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

In most places that people have congregated the crust is many miles thick. The thinnest parts are usually in the middle of the ocean.

Geothermal energy is heavily relied upon in places like Iceland where magma chambers have crept up close to the surface, but somewhere like Nebraska in the center of a continental plate would require tens of thousands of feet of drilling and enormous pumping systems to move water that far up and down.