Geothermal is just as likely to run into legal challenges as other forms of underground energy recovery. The article below is part of ‘a special feature on the hazards and potential of geothermal energy’, featuring the habitat of Nevada’s tiny and endangered Dixie Valley toad.
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From his home office in Carson City, Nevada, Paul Schwering monitors an old gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota, approximately 1,000 miles away and a mile underground.
What was once the Homestake Gold Mine has been repurposed as a research station for enhanced geothermal systems, also known as engineered geothermal systems, a technology that could increase the United States’ geothermal power generating capacity 40-fold, says the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Energy experts estimate that geothermal energy could contribute up to 10 percent of US electricity generation, but only if researchers can figure out how to make enhanced geothermal systems work on a large scale.
Enhanced geothermal systems have been called the “geothermal moonshot.”