Geothermal energy is a form of renewable energy that uses the constant temperatures below Earth's surface to generate power and directly heat and cool spaces. It's been around since the early 1900s and represents an enormous opportunity to accelerate the United States’ clean energy growth.
So, why does only 0.4% of the country’s total energy generation come from geothermal energy sources? To understand its potential and why it hasn’t been tapped yet, you first need to know the pros and cons of geothermal energy.
https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/geoth ... s-and-consWhy 0.4%? Because it's a gimmick that's why. The simple fact is it's expensive both to setup and maintain and is only really practical in a very limited number of geographic locations.
It's all part of mankind's obsession with "keeping the lights on." Like most of what we have achieved over the past 100 years our electricity obsession was built on cheap fossil fuels, free dense and portable easily got energy basically. Now those cheap energy sources are going away we are scrabbling to replace them with expensive energy sources. But the system we have built, which is paid for at all endpoints by the working classes of the planet, can only function up a set price point for electricity. You go past that and people turn off their lights, factories turn off their machines because "working classes" can't afford the product.
The vast majority of people on the planet don't want these new systems. They certainly don't want to pay for them. They don't want to pay for AI server farms or BTC or huge stadiums and city-scapes burning lights all night. Corporate media etc has fooled many into thinking they want them, but then the bill arrives. For 400 years and more we have been building ever more complex, and many would argue, fragile systems, to basically give us a better more comfortable lifestyle. Great! But nearly all of it has been built on the exploitation of one or another cheap fossil fuel.
Humans being humans extrapolate these comforts forward and now assume we'll all be served breakfast by robots soon, have bases on mars (a 60 year old dream that) and until recently, enjoy abundant cheap forever-electricity from the sun and wind. As for geothermal power, be it electricity or merely water to heat our homes, is a total fringe technology and for all intents and purposes can be dismissed as such. I don't see us heading for an AI singularity at all. I see us heading for a Power-Down of monumental proportions, the beginning of which has already been made in many third world nations and is now sweeping Europe.
Energy poverty basically, the limits to growth re-balancing consumption by pushing prices beyond what people can afford as they once did. For all of my life in the 20th century I never once considered an electricity bill to be of any consequence. We used what we liked, we never thought of it. Now electricity consumption occupies the thoughts of nearly all but the wealthy classes. It's not the master resource, not a resource at all in fact, but it is the master energy source, the driver of our day to day activities. It's why all these alternatives to coal and gas are no-shows. If they were of any benefit to society we'd not be concerned by our consumption would we? We'd be burning lights and airconditioners like in the good ol days, without a thought.
We're 17 years past the peak now and the 3rd World is going hungry and dark. We'll be next, we're well on the way in fact.
