CleanTech
Google.org invests in breakthrough geothermal energy technology
Through its philanthropic arm Google.org, announced $10.25 million in investments in a breakthrough energy technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).
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.
For more information on the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative, including $30 million in investments to advance solar thermal and advanced wind technologies, see http://www.google.org/rec.html.
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