In a November 5th opinion piece for The Hill, Tobias Russell (strategic researcher for Natural Resources) points to the major impediment facing proponents of geothermal energy networks: “Lay down your culture-war guns. One energy source remains tribeless—and strikingly underappreciated. Perhaps that’s because geothermal energy has no sex appeal.”
Geothermal has gained significant adherents across the political spectrum—and for good reason. Russell writes:
“Geothermal is exactly what its Greek roots imply: geo, earth; thermal, heat. To turn on the lights, we simply need to harness the heat our planet is already making. And it could save us six ways from Sunday. It’s an unlikely mix of keeping the lights on, muscle-flexing Americana, and tree-hugging peace and love. It sends all the right signals to both red and blue America. It’s perfectly purple.
For the tree-huggers: geothermal produces very little carbon, disturbs comparatively little land, and doesn’t require mountains of fuel to be dug up and burned.
For the drill-baby-drill crowd, geothermal is domestic energy pulled straight from American soil. It’s very much drill, baby, drill — except this time, we’re drilling for the Earth’s heat instead of ancient hydrocarbons. And unlike the blue-coded renewables, it can run day and night regardless of the weather.
The left gets reliable, climate-friendly power. The right gets to drill for American energy dominance. Americans of all stripes get electricity when they need it. Everyone wins.”
The problem, he continues, isn’t it’s value but the slow and impediment-filled nature of approval processes:
“You can’t have a geothermal boom if it takes a year to get permission to look for its source. Every month lost to exploration delays the power plant that might follow — and discourages investors and developers from taking the next risk.
Embracing geothermal probably won’t end the culture war. But it might get us to stop bickering for a moment about how to turn the lights on — and simply turn the damn lights on.”
Read the full opinion piece.