Imagining Different Futures: Geothermal Energy

Whether it be powering your home, your computer, or the phone you’re watching this video on, our world requires energy.

Historically, grid energy has been created through burning things, whether that be wood chips, coal, oil, or natural gas that heats up and boils water, with the steam then spinning turbines that create an electrical charge, successfully converting that heat into electricity.

Yet when it comes to imagining a clean-energy future, there’s one source I don’t think we all hear about enough. It’s endlessly abundant, totally and completely safe, and exists everywhere just beneath our feet - geothermal energy.

The core of our earth is molten rock and plasma that is really really hot, and simply by drilling a little hole into that, we’d have instant and consistent access to over 42 terawatts of clean, naturally occurring energy. Currently, geothermal is only utilized in a few parts of the world where accessing it is relatively easy, whereas you’d have to dig down through over 5 km of rock to access geothermal in other areas. This is very difficult, tedious and expensive to do with traditional drilling methods, which has been the main hinderance to geothermal playing more of a role in global clean energy discussions.

However, there have been recent tech developments that replace that cumbersome drilling apparatus with - and I kid you not - a giant laser beam.

High-powered lasers or millimetre wave-beams aimed straight down through the earths crust could melt, crack and vaporize rocks that drilling rigs have a hard time getting through, helping us access geothermal energy in even the deepest, hardest to access places, providing clean bountiful energy to billions of people.

Imagining a creative, radical, and better future than the fossil fuel dependant junk show we’re in these days is the first step towards creating that future, so let’s keep dreaming!

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