The Global CCS Institute, which is based in Canberra, has reported that since its previous survey a year ago, five carbon capture and storage projects have been canceled, one reduced in size and seven postponed, while three have been added. The leader in capture and storage is the United States – mostly because of the […]  Read more »

The U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is conducting a feasibility study into a unique energy storage method combining geothermal heat and underground compressed air energy storage. When power is abundant, compressed air energy storage plants use it to power a large air compressor which pushes pressurized air into an underground geologic storage […]  Read more »

Seattle-based AltaRock Energy Inc.has announced that it is confident that it has created three geothermal reservoirs from a single well. The importance of this is the high cost of drilling a deep well to reach hot rock deep underground is less significant if multiple reservoirs of hot fluid, possibly at diferent levels, can be created […]  Read more »

Simbol Materials, a Californian company, plans to extract lithium, as well as zinc and manganese, from the brine that is pumped by geothermal power plants. Currently many geothermal plants pump hot brine from deep underground to produce steam and then inject the cooled brine back into the ground. This brine is rich in minerals including […]  Read more »

Potter Drilling, which is partly funded by Google.org, is developing a novel drill which uses heat, rather than abrasion, to break through rock. Rocks do not expand uniformly when they get hot. This creates stress between the grains of the mineral sand that causes them to break apart. According to Jared Potter, chief executive of […]  Read more »

Enhanced or "hot rock" geothermal power production usually works by pumping water into fissures in hot rocks deep underground, A shaft is drilled into the fissures and some ot the resulting super-heated water comes to the surface where it is used to drive a turbine. One problem with this technique is the amount of water […]  Read more »

The US Department of Energy is beginning a program to demonatrate a way in which the oil  industry can produce useful power from waste heat. When drilling oil and gas wells and on exploration drilling rigs, fluids are used to provide pressure, to keep the drill bit cool and clean and to carry the drill […]  Read more »

Engineers from the University of Oviedo in Spain have published research which shows that mine shafts on the point of being closed down could be used to provide significant amounts of geothermal energy. The engineers have developed a method which makes it possible to estimate the amount of heat that a tunnel could potentially provide. […]  Read more »

Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources. A technical and economic analysis conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has estimated that enhanced geothermal systems could provide 10 percent of the United States’ overall electrical generating capacity […]  Read more »

The World Wildlife Fund and the Australian Geothermal Energy Association have produced a report on Australia’s geothermal energy potential. The main findings of the report are: By 2050 geothermal energy could reduce Australia’s emissions by avoiding approximately 25% of today’s electricity generation emissions. Over 17,000 Australians could be employed in the geothermal energy industry by […]  Read more »