Concerns about global warming and volatile energy prices have researchers and policymakers dusting off projects from earlier energy crises to find ways to produce abundant clean energy. Now a comprehensive report concludes that drilling wells to harvest heat deep underground–a project first financed by the government in the 1970s and 1980s–could meet ten percent of the United States’ current massive energy needs in less than fifty years, and provide much more than that in the future. But it will take sustained investment to make this happen.
Technology Review talked to one of the leaders of the report last summer about the potential of geothermal energy. (See Abundant Power from Universal Geothermal Energy .) The new 400-page report, along with an executive summary, can be found here .
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