How rural southwest Utah is proving the potential of renewable geothermal energy
There’s a new hotspot in the world of geothermal energy: a seemingly sleepy valley in Beaver County. Its secret? The valley sits on top of bedrock that reaches temperatures up to 465 degrees Fahrenheit. Joseph Moore, who manages the Utah FORGE research project, pointed across a dirt parking lot to a well being drilled at the University of Utah’s subterranean lab. … The mission of the FORGE project — which stands for Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy — isn’t to produce its own electricity. It’s to test tools and techniques through trial and error and, in the process, answer a big question: Can you pipe cool water through cracks in hot underground rock and create a geothermal plant almost anywhere?