On the United Downs Industrial Estate in Cornwall, England, Geothermal Engineering Ltd’s proof of concept power plant may be seen. The budding geothermal energy sector in the United Kingdom has accomplished a new milestone after a “proof of concept power station” in Cornwall began producing geothermal steam on Thursday. When water is recovered from a 5.1-kilometer-deep well, steam is produced, which may be used to generate energy. The project at the United Downs Industrial Estate near Redruth, Cornwall, “is on course to generate its first electricity during 2022,” according to Geothermal Engineering Ltd. Cornwall Council, the European Regional Development Fund, and another company named Thrive Renewables all contributed to the GBP30 million ($41.4 million) project. GEL also disclosed that it would be building four additional deep geothermal facilities in Cornwall, a county in the southwest of England, in its statement. It went on to say that these four power plants would generate enough electricity to power 45,000 houses. The facilities will be operational by 2026 if everything goes according to plan. Geothermal energy, referred to as a “important, clean energy resource” by the US Department of Energy, is the process of extracting energy from subsurface heat. Geothermal energy “offers renewable power around the clock and emits little or no greenhouse gases,” according to the DOE. A number of projects concentrating on the development of geothermal energy have taken shape in the United Kingdom over the last few years. In May, for example, planning approval was granted for an initial testing phase of a project aimed at harnessing geothermal energy from abandoned, flooded coal mines in the northeast of England. GEL has been working on the creation of a geothermal swimming pool in the town of Penzance in Cornwall. At the United Downs site, the company is also working on a project with another company, Cornish Lithium, to harvest lithium from geothermal waters. “As we transition from oil and gas and tap into this massive renewable power resource, this is an extraordinarily exciting time for deep geothermal energy in the UK,” Ryan Law, managing director of GEL, said on Thursday. “Our goal is to produce more than 500 MW of power from geothermal resources over the next 20 years,” Law continued. While the geothermal sector in the United Kingdom is still in its infancy, it is more established elsewhere. According to Iceland’s National Energy Authority, geothermal power plants generate 25% of the country’s total electricity./n
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