The Future of Geothermal Part 2: The Business Case

In June of this year, the California Public Utilities Commission put out a decision requiring an additional 11,500MW of clean energy capacity to be procured by entities supplying the California grid by 2026. But also stipulated 1,000MW of this has to come from zero-emitting, renewable resources that have at least an 80% capacity factor, or, geothermal. In part 1 of this series we talked about the new technologies enabling geothermal development. In part 2, we'll talk about the business case -- how this regulation has set off a wave of activity in the sector, from incumbent geothermal developers, and those planning to utilize new geothermal generation technologies. Today on the show, we’ve got Paul Thomsen, Vice President of Business Development at Ormat Technologies. He’ll tell us about what’s going on in California and how Ormat and others are responding to this demand.

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Switched On is hosted this week by Mark Taylor.

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