Power from the Earth

Over the past century, we have built our lifestyle on power and a main source of this is derived from burning coal from the Earth. Consistent power generation such as this provides baseload power, to supply power when it is needed. There are other ways to generate baseload, but one that is economic, easily available, less disruptive, and has extremely low carbon emissions is Geothermal, deriving power from the heat located at depths in the Earth. This power has also been used over the last century, but mainly where the heat was close to the surface, however there are many parts of the planet, including Australia, which have good heat resources at easy reach.

Using our significant expertise in mining technology, Australia has many major projects underway to utilise this heat for power in SA, TAS and QLD. However, an American company called RASER has developed a Geothermal process which can be built as small scale power plants within a few months. They claim that their proprietary technology will improve power generation efficiencies by up to 30%. Their first power plant is scheduled to open later this year in Utah and plans to produce power for 9,000 USA homes (translate that to about 8,500 Australian homes hehe).

One of the keys arguments from the mining industry, is that moving from coal production would cost jobs. It seems to me, with our considerable pool of talented people, a transition to geothermal makes sense, for us as a nation, for those who work in the mining industry, and for stewardship of our quite sizeable patch of Earth.