The Hindu Business Line : Hot on energy list

Few days pass by without some news or the other concerning sustainable energy getting prominent presentation in the US dailies. Dread of greenhouse gases and global warming with all their ill effects has, indeed, stoked vigorous research schemes and explorations to locate more and more sources for producing clean electric power. Recently, possibilities of tapping wave energy hit the headlines.

Earlier to this, the theme was on utilizing wind power to generate electricity. The idea has gained momentum and numerous wind farms are being set up wherever the wind map has indicated the presence of a strong belt. Use of sun’s heat as a dependable energy source has been steadily expanding, though slowly in view of the cost factor.

Harnessing geo-thermal energy

Hot on the list today is the possibility of harnessing geo-thermal energy locked up deep under craters and crevasses along mountainous regions such as the Cascade Range. A highly resourceful site at Newberry Crater in Central Oregon has been identified for constructing a power plant to use geo-thermal energy from the bowels of the earth, several layers below the spot. Experts have stated that this installation can provide 125 MW, enough to feed nearly 100,000 homes. The Newberry project for building a power plant at the crater site starts off with drilling a well reaching the stratum lying two miles below ground level. From the extensive reservoir here very hot water darts up as a continual jet through a pipe sunk in the well. Upon emerging on the surface it gets transformed into superheated steam. All the pent-up force contained in it is released during the expansion, thereby turning a turbo-generator to produce electrical power. Discharged water from the tail end is subsequently cooled down and pumped back though a second pipe into the nether storage, where it gets heated again, ready for reuse.

The Litany Examined

With the arrival of the geo-thermal energy concept on the scene, the litany of sustainable sources has now grown to include four areas. Project developments for harnessing them would, no doubt, depend on the extent of nature’s largesse in any region. Environmentalists have also been making their protests from time to time. Their fears are of possible degradation of wildlife habitat due to toxic fumes emanating from underground and of the ugly impact on the undisturbed landscape by power plant structures and transmission towers. But, by and large, all the four sources have stirred up large scale investigations for launching projects.

How far India will be inspired by these recent developments in the US cannot be guessed until natural occurrences in the country and their potential for yielding electric power are fully assessed. One may, perhaps, imagine feasible projects arising from thermal energy under the Rajasthan desert, or using solar heat from the scorching sun of Central India, or in wind farms on the belt near Gujarat or in chosen sites along the eastern coast swept by powerful waves of the Bay of Bengal? Time alone can reveal.

(The author is a US-based freelance writer,)

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