The White House wants a twenty-fold increase in geothermal energy production to fight climate change and it's counting on the oil and gas industry for help.iframe src="https://www.npr.
Geothermal energy, which in its simplest form means tapping hot water locked in granite faults sometimes thousands of feet below the surface of the earth to create heat or electricity, is often dubbed an invisible technology. It's long been seen as underutilized. But it's also a hugely expensive renewable resource to extract compared to more conventional drilling.to increase its development in the United States by twenty fold.
"What we're walking along now on this road is actually an inactive fault," Riley says. Idaho's geology makes it particularly suitable for geothermal energy, she adds.Soon, two structures built into the side of the mountain come into view. They look like bunkers. The warm water is pumped up through these well houses into a pipe system then transferred underground to nearby downtown. After it's used, it's discharged back into the aquifer near the Boise River.
This could bring down costs, Jones says. The geothermal industry is a fraction of the size of wind, solar and oil and gas industries in the U.S., accounting for only .4% of the total electricity generation. "Geothermal is a subsurface resource just like hydrocarbons. It requires pipes. It requires drilling. These are all skills and trades that we have in the U.S.," says Amanda Kolker, who runs the geothermal program at the federal National Renewable Energy Lab."It's a much smoother transition to geothermal than to maybe some other technologies."