geothermal

It's hot on the ground in New Mexico, but it's the heat underneath that's attracting new attention. A former Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher is calling for a new look at a way of doing geothermal that avoids causing seismic activity.

In the past, there have been questions about whether existing geothermal drilling techniques could trigger earthquakes, reports Richard Snodgrass of the Los Alamos Monitor in a story picked up by the Associated Press.

Other forms of renewable energy, including biomass, solar and hydrogen, have attracted more attention from researchers and investors, but this year the U.S. Department of Energy is taking a closer look at "hot dry rock" geothermal potential.

Are geothermal energy projects a boon for Western states or the beginnings of environmental disaster?

President Obama has heralded geothermal energy's role in the U.S. “clean energy transformation” -- funded by millions of dollars from the Department of Energy. But a series of earthquakes set off by small geothermal projects in Northern California's Lake and Sonoma Counties has residents worried that those seeking energy in the earth's depths will hit a major fault line.

Now, The New York Times reports that two federal agencies are halting a California project to break up bedrock deep in the earth to extract its geothermal energy until they review whether the project by AltaRock Energy could spawn earthquakes.

AltaRock Energy downplayed the dangers of its California deep-drilling project to tap geothermal energy by breaking up hard rock two miles deep to extract its heat.  Seismologists agree that human activity can trigger quakes, which residents of Switzerland remember well.

AltaRock Energy is a renewable energy development company with headquarters in Sausalito, CA, and a technology development office in Seattle, WA.