Geothermal Energy

WASHINGTON - The Interior Department plans to make available 190 million acres of federal land in a dozen Western states for development of geothermal energy projects - a move that could produce enough electricity for 5 million homes. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said yesterday that under a leasing program, as many as 270 communities could benefit from direct use of geothermal energy, generated from intense heat deep beneath the Earth. "Geothermal energy is replenished, is a renewable resource that generates electricity with minimal carbon emissions . . . (and)

GREENSBORO, N.C. - It's a happy coincidence that the greenest hotel in the country is on Green Valley Road in Greensboro. Last fall, Proximity Hotel was rated the hospitality industry's most energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable building, earning the US Green Building Council's only platinum award given to a hotel. While the hotel's setting in an urban office park doesn't scream green, its construction and operation do, allowing it to use 40 percent less energy and 35 percent less water than a comparable hotel, according to owner Quaintance-Weaver...

LOS ANGELES - Growers and ranchers in the southern reaches of California are posing the latest obstacle to the state's push for green power. Facing the possibility of losing land to power transmission lines, they have urged state commissioners to avoid their property when selecting a route for a project linking consumers on the coast to renewable energy operations in the Southern California desert. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. contends that stringing high-voltage lines over agricultural land in San Diego and Imperial counties as part of its $1.5-billion Sunrise Powerlink...

WASHINGTON - The Interior Department plans to make available 190 million acres of federal land in a dozen Western states for development of geothermal energy projects - a move that could produce enough electricity for 5 million homes. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said yesterday that under a leasing program, as many as 270 communities could benefit from direct use of geothermal energy, generated from intense heat deep beneath the Earth. "Geothermal energy is replenished, is a renewable resource that generates electricity with minimal carbon emissions . . . (and)

GREENSBORO, N.C. - It's a happy coincidence that the greenest hotel in the country is on Green Valley Road in Greensboro. Last fall, Proximity Hotel was rated the hospitality industry's most energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable building, earning the US Green Building Council's only platinum award given to a hotel. While the hotel's setting in an urban office park doesn't scream green, its construction and operation do, allowing it to use 40 percent less energy and 35 percent less water than a comparable hotel, according to owner Quaintance-Weaver...

BASEL, Switzerland -- When tremors started cracking walls and bathroom tiles in this Swiss city on the Rhine, engineers knew they had a problem. "The glass vases on the shelf rattled, and there was a loud bang," Catherine Wueest, a teashop owner, recalled. "I thought a truck had crashed into the building. " But the 3.4 magnitude tremor on the evening of Dec. 8 was no ordinary act of nature: It had been accidentally triggered by engineers drilling deep into the earth's crust to tap its inner heat and thus break new ground -- literally -- in the world's...

The nation could generate a large part of the electricity it will need in the future by tapping the enormous amounts of heat energy locked in hard rock below the earth's surface, a new study led by a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicated yesterday. Heat mining could supply energy at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact, according to the 400-page report commissioned by the US Department of Energy to assess the value of continuing to fund geothermal energy study.

BASEL, Switzerland - A geologist on trial for causing earthquakes while drilling for hot rocks to produce clean energy said yesterday that he was surprised by the strength of the most powerful temblor. Markus Haering, who designed the geothermal project, rejected allegations that he deliberately damaged properties and said local people knew the risks. “We had very little knowledge of seismicity’’ before starting to drill, Haering testified. The deep drilling underground caused a series of earthquakes in 2006, including one of 3.4 magnitude, rattling...

By Sara Brown, Town Correspondent Beacon Hill's Suffolk University received a nice gift to start of the school year: buildings and 86 acres of forest and farmland along the Penobscot River in Maine. According to an announcement today, the school received "expansive property" in Passadumkeag, Maine. The property, about 30 miles north of Bangor, contains a $3.5 million riverfront facility, residential buildings and other structures that will be used for scientific study and other academic and research programs.

HAMBURG AXEL DETTE pressed the button on the construction elevator, and it crawled 13 stories up alongside a concrete mass that once served as a World War II Nazi flak bunker, protecting 30,000 people in the heart of the Wilhelmsburg island district. With concrete walls 3 meters thick, it easily survived brutal firestorm bombings that claimed tens of thousands of lives in this strategic port city. It also survived postwar attempts by the British to level it. They blasted away the interior but could not bring down the walls.

LOS ANGELES - Growers and ranchers in the southern reaches of California are posing the latest obstacle to the state's push for green power. Facing the possibility of losing land to power transmission lines, they have urged state commissioners to avoid their property when selecting a route for a project linking consumers on the coast to renewable energy operations in the Southern California desert. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. contends that stringing high-voltage lines over agricultural land in San Diego and Imperial counties as part of its $1.5-billion Sunrise Powerlink...

BASEL, Switzerland -- When tremors started cracking walls and bathroom tiles in this Swiss city on the Rhine, engineers knew they had a problem. "The glass vases on the shelf rattled, and there was a loud bang," Catherine Wueest, a teashop owner, recalled. "I thought a truck had crashed into the building. " But the 3.4 magnitude tremor on the evening of Dec. 8 was no ordinary act of nature: It had been accidentally triggered by engineers drilling deep into the earth's crust to tap its inner heat and thus break new ground --...

The nation could generate a large part of the electricity it will need in the future by tapping the enormous amounts of heat energy locked in hard rock below the earth's surface, a new study led by a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicated yesterday. Heat mining could supply energy at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact, according to the 400-page report commissioned by the US Department of Energy to assess the value of continuing to fund geothermal energy study.

WASHINGTON - Senate majority leader Harry Reid has found a refuge in the nation's preoccupation with record energy prices. While the push by President Bush and congressional Republicans for more oil drilling is resonating with voters, the Nevada Democrat is focused on solar and other renewable energy sources, which happen to be more abundant in his home state than almost anywhere else in the country. At some political risk for the gold miner's son, Reid also is leading the opposition to new coal-burning power plants planned for Nevada, where unions and the energy-hungry casino industry...

I 'm sitting in a "hot pot" at 11 p.m., with the sun still visible above the cliffs that ring one of Ice- land's many fiords, and it occurs to me that this is one of the warmest countries I've ever visited, despite its location at the edge of the Arctic Circle. Not just for the geothermal energy that heats most homes and hot pots (Icelandic slang for hot tub), but for the people. I make fast friends with the four enjoying the view with me. We discover one of them is the cousin of a shark farmer I had met earlier in the day. Even the nation's phone book (yes, one for the whole country)