Word: coaling
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...Coal, steel, oil - we think of these old-economy industries, and we picture pollution. Smoggy skies, fouled rivers, toxic waste. As we make the transition to a new economy, we imagine that industrial pollution will become a thing of the past. Mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players - they conjure images of spotless semiconductor factories and the eternal summer of Silicon Valley where the digital economy was born...
...theory, says Geodynamics chief executive Gerry Grove-White, there's enough heat in the rocks of the Cooper Basin, on which Innamincka sits, to replace all the coal-fired power stations in Australia for more than 250 years. He says one cubic kilometer of hot granite has about the same stored energy as 40 million barrels of oil. With several thousand cubic kilometers of these granites, Australia has enough heat to last millennia...
...being watched worldwide," says Grove-White, a British power-industry veteran whose experience covers four continents and every system, from wind and hydro to nuclear and coal. "The climate debate has focused an awful lot of interest on the commercial development of these resources...
...There are some obvious challenges. Power from coal-fired plants is cheaper. And the closest connection point to the national electricity grid is 500 km away. But Grove-White says geothermal power will become economic once coal and gas plants have to pay for their carbon emissions, which he expects to happen in an Australian carbon-trading scheme due to start in 2010. While the transmission lines will be expensive, their cost - $500 million or more - is included in the business model...
...patina of high-mindedness: air-conditioning is bad for the planet, and for national security, and for our balance-of-payments deficit. Unfortunately, it is not as bad as I'd like it to be - in part because not all of our electricity is provided by fossil fuels (although coal does predominate). And also because air-conditioning represents a relatively small slice of our energy use, an estimated...