"Geothermal Project in California Is Shut Down"

Obama administration’s first geothermal project was unexpectedly abandoned. The company AltaRock energy was in charge of the project, located in California, to “extract vast amounts of renewable energy from deep, hot bedrock”. The project was Obama administration’s first major test of geothermal energy. The project costs millions of dollars and was funded by the government and private investors. One possibility that the project was shut down was because the funding fell through or because the harmful affects that occurred as a result of geothermal drilling.

Geothermal energy is a large alternative to the use of fossil fuels. Geothermal energy is potentially the best way of obtaining alternative energy because it is can be done quickly, efficiently, and is affordable. The geothermal project “could be quickly tapped as a clean almost limitless energy source.” The concepts and advantages of geothermal energy are vast and the amount of energy that cane obtained is endless. The problem with geothermal energy is that it requires drills to dig deep into the Earth, which causes small but dangerous earthquakes. But some “geothermal methods do not require drilling” so there s still much potential for success.

AltaRock has received millions of dollars to begin geothermal energy but has yet to really progress. AltaRock wants to start drilling on a different site because during the drilling steam was emitted from the cracks and fractures were observed. “By nature, fracturing creates earthquakes, though most of them are small.” (A nearby resident claimed to have felt an earthquake and blames the drilling for it.)

Geothermal energy “holds enormous potential to heat our homes and power our economy while decreasing carbon pollution”. Unfortunately geothermal technology has not been perfected and has not fulfilled its potential but hopefully son enough geothermal energy will become humanity’s main sources of energy.