Geo News1) Interesting news from the Iceland Deep Drilling Project. They wanted to drill 4.5 kilometers but ended up drilling 2 kilometers, when they encountered magma. The magma seeped into the well; instead of ruining the well it produced super-heated steam with 3X the energy content of traditional geothermal wells. If they can replicate this result this might be a way to consistently produce 20MW to 40MW wells. To harness the technology they'd have to install turbines that could withstand the high pressure and temperature of these super-heated wells (a good problem to have!).
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Improved drilling techniques (Potter Drilling is drilling with hot fluid) and interesting techniques (such a drilling into magma) will improve geothermal economics in the coming years. Ram's got the best pipeline and will benefit from all this research funded by other groups.
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2) A major clean energy speech by Obama tonight at Georgetown. After running into criticism about his handling of Libya and other foreign issues, he's turning to clean energy as one focus of his re-election campaign. He calls for 80% of US electricity to be produced by renewable sources by 2035. How to get there? Imposing renewable fuel requirements on electricity providers. A national CES standard, with regions weak in renewables able to buy credits from regions with more renewables.
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Clean energy polls extremely well with US independents. Can't win an election without winning the indies, and the Republicans know that too. Does a national CES pass? Probably not right away, but some version of California's RPS will appear nationally in the next decade. And I'm certain that currently existing incentives for geo won't disappear in 2013, those 30% of capex grants will be extended for years. Geothermal has too many supporters in Washington (Harry Reid of Nevada especially) for that to happen.