Legal Commentary

Geothermal Energy on the Rocks

By Jonathan H. Adler

The NYT reports:

The company in charge of a California project to extract vast amounts of renewable energy from deep, hot bedrock has removed its drill rig and informed federal officials that the government project will be abandoned.

The project by the company, AltaRock Energy, was the Obama administration?s first major test of geothermal energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuels and the project was being financed with federal Department of Energy money at a site about 100 miles north of San Francisco called the Geysers.

But on Friday, the Energy Department said that AltaRock had given notice this week that ?it will not be continuing work at the Geysers? as part of the agency?s geothermal development program.

The project?s apparent collapse comes a day after Swiss government officials permanently shut down a similar project in Basel, because of the damaging earthquakes it produced in 2006 and 2007. Taken together, the two setbacks could change the direction of the Obama administration?s geothermal program, which had raised hopes that the earth?s bedrock could be quickly tapped as a clean and almost limitless energy source.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on December 12, 2009 (boomark / email).