Earth Equity News

U.S. Signs Agreement with Australia and Iceland on Geothermal Energy. Triple Pundit, September 4, 2008. "Geothermal energy is attracting a lot of long overdue attention recently. Gathering in Reykjavik last week officials from Australia, Iceland and the U.S. signed a charter to establish the International Partnership for Geothermal Technology... A signal of 'the commitment of the three countries to aggressively foster and promote cutting edge geothermal technologies...' the announcement comes hard on the heels of [a Google announcement] that it will invest $10 million in enhanced geothermal systems as part of its 'Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal' program. Radiation emanating from the earth's core creates hotspots just below the earth's crust... that can be more effectively... tapped into using enhanced geothermal technology that has been in development since the 1970s. 'Geothermal power plants run 24 hours a day with an uptime of over 90%. They require no fuel and produce no pollution. Coal and atomic power plants need much more maintenance downtime, so they only operate an average of 75% and 65% of the time. Wind and solar power are even worse, producing an average of only 30% and 24% of their rated power,' says Thomas Blakeslee of the Clearlight Foundation]."