Geothermal Power is Heating Up Around the World  

TreeHugger has a look at growth areas for geothermal power - 5 Ways Geothermal Power is Heating Up Around the World.

Last week when the US Geothermal Energy Association released it’s biannual report which stated that geothermal power had grown by 20% so far this year , it cemented what TreeHugger said over a year ago: Geothermal power is the poor cousin of higher profile renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. It doesn’t seem to be a question of geothermal’s potential (which is great) but its amount of publicity (which isn’t so great). Towards that end, here’s a roundup of what’s heating up in geothermal power around the world:

Australia Could Have 2200 MW of Geothermal by 2020

Framed in the context of the vast untapped potential of geothermal energy in Australia—the figure of 1% of the country’s potential being enough power for 26,000 thousand years was thrown around—the Australian Geothermal Energy Association said that under current policy 2200 megawatts of power could be developed by 2020. Though a drop in the bucket of the total funding need to develop this amount of power, the Australian government announced that it is investing A$50-million (US$43.5 million) into developing this potential. ...

Kenya Plans 1,700 MW of Geothermal Power by 2018

Though it’s come under fire recently for proposing to expand biofuel production in an important coastal wetland, Kenya also plans to develop some more environmentally friendly power: President Mwai Kibaki announced that 1,700 megawatts of geothermal power over the next ten years.

A worker at Kenya’s Ol Karia geothermal power plant was quoted as saying, “Because geothermal energy is our only indigenous source of energy, we’re going for it. We can supply Kenya’s entire needs with geothermal alone.”

Indonesia, Philippines Investigate Tapping Into the Ring of Fire

Being located on the so-called Ring of Fire, it’s not surprising that both Indonesia and the Philippines are investigating how much of their geothermal power potential they can turning into usable power.

In Indonesia, the Bedugal project on Bali at 175 megawatts would supply half of the island’s power needs, but concerns over the project damaging a sacred area or affecting the water in local lakes will need to be addressed. According to TreeHugger contributer and Earth Policy Institute president Lester Brown, Indonesia as a whole could “run its economy entirely on geothermal energy and has not come close to tapping the full potential.”

In the Philippines, the goal is to increase its geothermal power capacity by nearly a third to about 3,100 megawatts in the next five years. The problem here is that many of the island nation’s geothermal fields are still acidic due to active volcanic activity. This acidity can corrode pipes and is making it difficult to expand geothermal power beyond the 18% of total power generation which the resource currently supplies.