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http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/08/22/geothermal.energy.enn/

DOE warms to geothermal energy One of the largest geothermal fields in the world is The Geysers near San Francisco August 22, 2000 Web posted at: 12:08 p.m. EDT (1608 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

Just below Earth's surface is a virtually limitless supply of energy.

It isn't coal, oil or natural gas. It's raw heat.

The Harry Blundell Geothermal Plant in Roosevelt Hot Springs, Utah, has used Earth's heat to generate power since 1982. Drawing super-heated water from an underground reservoir nearly a mile underground and using the steam to drive turbines, the plant pumps 20 megawatts of clean electricity into the grid.

The Blundell plant has been "cooking along for sometime," said Marshall Ralph of Power Engineers in Hailey, Idaho. And yet, Ralph said, its energy stores are not being tapped to their potential.

The same can be said about the United States in general. Even though geothermal energy has been used to generate electricity in the country since the early 1920s, it is a largely underdeveloped energy source in America.

A new initiative, introduced recently by the U.S. Department of Energy, may change all that. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson last week confirmed 21 partnerships between the DOE and private industry to promote the development and use of geothermal energy in the western United States.

-- K (infosurf@yahoo.com), August 23, 2000