geothermal power

Drill, baby, drill

A veteran of the Manhattan Project is developing technology that could make it easier to tap geothermal energy locked deep underground. Potter Drilling It’s the archetypal Silicon Valley story: Unknown entrepreneur toils away on a Big Idea in an anonymous office park until discovered by one of the Valley’s legendary deep-pocketed investors. Another boy wonder […]

Jim Rogers' chutzpah, geothermal's promise, Larson's carbon tax, and efficiency's returns

• Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy and prominent member of USCAP, says that it's a bad idea to refund carbon auction money back to taxpayers. Instead, the vast bulk of the money should be given to public utility regulators. Really, he said that.

• According to a new report from Credit Suisse, geothermal power now has a lower cost-per-kilowatt-hour than coal. ScientificAmerican takes a look at the report and finds that it contains several important caveats (it presumes reasonable interest rate financing, doesn't include explorations costs, etc.). Even with the caveats, though, this is heartening stuff.

• Shell Oil now has a climate change blog. So far, it's surprisingly good and substantive.

• Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) has introduced a carbon tax bill to the House (updating and improving a similar bill from 2007). It would start with a $15/ton tax, which would rise $10 per year, and it would refund all revenue to taxpayers through payroll tax rebates. $10 billion a year in tax credits are also made available to cleantech R&D and investments. The guys at the Carbon Tax Center love it. They say one of the prospective losers is "cynics who said the U.S. could never enact a meaningful carbon tax." But the U.S. won't enact this one either, so ...

• The Berkeley National Laboratory has an interesting report out: "Financial Analysis of Incentive Mechanisms to Promote Energy Efficiency: Case Study of a Prototypical Southwest Utility (PDF)." (I know, sounds fascinating, right?) It runs through scenarios whereby a utility aggressively pursues energy efficiency, based on various policies (decoupling, performance standards, etc.). What does it do to rates? Equity? Shareholder returns? Here are the key conclusions:

Paris digs deep to harness Earth’s green energy

PARIS — A major new project is under way in Paris to provide ecologically clean heating for an entire district by extracting piping hot water from nearly two kilometers under the earth. In a revival of the French capital’s geothermal potential, drilling has just begun in the north of the city on a desolate building […]

Wind, solar thermal, and geothermal development outpaces expectations

As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging in the United States. The old energy economy, fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced by one powered by wind, solar, and geothermal […]

How current GHG policy distorts capital allocation

As we think about how to price GHG emissions, it’s often (and accurately) cited that having a meaningful conversation about GHG pricing first requires that we remove all the existing subsidies so that we can stop irrationally allocating capital. Clearly, we can’t provide insurance liability waivers to nuclear and ratepayer guarantees to regulated utilities and […]

Electric vehicles crowd out hydrogen brethren at sustainable driving conference

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress. —– Iceland has long been touted as a hydrogen economy pioneer. So it is quite shocking that electric vehicles — both plug-in hybrids and pure battery electric cars — crowded out hydrogen at a recent Reykjavík conference. Iceland is blessed with abudant hydro-electric […]

Shipments of geothermal heat pumps grew 33 percent in 2006

Baseload geothermal power gets all the attention because it has such enormous potential for delivering low-carbon 24/7 power. But geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) are every bit as deserving of attention because they are the most energy efficient form of heating and cooling a building over much of this country [click on figure at right to […]

Geothermal power: a core climate solution

While wind and solar get the media attention of a sexy starlet, good old geothermal power is treated like an aging character actor.

But geothermal energy is, in fact, sizzling hot these days. Big-time investors from Warren Buffet to Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley to Google have begun investing:

In 2007, private equity firms invested more than $400 million in geothermal energy, which is derived from hot water under the Earth's surface and can be used for space heating or generating electricity.

Why the interest in a form of energy that President Bush repeatedly tried to zero out of the Department of Energy Budget? One reason is the soaring cost of conventional power like coal and nuclear. Another is the growing awareness of just how much is zero-carbon electricity will need in coming decades.

Talk about targeting!

Here’s a blog devoted entirely to geothermal energy in Washington state. Apparently there’s a need: The hot zone of California, Nevada (the Saudi Arabia of geothermal), Idaho and Oregon could produce tens of thousands of megawatts along the spine of the Sierra Nevadas and Cascades. Washington state sits on the edge of this hot zone. […]