What a pleasant surprise to read James Yearling’s
informative piece about geothermal energy (HCN,
2/18/08). As a volcanologist who spent much of his
32-year career researching geothermal resources for the U.S.
Geological Survey, I’m used to seeing geothermal treated like the
comedian Rodney Dangerfield … getting no respect. This lack of
respect is in spite of the fact that generating electricity with
geothermal steam has been done ever since a clever Italian
scientist succeeded in 1904. Today, several countries (for example,
Costa Rica and El Salvador) generate up to 25 percent of their
nation’s electrical power from geothermal steam. Moreover, in these
times of global warming and much concern about carbon footprints,
it’s comforting to know that electricity generated using geothermal
steam releases almost no carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Geothermal energy can be developed in many more ways than
producing electricity. For example, it’s hard to drill a well in
volcano-rich Iceland and not encounter warm water. Virtually every
building in that country is heated by routing such water through
radiators. Geothermal heat is also being increasingly developed to
both heat and cool buildings by installing ground-source (also
called geothermal) heat pumps. If using geothermal heat to cool a
building sounds magical, you may want to read about this process
and many other characteristics of geothermal resources in USGS
Circular 1249, Geothermal Energy – Clean Power From the Earth’s
Heat. Search this title at Google, and you can download your own
copy.
Wendell A. Duffield
Flagstaff,
Arizona
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Geothermal is no joke.
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