The folks over at google.org put some money to work in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).

The energy from the heat beneath the earth’s surface is essentially an unlimited resource. What if it could be developed to help solve our energy challenges and fight global warming? Enhanced Geothermal Systems, or EGS, attempts to do just that. EGS produces heat and electricity by harnessing the energy from hot rock deep below the earth’s surface, expanding the potential of traditional geothermal energy by orders of magnitude.

To do this you need a few basic items, like to start drill bits to cut through the rock. Potter Drilling received an investment from Google for drilling technology. And you need management, AltaRock Energy is the development company, they too received investment from Google.

The concept of EGS is intuitively appealing, it’s simple enough to understand the science as well as the numbers. It’s carbon free, baseload, scaleable. From Wikipedia:

A 2006 report by MIT conducted the most comprehensive analysis to date on the potential and technical status of EGS. The 18 member panel, chaired by Dr. Jefferson Tester of MIT, reached several significant conclusions.

1) Resource Size: The MIT report calculated the United States total EGS resources from 3-10 km to be over 13,000 zettajoules, of which over 200 ZJ would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements – sufficient to provide all the world’s currentenergy needs for several millennia.^[1] The report found that total geothermal resources, including hydrothermal and geo-pressured resources, to equal 14,000 ZJ – or roughly 140,000 times total U.S. annual primary energy use.

2) Development Potential: With a modest R&D investment of $1 billion over 15 years (or the cost of one coal power plant), the report estimated tha 100 GWe (gigawatts of electricity) or more could be installed by 2050 in the United States. The report further found that the “recoverable” resource (that accessible with today’s technology) to be between 1.2-12.2 million MW for the conservative and moderate recovery scenarios respectively.

3) Cost: The report found EGS could be capable of producing electricity for as low as 3.9 cents/kWh. EGS costs were found to be sensitive to four main factors: 1) Temperature of the resource 2) Fluid flow through the system measured in liters/second 3) Drilling Costs 4) Power conversion efficiency