“The Department of Energy has not requested funds for geothermal research in our fiscal-year 2008 budget,” said Christina Kielich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. “Geothermal is a mature technology. Our focus is on breakthrough energy research and development.”

This has been widely reported since December, 2006 and is appalling as geothermal power is in no way “mature” and there are still several breakthroughs required to realize the vast potential of harvesting heat from the earth including:

• Deep drilling to 10km
• Warm water harvest (25-75C)
• Engineered geothermal systems

With the change from the mid-term elections, there is still hope the Department of Energy position can be modified on this issue.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 7:57 am and is filed under Geothermal, Policy.