Energy Crisis? No Problem. Google To the Rescue

Google’s to do list: Organize the world’s information? Check. Cloud based software, free email? Check. Solve the world’s energy problem?

Check.

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the search giant has invested $10.35 million in a revolutionary new geothermal energy technology. It’s called Enhanced Geothermal Systems, and it’s reported that the system could generate thousands of times the yearly amount of energy needed to run the US (and beyond).

Clusterstock reports:

EGS expands the potential of geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.

A recent MIT report on EGS estimates that just 2% of the heat below the continental United States between 3 and 10 kilometers, depths within the range of current drilling technology, is more than 2,500 times the country’s total annual energy use.

[Clusterstock via Silicon Alley Insider]