Power to the People
Last month, I told you about Defenders of Wildlife’s wonderful Your Lands, Your Wildlife initiative. One of its main goals is to help spread the word that many wonderful experiences occur on America’s natural lands every day so that more people will patronize them and so that the government of the United States will provide adequately for their maintenance and expansion.
Communing with nature is very important in combating natural deficit disorder but America’s natural lands are playing an increasingly important role in harnessing geothermal for electricity generation. That’s right. As of this writing, America’s natural lands comprise half of the real estate used for electricity generation from geothermal energy in the United States.
During the middle of the summer of 2008, several new or expanded projects in Nevada and New Mexico were announced which point to the bright promise of harnessing geothermal for electricity generation. One of the key lessons which this green energy technology can teach us is that, at the macro level, we really only have 2 truly renewable sources: the Earth and the sun.
Solar power comes directly from the sun. Wind power comes from the intersection of solar and terrestrial energy – the Earth’s core maintains an electromagnetic field around the planet which keeps the atmosphere from escaping into space and the heat from the sun causes the atmosphere to spin in all directions, giving us wind. All of the other sources come from those two.
Hydroelectric power occurs because the sun causes evaporation of the oceans which falls on the surface as rain which is transported by the wind. Biofuels come from agricultural crops which would not exist without the Earth and the sun. Well, you get the point.
So, if the planet is half of the equation in providing truly green sources of energy, it is appropriate that they should play a vital role in harnessing geothermal for electricity generation. That’s what I call fomenting the triple bottom line.
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
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