October 22, 2018

  • Supercharged geothermal energy could power the planet

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    Steam rises from the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland

    The next generation of geothermal plants will unlock more of Earth's bountiful, underground energy and could allow the technology to finally fulfil its promise.

    Arctic-Images/Getty

    By Julia Rosen of NewScientist

    THE Reykjanes peninsula juts out of the south-western tip of Iceland like a hitch-hiker’s thumb. Most visitors glimpse it from a plane, as they swoop down onto the runway at Keflavík airport, or through the mist at the Blue Lagoon – a popular hot spring. It is an otherworldly landscape of rumpled volcanic rocks and stout cinder cones. The most common signs of life: tenacious mosses in varying shades of green, and the odd wandering sheep.

    Here, the tectonic seam that runs along the bottom of the Atlantic, belching out new ocean crust between North America and Europe, runs aground. That’s what makes this place so attractive to people like Guðmundur Olaf Friðleifsson, chief geologist at Icelandic energy company HS Orka. Just a few kilometres beneath their feet, the staggering heat of a volcano bubbles away. All they have to do to harness its power is drill.

    Click here for the complete article from the NewScientist:

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