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Volcano power to boost green energy

By Nadine Arendse
Johannesburg, 17 Jan 2012

Volcano power to boost green energy

Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 91 million litres of water into the side of a dormant volcano in Oregon to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise, News24 says.

They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that is not dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes - without shaking the Earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.

Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas, weak demand for power and waning political concern over global warming, 3 News reports.

Efforts to use the Earth's heat to generate power, known as geothermal energy, have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes.

Even so, the US federal government, Google and other investors are interested enough to bet $43 million on the Oregon project. They are helping AltaRock Energy, of Seattle, and Davenport Newberry, of Stamford, demonstrate whether the next level in geothermal power development can work on the flanks of Newberrry Volcano, located about 20 miles south of Bend, Ore.

The heat in the Earth's crust has been used to generate power for more than a century. Engineers gather hot water or steam that bubbles near the surface and use it to spin a turbine that creates electricity, The National notes.

Most of those areas have been exploited. The new frontier is places with hot rocks, but no cracks in the rocks or water to deliver the steam. To tap that heat - and grow geothermal energy from a tiny niche into an important source of green energy - engineers are working on a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).

"To build geothermal in a big way beyond where it is now requires new technology, and that is where EGS comes in," said Steve Hickman, a research geophysicist with the US Geological Survey in California.

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