MIT centers, laboratories, departments and programs provide a multi-faceted approach to solving the world's energy challenge.
Geothermal
Geothermal energy captures the heat of the earth and uses it to produce electricity and to heat and cool homes and buildings. While conventional geothermal energy must rely on proximity to active, high-grade hydrothermal systems relatively close to the surface, advances in drilling and exploration technologies over the past two decades have created a new and significant opportunity: engineered artificial systems that can emulate the characteristics of the world's best hydrothermal reservoirs and enable "heat mining" by circulating water through fractured hot rock in deep geologic formations.
Such geothermal energy systems have the potential to contribute enormous quantities of clean, carbon-free energy that can be used when needed to provide continuous baseload power or to meet occasional peaks in electricity demand. A program of geothermal resource characterization, focused research and commercial-scale demonstrations could mean large-scale geothermal power generation within the next 10 to 15 years.
