Please don’t get me wrong. There are many places where there are hot springs and heat from the earth can be harnessed without any drilling at all. George Bush Jr. is using a geo-energy system to help heat and cool his home in Texas. Unfortunately, geoenergy is not an economical alternative to our nation’s energy needs at this time. In our state several working hydro plants that had been operating for decades have been shut down in the last few years because their permits were not renewed. Hundreds of kilowatts are no longer being produced because of non-sensical reasons that have little to do with protecting nature. I have no doubt that American ingenuity unbridled by rampant government interference would be capable of meeting our energy needs in the future.
I had relatives in Eastern Washington who lived in below grade housing because it was cooler in the summer and easier to heat in the winter. This was a common sense variation on the geothermal theme before “heat pumps”.
We are on a relatively thin continental mass where Africa has pulled away from North America and stretched the surface.
Add to that the gigantic meteor that hit the DELMARVA peninsula 35million years ago, and we have a rather broken rock access port to the upper mantle.
Assuming nothing bad happens we could literally tap virtually unlimited hot rock not otherwise associated with a volcanic fissure or mantle plume!