Geothermal

Fervo Energy says it has achieved a breakthrough in technology. It carried out a 30-day well test at its site in northern Nevada and a "flowrate of 63 liters per second at high temperature that enables 3.5 megawatts of electric production." The company says the test resulted in flow and power output records for an enhanced geothermal system (EGS) and that it was completed without incident. A megawatt can power around 750 homes at once. Fervo is expected to connect its Project Red site to the grid this year. It will be…

Toxic gases and ash from Mount Vesuvius took just minutes to asphyxiate an estimated 2,000 Pompeians in C.E. 79. A pyroclastic flow from Mount Pelée claimed the lives of nearly 30,000 on the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1902. If those catastrophic eruptions had occurred today, could scientists have forecast them in time to save lives? Volcanologists have certainly made some progress on this front. Look no further than Popocatepetl, or El Popo. Lying on the outskirts of Mexico City, it is one of the largest active…

Toxic gases and ash from Mount Vesuvius took just minutes to asphyxiate an estimated 2,000 Pompeians in C.E. 79. A pyroclastic flow from Mount Pelée claimed the lives of nearly 30,000 on the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1902. If those catastrophic eruptions had occurred today, could scientists have forecast them in time to save lives? Volcanologists have certainly made some progress on this front. Look no further than Popocatepetl, or El Popo. Lying on the outskirts of Mexico City, it is one of the largest active…

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This weekly newsletter is part of a CBC News initiative entitled "Our Changing Planet" to show and explain the effects of climate change. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday.This week:Waterfront homes tap into lakes for cheaper geothermal heatingWhat's going on with those boat-ramming orcas?Many of Canada's greenest apartments are ultra-affordable. Here's whyWaterfront homes tap into…

The intense heat under the Earth's surface represents a virtually inexhaustible source of reliable clean energy that would be available 24/7 from anywhere on Earth – you could pull it up as steam to run generator turbines, or pipe it directly into district heating systems.That's if we could get to it. Earth's most easily accessible geothermal energy is located wherever it's closest to the surface – typically, geologically unstable areas near volcanos and lots of seismic activity, representing only about 3% of the Earth's…

because of the promising conditions in Starr and Hidalgo Counties, Jamie had been helping a handful of people there. The Sage team, of course. The public utility manager for the city of McAllen, who desperately wants to build a geothermal plant for his city. She’d been talking to Dario Guerra, a local water engineer who had been preaching the gospel of geothermal for years. One person she hadn’t met, though, was James McAllen.So, late in the afternoon, Jamie and I headed about an hour northwest from the city of McAllen to…

In late January, a geothermal power startup began conducting experiments where it pumped water deep below the desert floor of northern Nevada.  The results—which MIT Technology Review is reporting exclusively—suggest that Houston-based Fervo can create flexible geothermal power plants, capable of ramping electricity output up or down as needed.Potentially more importantly, the system can store up energy for hours or even days and deliver it back over similar periods, effectively acting as a giant and very long-lasting…

The crust stretched, thinned, and broke into blocks that tilted, forming mountains on the high side while filling in and flattening the basins with sediments and water, as John McPhee memorably described it in his 1981 book, Basin and Range. From a geothermal perspective, what matters is that all this stretching and tilting brought hot rocks relatively close to the surface. There’s much to love about geothermal energy: it offers a virtually limitless, always-on source of emissions-free heat and electricity. If the US…

The Department of Energy will offer $74 million to geothermal pilot projects that tap into heat several miles underground, in a bid to unlock massive amounts of renewable electricity. The funding, announced last week, will go to up to seven pilot projects. Funding recipients will test whether a new kind of geothermal technology called EGS—enhanced geothermal systems—could be an economic way to transform heat almost anywhere on the planet into electricity. It is part of the Biden administration's efforts to halve…

Texas is hot below ground and full of folks with oil and gas drilling expertise, so that makes it ripe for a geothermal energy boom, according to a new study from researchers at five Texas universities. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, Southern Methodist University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Houston, as well as the University Lands Office and the International Energy Agency, just published a landmark study, “The Future of Geothermal in…