermal neighborhood operated by a utility, in Framingham, Massachusetts. Pipes run down boreholes 600 to 700 feet deep, where the temperature of the rock is consistently 55 degrees Fahrenheit. A mixture of water and propylene glycol (a food a... Read more
