14 DAY TRIAL // The philanthropic arm of Google announced an investment of over $10 million in unconventional geothermal energy. Google's decision to become involved in yet another environmental project comes a month after it invested another $2.75 million in the development of plug-in electric vehicles. This time, the investment is more substantial, but the total pecuniary requirements of the project are also greater.
While the use of geothermal springs normally implies the exploitation of pockets of hot water or Steam, which appear naturally in certain areas, the Enhanced Geothermal Systems project aims to reproduce these natural conditions in a controlled environment. "The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine." explains Charles Baron from the Climate and Energy Team, on Google's official blog.
While petrol costs are rising, leading to a global fuel crisis, the good thing about geothermal energy is that, with the proper investments, it could become available anywhere around the globe. "The most important economic aspect of geothermal energy use is that it's homegrown - using geothermal energy reduces our dependence on foreign oil, creates jobs here in the United States, and more favorably balances our global trading position." says the U.S. Department of Energy. Of course, any country can decide to stray from the beaten path to embrace the revolutionary technology.
Up until now, hot water and steam have been used solely in certain regions - California, Indonesia and Iceland, which are located at the conjunction of two continental plates. With the boost given by new technologies, which still need investments in order to reach a more extended scale, the eco-friendly energy solution could go national, and then global. And the larger the EGS network, the lower the prices.
EGS is "providing base load continuous power, with high availability. It's essentially emissions free and therefore carbon neutral and it has this distributed indigenous nature so it's not just in the South-Western parts of the U.S, it is extendible and scalable on a national scale. [...] Once you get large and you do this large at a national basis, then the costs will come down naturally." underscores Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, Dr. Jefferson Tester.