Blogs & Ecology

While it’s not exactly an answer for a question I put to Al Gore in a recent post, more details have come out about how the clean energy vision Gore articulated in his Repowering America speech can be made a realit...

image: Trinifar

In case you’re new to the “new energy economy” debate—in short, figuring out how to transition the entire energy infrastructure of the world away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy—and want as about brief a summary as could be created of the progress made in the last year as well as some of the challenges ahead, this one’s for you.

Photo by Gbalogh

And we are not referring you to the microwave...

photo: blueforce4116.

By hook or by crook, the renewable energy tax incentive legislation which was stalled in Congress for so long, only to be passed, then to stall again a few days later, has been approved by both the House and the Senate, and already signed into law by President Bush.

Mountains in Box Elder County, Utah site of the Shoshone Nation’s planned geothermal power plant. Photo: Dave Merrill.

Geothermal power plant in Iceland. Photo: Trey Ratcliff

Eric Schmidt with GE's CEO Jeff Immelt at Google's Zeitgeist conference. Photo: Google

Expanding and improving the United States’ electrical transmission grid would be a major building block in creating an electrical supply that is reliable, efficient and clean. The move to make that happen got a new ally today: Google. The internet giant has announced that it will be partnering with GE to work on both the technological side of the problem as well as the policy angle. This is the plan:
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photo: USGS

Just a quick update to a post done back in July on the geothermal exploration rights on several Alaskan volcanoes being put on the auction block. Mount Spurr, a snowcapped 11,070 foot tall volcano about 75 miles west of Anchorage was the first one up and Ormat Technologies is the lucky winner.

Nesjavellir geothermal power plant in Iceland, photo: Wikipedia.

photo: Calpine

There’s been a good deal of geothermal energy news in the past few weeks—less than solar and wind perhaps, but that’s more a function of publicity and popularity rather than the potential of the resource—and the latest US Geothermal Power Production and Development Update from the Geothermal Energy Association shows just how much geothermal power has grown so far this year.

New Developments Will Nearly Double Current Capacity

image: AGEA

Yesterday Google announced that it was getting into the geothermal power game, investing over $10 million into researching Enhanced Geothermal Systems. It is estimated that using this technology, just 2% of the heat below North America would easily supply all of the United States’ current energy needs.

Geothermal energy is probably the greatest potential renewable energy source with the least amount of public awareness. It certainly spends much less time in the public gaze than wind, solar or biofuels. Recently the US Department of Ene...

Geothermal power is among the energy sources being investigated on Réunion. Photo by Frédéric Caillé.

photo: OIT

Here’s a “world’s first” that’s worth mentioning: the Oregon Institute of Technology will be the world’s first university to be entirely powered from geothermal energy. The Klamath Falls school announced this week that it will be constructing a $7.6 million dollar geothermal power plant on campus which will not only provide energy to the school, but will also allow students to study and research geothermal energy technologies.
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