Drilling deep holes and making bombs

Tony Curzon Price, 15 March 2009
Subjects:

March 15th 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 14 and 15. Geothermal and Public Services

(Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post)

It matters where the energy is: lots of heat just 100km under our feet doesn't help much although manufacturing earthquakes might, just a bit. We're not Iceland which can rely on geothermal heat closer to the surface to operate huge aluminium smelting plants. So we can (almost) forget geothermal. Public "services" like a well-equipped army or well-heated academics also consume. Maybe some demand should be counted as production if it can be sustainably avoided by our efforts?

Next week is the first chapter looking at the overall balance of demand to potential renewable supply.

About the author

Tony Curzon Price  is Editor-in-Chief of openDemocracy and blogs at tony.curzon.com


March 15th 2009. Join the Group Read. Chapters 14 and 15. Geothermal and Public Services

(Instructions on how to join are at the bottom of the original post)

It matters where the energy is: lots of heat just 100km under our feet doesn't help much although manufacturing earthquakes might, just a bit. We're not Iceland which can rely on geothermal heat closer to the surface to operate huge aluminium smelting plants. So we can (almost) forget geothermal. Public "services" like a well-equipped army or well-heated academics also consume. Maybe some demand should be counted as production if it can be sustainably avoided by our efforts?

Next week is the first chapter looking at the overall balance of demand to potential renewable supply.

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