Book a live interview
To book a live or taped interview with David Blackwell in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
View on Google Earth
To explore the new Enhanced Geothermal Systems maps built on SMU’s research via Google Earth, download the latest version of Google Earth and then download and open the file at http://www.google.org/egs/downloads/EGSPotential.kmz.
Related links
- Science: ““West Virginia is a Geothermal Hot Spot“
- SMU Research News: Earth’s inner heat can generate electric power
- Google.org’s RE<C initiative
- SMU Geothermal Energy Utilization Conference
- SECO: Texas Geothermal Energy
- Google invests in SMU geothermal research
- CBN News: Geothermal energy right under our feet
- SMU geothermal home
- SMU Geothermal Laboratory
- David Blackwell
- Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences
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The Daily Mail has covered the geothermal energy research of SMU Hamilton Professor of Geophysics David Blackwell, Maria Richards and the SMU Geothermal Laboratory.
Blackwell and Richards, the Geothermal Lab coordinator, released a new map earlier this week that documents significant geothermal resources across the United States capable of producing more than three million megawatts of green power — 10 times the installed capacity of coal power plants today.
Funded with a grant from Google.org, sophisticated mapping produced from the research demonstrates that vast reserves of this green, renewable source of power generated from the Earth’s heat are realistically accessible using current technology.
The results of the new research confirm and refine locations for resources capable of supporting large-scale commercial geothermal energy production under a wide range of geologic conditions, including significant areas in the eastern two-thirds of the United States.
EXCERPT:
By LUCY BUCKLAND
Daily Mail
America could be standing on the most powerful renewable energy resource, which can be tapped into with existing technology — new research has revealed.Buried deep below the surface scientists have discovered hot rocks across the U.S., which could provide up to 10 times the amount of energy given out by existing power plants.
Although this energy, called geothermal, is already generated in western U.S., it had previously been thought the eastern part of the county didn’t have any hot rocks below the surface.
But researchers at Southern Methodist University, with funding from Google.org, have found huge potential to accessing this energy including ‘significant portions of the eastern two-thirds of the U.S.’ -website msnbc.com reports.
Researchers also say this unique energy resource can be accessed with existing technology.
On the university’s webiste it states areas of particular geothermal interest include Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, South Dakota, and the areas in northern Illinois and northern Louisiana.
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