Yellowstone Supervolcano Could Power The Entire Planet Twice Over

Iceland, for example. This beautiful song of ice and fire sits atop an upwelling mantle plume, which means that it is riddled with active volcanoes, and a central rift which is slowly but surely tearing the country apart. The admittedly small nation uses these molten fingers to get 13 percent of its electricity, with the rest coming from hydroelectric power. It’s pretty much 100 percent renewable in this regard.

Then you’ve got Indonesia. One of the world’s most populous and most densely populated countries on Earth, it’s also kickstarting new national projects to get more energy out of the hellish caverns beneath its soil. Indonesia is home to a bewildering array of strange and deadly volcanoes, so it’s no surprise that the government wants to expand its geothermal energy sector by 500 percent by 2025.

Yellowstone National Park's Castle Geyser. (Shutterstock)

If it manages to do this, it would generate around 7,200 megawatts of electricity this way per year, making it the planet’s primary producer of this clean energy source. Right now, the country’s 250 million people get 88 percent of their electricity from fossil fuels, which makes it a major greenhouse gas producer. If the geothermal initiative works, this would not just benefit the nation, but the planet.

So how much geothermal energy would you need, hypothetically speaking, to power, say, half the planet? If we imagine a rather lovely future in which climate change nightmares were averted because the world invested heavily in wind, solar, hydroelectric and nuclear power – enough that 50 percent of the electricity generated comes from those four sources – could we get the other 50 percent from volcanic heat?

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world in 2012 used around 21 petawatt-hours of electricity. A quick explainer: a watt is a measure of power, and it’s measured in units of energy (joules) per second. A megawatt is a million watts, and a petawatt is a quadrillion (10¹⁵) watts. A petawatt-hour, then, is how many quadrillions of watts have been consumed in an hour.

I hate this unit, and mush prefer joules. One joule is equal to one apple from a tree to the ground – much easier to visualize. So in this sense, in 2012, the world consumed 75.2 quintillion joules (10¹⁸). This may sound like a lot, but nature is far more powerful than we often give it credit.

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Geothermal energy is definitely an underrated resource. Fair enough, not every country in the world has access to it, because not every single country sits atop a magma chamber that can be tapped for thermal juice, so to speak. Nevertheless, those that have really seem to take advantage of it.

Take Iceland, for example. This beautiful song of ice and fire sits atop an upwelling mantle plume, which means that it is riddled with active volcanoes, and a central rift which is slowly but surely tearing the country apart. The admittedly small nation uses these molten fingers to get 13 percent of its electricity, with the rest coming from hydroelectric power. It’s pretty much 100 percent renewable in this regard.

Then you’ve got Indonesia. One of the world’s most populous and most densely populated countries on Earth, it’s also kickstarting new national projects to get more energy out of the hellish caverns beneath its soil. Indonesia is home to a bewildering array of strange and deadly volcanoes, so it’s no surprise that the government wants to expand its geothermal energy sector by 500 percent by 2025.

Yellowstone National Park's Castle Geyser. (Shutterstock)

If it manages to do this, it would generate around 7,200 megawatts of electricity this way per year, making it the planet’s primary producer of this clean energy source. Right now, the country’s 250 million people get 88 percent of their electricity from fossil fuels, which makes it a major greenhouse gas producer. If the geothermal initiative works, this would not just benefit the nation, but the planet.

So how much geothermal energy would you need, hypothetically speaking, to power, say, half the planet? If we imagine a rather lovely future in which climate change nightmares were averted because the world invested heavily in wind, solar, hydroelectric and nuclear power – enough that 50 percent of the electricity generated comes from those four sources – could we get the other 50 percent from volcanic heat?

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world in 2012 used around 21 petawatt-hours of electricity. A quick explainer: a watt is a measure of power, and it’s measured in units of energy (joules) per second. A megawatt is a million watts, and a petawatt is a quadrillion (10¹⁵) watts. A petawatt-hour, then, is how many quadrillions of watts have been consumed in an hour.

I hate this unit, and mush prefer joules. One joule is equal to one apple from a tree to the ground – much easier to visualize. So in this sense, in 2012, the world consumed 75.2 quintillion joules (10¹⁸). This may sound like a lot, but nature is far more powerful than we often give it credit.

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