Heat from deep down under: Alaska may soon see oil reliance replaced by earth's geothermal power.

• Author: West, Gail
• Position: ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

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Sitting atop the Pacific's Ring of Fire, Anchorage should have plenty of geothermal energy to supplement or replace our reliance on oil. And we're about to find out just that.

In mid-September 2008, the State of Alaska Division of Oil and Gas offered 36,057 acres in 16 tracts of land on the southern flank of Mount Spun in a geothermal lease sale--all 16 were sold. Fifteen of those tracts went to a Reno, Nev., company, Ormat Technologies Inc., and one was purchased by a Utah resident, Chad Attermann. Ormat outbid Iceland America on 15 of the tracts, and the State reaped more than $3.5 million in bonus bids from the entire lease sale. In addition to the bonus bids, the state will collect a $3-per-acre rental on the 10-year lease, and 10 percent royalty of the gross revenues derived from the production, sale or use of geothermal resources under the lease. The lease also can be extended for the duration of commercial production.

"We believe there's a huge geothermal resource there," said Paul Thomsen, Ormat's director for policy and business development. "We've been looking at the Mount Spun area since 2006. Now, with the volatility of oil and gas prices, and concern for the environment, geothermal energy is becoming much more attractive--even in Alaska."

What is geothermal energy? It's heat energy created from the earth that becomes hotter from the surface down through the crust, mantle and core. Four thousand feet below us, this heat can reach more than 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit at its center, according to volcanologist and geologist Christopher Nye, with the State Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

"Most of the earth is thick and viscous, and is stirred by thermal and tectonic forces. Uncommon geologic features, such as active volcanoes and tectonic stretching and thinning of the crust heralds unusually high heat concentrations very near the surface associated with upwelling magma or mantle," Nye said. "If groundwater is available to be heated in these areas of shallow heat concentration, then geothermal reservoirs can be formed. Such reservoirs are sparsely distributed and generally marked by surface manifestations, such as hot springs."

GEOTHERMAL ACTION

Sometimes, geothermal energy rises to the surface in pools and is used for bathing. Chena Hot Springs near Fairbanks is such a site. In 2006, Chena Hot Springs installed equipment from United Technologies Corp., built a...