eli5: If we’re all sitting above the magma and heat in Earth’s mantle, what are the barriers to tapping that heat in each municipality to provide local affordable electricity?

Question

eli5: If we’re all sitting above the magma and heat in Earth’s mantle, what are the barriers to tapping that heat in each municipality to provide local affordable electricity?

In: 43

Answer 1

Cost. I don’t know about all these people talking about miles of crust – a coworker of mine installed a geothermal heating system in his house as the primary source of heat. This is in the suburbs of Washington DC, USA.

Frankly, people don’t do this because of the economics of it. Natural gas is way too cheap in most parts of the world. If you want to go green the solar is a more economical avenue than geo thermal in most parts of the world, and more flexible too as solar can heat and light your house.

Edit: didn’t read the question haha. Geo as electric is much more difficult than geo as heating and cooling. Given that the vast majority of energy use in a home is for heating and cooling, making electricity is not as important of a goal