Hamilton: Drill baby, drill – for heat

Do you have family in Alberta? If so, do me a favour. Give them a call and shame them into promoting the development of geothermal power in their province.
Tell them to look at the United States, where over the last two years $338 million (U.S.) in government stimulus spending has lit a small fire under the geothermal industry, which works at tapping into the natural thermal energy of the earth’s interior. In the U.S. in 2011 it will employ 3,000 more people and have up to 700 megawatts of new projects near completion.
Ironically, some of the most active companies behind these U.S. projects are Canadian.
Here in Canada, where a province such as Alberta has a rich but unexploited geothermal resource, we’re still oblivious to the opportunity on our home turf. Nothing is operating. No major projects on the go. No job creation. Heck, we can’t even get updated mapping of the resource, let alone a technology roadmap investors can follow.
“I’d love to find a champion for this,” says Alison Thompson, a vice-president with Vancouver-based geothermal power developer Magma Energy, which is currently developing in the U.S., Iceland and Chile. She’s also the chair of the Canadian Geothermal Association. “At a certain point, somebody needs to rise above the excuses and just do it.”
http://www.thestar.com/business/cleanbreak/article/893121--hamilton-drill-baby-drill-for-heat