this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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I can't find where I read it, but I remember it being something like: if all of humanity consumed the same amount as an energy hungry American and then doubled it while getting all of its power from geothermal then we have almost tapped 1% of the crusts potential, rounding up.
I did some looking around. Looks like I was a factor of 10 off. As in- not 1% but 0.1% and that could be sustained for millions of years
https://www.contrary.com/foundations-and-frontiers/geothermal
https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/geothermal-faqs#%3A%7E%3Atext=4.5+billion+years.-%2CThis+heat+is+continually+replenished+by+the+decay+of+naturally%2Cessentially+inexhaustible+supply+of+energy.
There is also a great pdf over at www.worldenergy.org under their geothermal - world energy council that is a little old but still points out the math on just how immense the energy output of earth is. We could each run our own small AI data center on geothermal power and the earth would still have extra. And we are only talking about tapping into the very top of the crust.
Now add AI technology and crypto mining and anything else we might come up with in the near future.
Americans use those so it's already accounted for.
That's sounds about right.
Earth is big big and we only occupy the tiniest outer layer.
Is that 1% replenished? If not then we would have problems in a short couple decade.
At what % does the crust start to experience cooling? What biological systems could be effected? What about tectonic systems?
Tons of real legitimate questions here.
It does cool down the surrounding rock, which means there's less potential power output the more you try to use it.
But it's also a rock floating on a pool of magma, it warms back up relatively quickly.
I read a proposal a while back for using the Yellowstone magma chamber for geothermal power generation. It's not currently in danger of erupting as a supervolcano, but the paper worked the numbers and showed that it would actually be feasable with realistic engineering to tap enough heat from the magma chamber to literally "defuse" it if it actually came to that. And turn a profit while doing so.