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Geothermal growth accompanied by challenges

Geothermal growth accompanied by challenges Karl Gawell (right) in an interview with Stephen Lacey of Renewable Energy World (source: REW)
Alexander Richter 23 Nov 2010

The growth in geothermal development world-wide provides opportunities but also represents challenges as the availability of financing, people and technology will determine how much the industry will be able to grow.

As part of the GRC Opening Session in Sacramento in October, I presented on behalf of Islandsbanki and titled my presentation “preparing for growth”, where I was referring to the paradox of the growth in geothermal development actually representing challenges.

Simply spoke the growth might be hard to fuel, given a potential lack in financing, people and technology.

The slow growth since the 1980s meant that a lot of people left the industry and no new people came along, so a lot of the work force working in geothermal energy development today is reaching retirement age and the younger generations have all be lured into the oil and gas sector. At the same time academic programs are not plenty and efforts need to increase to educate the work force of the future.

The Renewable Energy World provides a nice article based on an interview series that Stephen Lacey did, where he interviewed several players in the industry, among them myself.

Very worth to read. Link to the article

The series of videos can be found here: geothermal interview series at Renewable Energy World.