Geothermal Energy

08 April 2015
It is a start of a new year, and there is one energy I want to talk about that dramatically increased in 2014. It is called geothermal energy and it increased 5% last year. Geothermal energy is just heat coming from the Earth. Starting in the 1970s different countries started using it for energy. Most geothermal systems go 10,000 meters into the ground. The temperature underground for most of it is 65-75 degrees. There are many pros of geothermal like how it is green because it releases barely any emissions, zero carbon, does not take much land, and can be used mostly everywhere. But of course there are negatives to every energy. Geothermal energy usually are faraway from people, long transmission, water usage, and high construction costs. I do like how geothermal is one of the cleaner type of energies, but I think it definitely needs improvement. It seems really dangerous digging into the ground because I feel like it could lead to water pollution. I also do not like how it usually has to be away from people because you lose so much electricity and money that way. Most people are familiar with Yellowstone National Park's geysers. but those are not used for electricity.

The U.S. is the biggest produce of geothermal energy and we generate 15 billion kilowatt hours of geothermal power per year which is 0.41% of  U.S. energy. There was an article I read called "The Dream Becomes Real: Touring the Newberry Enhanced Geothermal Site" by Renewable Energy World. I really liked this article because it talked about how they are determined to get the plant up and running, but with everything there are some complications. In Bend, Oregon they are building the Newberry geothermal project. It has 5 GW of potential. The U.S. has a potential of 345,100 more MW of power, which could help the environment by moving away from coal. Most geothermal plants use existing reservoirs, but this project is creating its own by drilling into dry rock and injecting liquid to make the reservoir. This project's opening has been postponed two years now because there was a leak which released 10 million gallons of water! This could have been very dangerous because it could have caused an earthquake. It should be ready in spring of this year and reach almost 10,000 feet.
I think this project is amazing. I love how they figured out new ways to get the energy. It is not really damaging the landscape and it provides a lot of clean energy. We should really try to do more projects like this in the future, so that we could move away from. We still need to improve our technology because it has been delayed so much time, and we waste so much water getting the heat. I hope that when they do start running the project, that nothing will go wrong like polluting the water supply. But this project is great news to the environmental community!