![]() They’ve needed to be able to drill down to porous, permeable, hot rock at relatively low depths. ![]() To date, developers of geothermal power plants have largely been able to tap only the most promising and economical locations, like this stretch of Nevada. If the US could capture just 2% of the thermal energy available two to six miles beneath its surface, it could produce more than 2,000 times the nation’s total annual energy consumption.īut because of geological constraints, high capital costs and other challenges, we barely use it at all: today it accounts for 0.4% of US electricity generation. There’s much to love about geothermal energy: it offers a virtually limitless, always-on source of emissions-free heat and electricity. From a geothermal perspective, what matters is that all this stretching and tilting brought hot rocks relatively close to the surface. ![]() The crust stretched, thinned, and broke into blocks that tilted, forming mountains on the high side while filling in and flattening the basins with sediments and water, as John McPhee memorably described it in his 1981 book, Basin and Range.
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