DALDRUP+SOEHNE AG - Fulminantes Börsendebüt (Seite 219)

[Shortsseller]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 35.969.569 von Haettsch am 16.11.08 19:31:14

Dein Wort in des Herrn Gehörgänge.

[Haettsch]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 35.956.987 von Shortsseller am 15.11.08 12:57:15

Oh, da könnten dunkle Wolken auf unseren Sonnenschein zukommen:

Gebohrt wurde von einer österreichische Firma.
Wer Schuld hat, klärt das Freiburger Landgericht.

Der Fall verdeutlicht, dass Geothermie außerordentliches bohrtechnisches Know-how benötigt.
Daldrup&Söhne genießt diesbezüglich zweifellos beste Referenzen.

[Shortsseller]

Oh, da könnten dunkle Wolken auf unseren Sonnenschein zukommen:


http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,589944,00.ht…

NACH ERDWÄRME-BOHRUNG
Eine Stadt zerreißt

Von Jens Lubbadeh

Vorbildlich ins Desaster: Mit Erdwärme wollte man das Rathaus im südbadischen Staufen heizen. Doch kurz nach den Bohrungen begann der Horror. Überall in der Stadt taten sich tiefe Risse auf. Keiner weiß, was noch kommt - und wer eigentlich Schuld an der Sache hat.

Staufen im Breisgau. Eine kleine beschauliche Stadt am Fuße des Schwarzwalds. 7800 Menschen leben hier, wo die Welt noch in Ordnung ist. Genauer gesagt: Wo die Welt noch in Ordnung war. Denn im Herbst vergangenen Jahres begann das Unheil über die Stadt zu kommen …

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Foto: AP
Video: SPIEGEL TV
Es fing mit einer eigentlich löblichen Idee an. Man wollte das historische Rathaus mit klimafreundlicher Erdwärme beheizen. Eine österreichische Firma wurde engagiert, sieben Sonden wurden in den Grund unter dem Rathaus getrieben, 140 Meter tief.

Kurz danach zeigten sich erste Risse in dem historischen Gebäude. Noch war man nicht wirklich beunruhigt. Noch sprach Bürgermeister Michael Benitz von "kosmetischen Schäden". "Am Anfang waren es noch Bewegungen im Millimeter-Bereich", erzählt er. Doch dabei blieb es nicht: Aus Millimetern wurden Zentimeter und aus den kosmetischen Schäden eine Katastrophe. Dieses Wort jedenfalls benutzt Bürgermeister Benitz, wenn er über die unheimlichen Vorgänge in seiner Stadt spricht.

STAUFEN: STADT GEHT HOCH

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Fotostrecke starten: Klicken Sie auf ein Bild (8 Bilder)

Die Risse im Rathaus begannen zu wachsen, auf andere Häuser überzugreifen, immer länger und immer tiefer zu werden. Wie ein Monster aus der Tiefe fressen sie sich durch die gesamte Stadt. Nach nur einem Jahr sind mehr als hundert Häuser von Rissen durchzogen. Und sie sind mitunter so tief, dass man schon hineingreifen kann.

Unter Staufen brodelt etwas. Die gesamte Stadt hat sich angehoben. Und das in Dimensionen, die für geologische Verhältnisse enorm sind. Es geht um mehrere Zentimeter pro Monat.

Was geht da vor sich?

Geologen wurden zu Rate gezogen. Sie sollten klären, ob - und wenn ja wie - die rätselhaften Risse durch die Bohrungen verursacht wurden. Wissenschaftler von der TU Darmstadt haben eine Theorie. Ingo Sass, Ingenieurgeologe an der TU Darmstadt und Experte für Geothermie-Bohrungen, vermutet im Gespräch mit SPIEGEL ONLINE, dass folgendes passiert ist: "Man hat am Rathaus losgebohrt, durchstieß die Gips-Keuper-Schicht und stieß darunter auf den Grundwasserleiter, in dem Wasser unter hohem Druck steht."

Keuper ist ein Anhydrit, ein Kalziumsulfat. Kommt es mit Wasser in Kontakt, entsteht Gips. Und der dehnt sich aus. Als die Grundwasserschicht unter dem Keuper angebohrt wurde, schoss das Wasser wie bei einem Geysir durch die Bohrung hoch und kam mit dem Anhydrit in Kontakt. Dadurch kam die chemische Reaktion in Gang. Bis zu 60 Prozent kann das Gestein im Untergrund bei diesem Prozess an Volumen zunehmen.

Anwohner und Gastronomen sind verzweifelt. Letztere geben ihr Bestes, den unheimlichen Anblick vor den Touristen zu verbergen - was schwerfällt, denn vom Gastraum bis zur Toilette zieht sich die Zerstörung. Am schlimmsten steht es um das Rathaus. Statiker prüfen derzeit, wie sicher es überhaupt noch ist, das Gebäude zu betreten.

Aus dem Naturspektakel ist ein Justizspektakel geworden

Was tun? Eine Sanierung zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt erscheint sinnlos, denn es heißt, dass die Anhebung noch weitergehen wird. Um bis zu zwei Meter, so erzählt eine Anwohnerin. Da erscheint die Option Haus abzureißen, abwarten und neu aufbauen noch am sinnvollsten.

Sass bestätigt: "Das kann noch Jahre so weitergehen - je nachdem wie schnell sich das Wasser in der Keuper-Schicht bewegt." Er befürchtet gar, dass das Schlimmste noch bevorsteht: Die Gipsschicht könnte sich im Wasser teilweise wieder auflösen, Hohlräume würden unter der Stadt entstehen. "Ich kann nicht ausschließen, dass Gefahr im Verzug ist." Denn dann könnte es mitten im Stadtgebiet zu unerwarteten Einstürzen kommen. "Es muss dringend etwas getan werden", sagt Sass. "Der Wasserzutritt in den Gips-Keuper muss unterbunden werden." Aber das wird kosten.

IHRE MEINUNG IST GEFRAGT

Diskutieren Sie über diesen Artikel
Doch wer zahlt? Sind wirklich die Erdwärme-Bohrungen der Grund für die ganze Misere? Hat der Bauingenieur schlecht geplant, die Bohrfirma unsauber gearbeitet? Muss die Stadt - der Bauherr - für die Schäden haften? Solange die Schuldfrage nicht geklärt ist, zahlen die Versicherer nicht, gibt es keinen Schadensersatz. Aus dem Naturspektakel ist mittlerweile ein Justizspektakel geworden. Ein Gutachten wurde bereits in Auftrag gegeben, um Klarheit zu bringen.

Geotechniker der Stuttgarter Materialprüfungsanstalt maßen Temperaturprofile in den Bohrlöchern und ermittelten die Vertikalbewegungen an 30 Messpunkten in der Innenstadt. Am Ende gab es dennoch keine Klarheit: Die Bohrungen könnten schuld an allem sein. Oder auch nicht, denn auch natürliche Ursachen sind denkbar.

"Staufen ist tektonisch aktives Gebiet"

"Staufen ist tektonisch aktives Gebiet", sagt Sass. "Natürlich ist es möglich, dass Schollen sich tektonisch aneinander bewegen, wodurch sich die Wasserwege geändert haben könnten und so die Quellreaktion in Gang kam." Nur: Sehr wahrscheinlich ist das seiner Meinung nach jedoch nicht.

Die zeitliche Übereinstimmung der Vorgänge mit den Bohrungen ist jedoch ein starkes Indiz, das gegen natürliche Ursachen spricht. Wieso ausgerechnet jetzt diese seltsame Anhebung, so kurz nach den Bohrungen? Viele Anwohner glauben nicht an theoretisch mögliche natürliche geologische Verschiebungen.

MEHR ÜBER...
Erdwärme Geothermie- Bohrung Staufen Oberrheingraben Schwarzwald Keuper Anhydrit Gips
zu SPIEGEL WISSEN
Das Risiko einer Bohrung war jedenfalls bekannt. Vor Bohrbeginn muss eine Einzelfallprüfung stattgefunden haben. Denn für die Genehmigung einer Geothermie-Bohrung machen Behörden strenge Auflagen. Im " Leitfaden für die Nutzung von Erdwärme mit Erdwärmesonden" des Landesamts für Geologie, Rohstoffe und Bergbau wird nach Risikozonen beurteilt. Und dort heißt es auf Seite 15: Bei "Gebieten mit ungeklärten und räumlich eng wechselnden Untergrundverhältnissen - hierzu zählen die Randschollen zwischen Oberrheingraben und Schwarzwald mit unterschiedlichen Schichtfolgen und Gesteinen im Untergrund" seien Erdwärmesonden nur nach Einzelfallprüfung möglich. Zudem sei laut Sass anhand geologischer Karten vorher bekannt gewesen, dass eine Keuper-Schicht unter Staufen lag.

So geht das Schauspiel in Staufen zunächst weiter. Die Schäden haben bereits jetzt schon einen zweistelligen Millionenbetrag verschlungen, die Gutachten immerhin einen fünfstelligen.

Wer schuld an all dem hat, ist noch nicht klar. Klar aber ist: Den Grund unter Staufen wieder sicher zu bekommen, wird teuer. Sehr teuer.

[revo1211]

The Power Of Geothermal Energy
FN Arena News - November 13 2008

One minute the price of oil is going to US$200/bbl according to the pundits, the next it is going to US$50/bbl. One minute the Chinese economy is a perpetual motion machine, the next it is as vulnerable as any other. One minute it is imperative that Big Industry pay the cost of reducing carbon emissions, the next it is imperative to provide assistance for Big Industry's mere survival. One minute the alternative energy sector is the investment of the future, the next it is left stranded at the altar. The fight to prevent climate change? It will have to wait. Keeping jobs at General Motors is more important.

Such is a short, sharp synopsis of about six months in the history of the world.

One by one the effects of the global credit crisis have rolled through each asset class, finally hitting commodities as speculative money rushed back into cash. The world is now teetering on the brink of economic recession and forecast demand for commodities has been slashed. The swiftness of the turnaround has been dramatic. Caught in the deluge have been alternative energy companies - themselves previously in somewhat of a speculative bubble. Alternative energy is more expensive than traditional carbon-based energy. The only way alternative energy sources can be developed and improved is through mandated assistance in the form of penalties imposed on greenhouse gas producing Big Industry. This is the basis of a global "cap and trade" carbon market which is the preferred vehicle for indirectly enforced emission reduction.

When climate change was still arguably the world's most pressing problem, augmented by the rapidly rising cost of oil and coal, Big Industry was set for a battle for government concessions on the inevitable move towards carbon trading in developed markets. Behind the scenes, Big Industry has long been in preparation for such an event. At least, the smart companies therein have. General Motors is not included in that group. But now the global economic crisis is the perfect smokescreen inside which to argue the folly of pressing ahead with costly emission reduction targets when mere commercial survival is imperative. Think of the profits. Think of the jobs.

When Kevin Rudd took over power in Australia the first thing he did was ratify the Kyoto Protocol. John Howard never would. The next step in the Labor government's environmental mission was to suggest a starting template for a national carbon trading scheme and put it up for comment, negotiation and tweaking. When the self-interested lobbying began from all sides, no one was surprised. Big Industry wailed in the night, crying poor over lost profits and Australia's inevitable loss of industry - and jobs - to less carbon-stringent markets. You could have bought the script at a second hand bookstore.

Until November the US administration was never going to ratify the Kyoto Protocol either. George Bush was an oil man, and the best the US could come up with were ill-thought out assistance schemes for alternative energy such as the ethanol debacle, and a plan to drill for more oil farther afield so as not to be so reliant on enemies as a source. But both candidates for the new presidency included policies to address climate change in their campaigns, and the most convincing won. Obama and the Democrats will likely attack the problem in a similar vein to the Rudd government. However both administrations have to make a difficult choice between future needs and immediate needs.

Is it really the right time to be imposing a further cost on Big Industry?

The short answer is: Of course - if climate change predictions are correct. And one does not need to drive home the economically destructive capacity of US$200 oil, even if it may now take a long time to reach such a price. The Europeans are already moving towards Phase III of their emission reduction and carbon trading scheme. The Chinese have woken up to the ramifications of environmental destruction for the sake of rapid economic growth. The two biggest barriers to a global carbon trading scheme - Australia and the US - are now on side. We won't get a global carbon trading scheme tomorrow, and the wheels will now turn even slower as industry assistance packages move in alongside industry penalties, but if one needs to reassess the direction of the alternative energy market in light of the global economic crisis one need only look to the recent activities of Big Industry itself: Why are the oil and gas companies of the world still paying stiff premiums to access Australia's coal seam methane reserves?

The world's big oil and gas companies have lived through several economic cycles over decades of existence. Had they implemented knee-jerk responses to every turn in the cycle, every price movement, every period of economic growth and period of economic contraction as if there were no end in sight, they would not be today's big oil and gas companies. British gas giant BG set the Australian gas market on fire earlier this year in bidding for Origin Energy. Months later the gas sector has been extensively re-rated as an investment, the value of liquid natural gas reserves has been identified, and the previously ignored value of coal seam methane as a source of natural gas has been established. The big companies are not investing for 2009 and a time of economic recession and low energy demand. They are investing for a future where oil is scarce, coal is expensive, and global carbon trading ensures that cleaner forms of energy are an essential part of everyday life.

The biggest global polluter is the power industry - the producers of electricity. The cheapest from of electricity available is that produced from burning coal. Unlike oil, coal is unquestionably abundant. The only barrier to massive coal production is the infrastructure required to mine it and transport it across the globe. But coal-burning power stations are on the hit-list as the first to go in a global emission reduction plan. The days of the indiscriminate construction of ever more coal-burning power stations are gone. However the world's demand for power will only increase exponentially as the most populous nations on earth urbanise and industrialise. Economic cycles only serve to ensure that process is not smoothly linear. Despite current economic weakness, the world must still move towards cleaner forms of energy and renewable forms of energy.

When one thinks of "cleaner" energy, one thinks of natural gas over heavy oil, nuclear energy, and "clean coal". The natural gas industry is already ramping up. While the price of uranium today might suggest the nuclear push of two years ago is now dead in the water, that is just a smokescreen created by the bursting of a speculative bubble in uranium trading. Those countries accepting of nuclear power are still pushing slowly ahead. As for "clean coal", to date the concept is still up there with cold fusion. There has been much talk, much government research money invested, but so far no one has been able to turn lead into gold.

One sideline to "clean coal" is coal-to-liquid conversion, and in Australia the flagship of this process - Linc Energy - has seen its share price rocket up from nothing over the last two years. Linc is successfully converting coal to gas underground - thus containing emissions - and then converting that gas to a form of diesel much cleaner than its crude oil-based counterpart. The company has successfully built a prototype plant and the world is watching.

When one thinks of "renewable energy", one immediately thinks solar and wind. These two industries have been the forerunners in a speculative bubble that formed in the alternative energy sector right up until the oil price tipped over and the coal price peaked. While each offer power delivered purely by nature in an unending source, neither can produce necessary "baseload" power - the sort of reliable power source required to continuously power a city. Enough solar panels and wind farms together could produce baseload power, but the cost is prohibitive. It is one thing to decree that no more coal-fired plants can be built. It is another to expect consumers and industry to pay a large premium for clean power.

To solar and wind, one can also add hydro, biofuels, tidal and a myriad of other prospective renewable energy sources. The barrier to the development and efficiency improvement of all sources is simple cost. Such sources cannot compete with coal in a world where emissions are disregarded. The only way they can compete with coal in today's world is with mandated indirect government assistance through schemes such as carbon "cap and trade". The world needs to ease itself away from the profligate consumption of fossil fuels, and while the economic crisis will likely slow the process despite ever more urgent protest from the scientific community, the process itself will continue. The governments of the world know this has to be done. And Big Industry is already moving in that direction, working towards a future beyond simple economic cycles.

Thus despite stock market fluctuations, alternative and renewable energy industries are not dead. However, more than ever potential alternatives must offer the sort of commercial efficiencies required in the drawn-out process of supplementing existing baseload power. Most renewable energy sources come with drawbacks - the sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't always blow, it doesn't always rain and as for biofuels - we have now experienced the folly of taking food from the mouths of babes.

There is one renewable source which is nevertheless more reliable than others. It is geothermal energy. While the sun may not always shine it will always rise again tomorrow. Just as reliable is the fact that deep beneath the earth's surface lies the greatest perpetual (at least for a few billion years yet) energy source of all - the planet's own furnace. And as the citizens of Pompeii once found out to their detriment, in parts of the world the earth's furnace reaches very close to the surface.

The principal of geothermal energy is simple. Water pumped below the earth's surface and back again will return hot - very hot. And heat is energy, and that energy can be converted into electricity. And that energy does not deplete.

The most obvious places on earth at which to tap geothermal energy are near existing volcanoes, which themselves exist at the meeting of continental plates. Here the superheated molten magma of the earth's furnace is reachable rather close to the surface. Water passed into or near magma and out again is heated to very high temperatures and thus allows for power generation. The bulk of the world's existing geothermal energy industry is located at such sites, in places such as Iceland, California, Chile, Japan, the Philippines and New Zealand. While this is a boon for those living on the fault lines, it's not a lot of help to those living more safely inside the continental plates. Were volcanoes to provide the world's only source of geothermal energy, then it would be a very small industry indeed.

However, one need not tap directly into magma to achieve superheating. The deeper one drills into the earth's crust, the hotter the rock layers become, trapping heat from the magma further below. Thus it is possible to source geothermal energy from "hot rocks". Granite is a great heat sink, and hot granite close to the surface is fractured allowing for a water reservoir and flow system to be created within the rock and geothermal energy thus sourced. This is known as "hot fractured rock" energy and the granite will often also exhibit an element of (safe) radioactive decay which adds to the energy source.

The easiest rock to drill into nevertheless is your simple sedimentary rock - rock that is formed by the erosion of older rocks into a form of compressed sand. It is within the porous confines of sedimentary rock that decaying vegetation was once trapped and heavily compressed, thus forming today's fossil fuels.

Sedimentary rock thus provides two major advantages for geothermal energy production over volcanic rock (not counting the danger factor inherent in volcanoes) and granite. Firstly, ever since electricity and the combustion engine were invented prospectors have scoured the world's sedimentary deposits for reserves of fossil fuels. There are not many rocks left that haven't been drilled, assessed, mapped and - if fortunate - exploited. For those looking for a prospective site for a sedimentary geothermal energy plant, all the time-consuming and costly grunt-work has already been done.

Secondly, as sedimentary rock is porous it also traps water. Hence in order to harness the energy from hot sedimentary rock one does not need to bring in one's own water for the circuit - it's already there. Simply bring the hot water to the surface, extract the heat, and send the cool water back down to start again. Such a system is as close to a perpetual motion machine as one can invent. And there are no inputs.

The downside of geothermal energy is, however, that the farther below the earth's surface the hot rocks are, the more heat will be lost on the trip to the surface. Thus in order to compete with the heat generated by coal burnt at the surface, the hot rock must be close. Sedimentary rock does not retain heat as well as other rocks, and so this element becomes more critical. Another problem - one which rather spoils the perpetual motion machine concept - is that water brought from below the surface is highly corrosive. Those pipes will not last forever.

The trick in sedimentary geothermal, therefore, is to find a sedimentary basin in which the magma below is close enough to ensure the least drill depths and the greatest heat retention. We already know where those are because years of fossil fuel exploration has already identified them. The most suitable are the Salton Sea in California, the Paris Basin in France, the Molasse Basin in Germany, and the Otway and Great Artesian Basins in Australia. The latter is one of the largest sedimentary basins on earth, and home to Australia's one and only operating geothermal plant at Birdsville. The Californian and French basins currently provide local power, but the global centre of geothermal development is in Germany.

The reason the Molasse basin is the world's geothermal "hotspot" is because of the German government's enthusiastic support of renewable energy. Germany is Europe's industrial engine, yet the country is largely devoid of its own fossil fuel sources. One may recall that one reason Hitler lost the War is because he ran out of petrol, and had to stretch his resources far and wide in an attempt to secure a source. It also means the Germans have spent plenty of time looking for oil, and thus know the Molasse Basin back to front. It may not hold commercial oil reserves, but it is an ideal source of geothermal energy. And the German government is right behind it.

The Australian government is similarly enthusiastic about renewable energy, and it so happens the Otway Basin in Victoria is a strikingly similar sedimentary system to Molasse. Otway has also been extensively drilled to date being, as it is, a globally significant source of natural gas.

Yet despite all the excitement, one unavoidable fact remains. While geothermal energy sounds like a simple source of abundant energy, it is still costlier to generate electricity using the earth's own power source than it is to dig up coal and burn it. Without government incentive, the geothermal industry would never get off the ground - or under it.

Which brings us back to the idea of carbon trading. The principle of carbon trading is to put a cost on greenhouse gas emission by limiting the amount of greenhouse gases - or carbon equivalent - an industry can generate, via government mandate. Faced with such limits, a carbon emitting industry can either (a) reduce production full stop; (b) reduce emissions through production efficiencies; or (c) offset emissions by the generation or acquisition of "carbon credits". Carbon credits are created by investing in either emission reduction, zero emission or negative emission. Natural gas (cleaner than oil or coal) would fall into the first category, renewable energy such as solar, wind or geothermal into the second, and "carbon sinks" such as purpose-planted forests into the third.

Under the system, an aluminium smelter (the greatest industrial consumer of electricity), for example, could buy carbon credits from the market to achieve emission reduction on a net basis, rather than actually reducing emissions itself. The value of the carbon credit will be determined by just how stringent government emission reduction targets are, and the money generated from carbon credits will ensure that the costs of alternative energy sources are brought into line with existing sources. Carbon credits make alternative energy commercially viable.

But the carbon credit system is not the only government-mandated emission reduction model. Another is the "feed-in tariff". A carbon credit system will only work if the resultant credits are sufficiently valued by the market. Get the system wrong and their value collapses. Such price collapses have been experienced in Europe and more recently in New South Wales. It is not easy to turn a hundred years of industry around on a dime with the perfect model. A tariff is a more straightforward charge placed on industry.

The way a feed-in tariff works is that the government dictates that an energy consumer must buy a proportion of its required energy from an alternative (clean) source and pay a premium for it. Alternative energy already costs more, so the ongoing development of alternative energy sources requires that such tariffs are set at a premium to that already higher cost. While this is an indirect way of ensuring the big polluters are the ones who pay for alternative energy development and greenhouse emission reduction, it is a more direct model than carbon credits, which are susceptible to the vagaries of the marketplace.

The German government is a staunch supporter and enforcer of feed-in tariffs via its Renewable Energies Law (EEG). This law ensures that energy from renewable sources is set at a price equivalent to seven times the current cost of wholesale electricity in Australia and local wholesale consumers must buy a proportion of it. The law has already inspired significant investment in solar and wind power in Germany, and geothermal is now catching up. Feed-in tariffs do not replace carbon credits, they merely compliment them. Mandatory renewable energy targets are part of the broad intention of emission reduction of which carbon trading schemes are also a part.

And such is the case in Australia, which has plans for both an Emission Trading Scheme and a Mandatory Renewable Energy Target on the table. The ETS is slated to commence in 2010 and the MRET has been so far set at 20% by 2020 for industry. The MRET will operate on feed-in tariffs, with the first already under wobbly operation at a household level in the form of premiums paid for household excess solar energy fed back into the grid.

Australia has great potential as a geothermal energy generator. While geothermal energy will not need to rely on a specific level of carbon credit pricing to be commercial, it will rely on the receipt of feed-in tariffs. While the Australian government is no doubt in for a staunch battle before its final carbon reduction laws are set, its intent is still clear. The government is determined to push forward despite the global economic crisis.

[mintelo]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 35.857.047 von zeitklau am 06.11.08 18:05:46

Was willst du uns zeigen?

So bringt der Link gar nichts.

[zeitklau]

http://aktien.onvista.de/empfehlungen.html?ID_OSI=12365189

[revo1211]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 32.646.322 von KulaShaker am 03.12.07 14:07:59

Utilities putting new energy into geothermal sources

November 3, 2008

Reporting from Reno -- Not far from the blinking casinos of this gambler's paradise lies what could be called the Biggest Little Power Plant in the World.

Tucked into a few dusty acres across from a shopping mall, it uses steam heat from deep within the Earth's crust to generate electricity. Known as geothermal, the energy is clean, reliable and so abundant that this facility produces more than enough electricity to power every home in Reno, population 221,000. "There's no smoke. Very little noise," said Paul Thomsen, director of policy and business management for Ormat Technologies Inc., which owns the operation. "People don't even know it's here."

Geothermal energy may be the most prolific renewable fuel source that most people have never heard of. Although the supply is virtually limitless, the massive upfront costs required to extract it have long rendered geothermal a novelty. But that's changing fast as this old-line industry buzzes with activity after decades of stagnation.

Billionaire Warren E. Buffett has invested big. Internet giant Google Inc. is bankrolling advanced research. Entrepreneurs are paying record prices for drilling leases in places such as Nevada, where they're prospecting for heat instead of metals.

"This is the new gold rush," said Mark Taylor, a geothermal analyst with the consulting firm New Energy Finance in Washington. He credits high fossil fuel prices and concerns about global warming with jump-starting the U.S. industry, along with federal tax credits and state laws mandating the wider use of renewable energy.

Global investment in geothermal was around $3 billion last year, Taylor said. Although that's a blip compared with the estimated $116 billion funneled into wind and solar, it's still a 183% increase over investment in 2006. In a difficult year for alternative energy funding, the industry snagged $600 million through the first six months of 2008, Taylor said.A lot of that new investment is in the United States, the world's leader in geothermal energy. More than 80% of the country's 3,000 geothermal megawatts lies in California. The Geysers, a network of 22 geothermal plants about 75 miles north of San Francisco in the Mayacamas Mountains, is the largest geothermal complex on the planet. Calpine Corp. owns the largest part of it.

The area around the Salton Sea in Imperial County is another hot spot. CalEnergy Generation, a subsidiary of Buffett's Mid-American Energy Holdings, owns and operates 10 plants there. It plans three additional facilities in the next few years, CalEnergy President Steve Larsen said.

In October, the Bureau of Land Management said it planned to open more than 190 million acres of federal land in California and 11 other Western states for new geothermal development.

Nevada, the nation's No. 2 geothermal producer, has 45 new projects underway, said Lisa Shevenell, director of the Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy at the University of Nevada in Reno. An August lease sale of Nevada lands by the federal bureau brought in a record $28.2 million.

"I've been at this 25 years, and I've never seen anything like it," said Shevenell, a research hydrologist. "Money is falling out of the sky."

Geothermal has been harnessed for industry since at least the 1820s. Operators tap natural reservoirs of scalding water and steam trapped thousands of feet underground, drilling wells to bring the heat to the surface to power turbines that feed electricity generators.

Costing about 4 to 7 cents a kilowatt-hour, Taylor said, geothermal is competitive with wind power and significantly cheaper than solar. Geothermal facilities occupy a fraction of the space required by wind and solar farms. The energy is also more reliable. Plants crank electricity around the clock, irrespective of whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

This so-called baseload generation is coveted by power companies, which are under pressure to boost their use of green energy. California utilities must generate 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Nevada utilities must hit that target by 2015. Geothermal is a cornerstone of that effort, accounting for about two-thirds of the renewable portfolio of NV Energy, Nevada's biggest utility.

"It's a 24/7 predictable supply," said Thomas Fair, the company's head of renewable energy. "That means a lot to a utility."

Greenhouse gas emissions are minimal in geothermal operations, and the size of the fuel supply defies imagination. There is 50,000 times more heat energy contained in the first six miles of the Earth's crust than in all the planet's oil and natural gas resources, according to the environmental organization Earth Policy Institute.

The challenge is extracting it. Geothermal energy production requires three things: heat from the Earth's core, fractured rock to make it easy to get to and water to transport the heat to the surface.

Traditionally, developers have sought out pockets of hot water and steam hidden underground. Prime areas lie along continental plate boundaries, which is why California is such a hotbed.

Still, these reservoirs can be tricky to pinpoint. They're also expensive to reach. A geothermal well can cost $5 million or more. The result: The U.S. currently derives less than 0.5% of its electricity from geothermal.

Some say the key to harnessing this energy source on a massive scale lies with a technology known as enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS for short. The idea is to engineer the necessary conditions by pumping water into the Earth's crust and fracturing the hot rocks below. Heat from the Earth warms the water, whose resulting steam is channeled back to the surface, powering turbines to create electricity. The water is then pumped back underground.

Though still in its infancy, EGS has the potential to open up much of the planet to geothermal development. Tiny plants are already online in France and Germany. More than 30 EGS firms are engaged in exploration and development in Australia.

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Mountain View, Calif.-based search engine company, is trying to push EGS in the U.S. It recently gave $10 million to Southern Methodist University's Geothermal Lab to update the nation's geothermal resources map, as well as to two California companies -- Potter Drilling and AltaRock Energy Inc. -- that are working on EGS technologies.

Google is urging the U.S. government to spend big on geothermal R&D as part of the company's push to encourage utility-scale renewable energy that's cheaper than coal. About half the United States' electricity is generated by that dirty fossil fuel. China, already the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, is adding coal-fired plants at a swift rate.

EGS "is indeed the sleeping giant of renewable energy," Dan Reicher, director for climate change and energy initiatives at Google.org, said during a recent industry conference in Reno. "It's the killer ap."

Some industry veterans such as Shevenell are miffed that EGS has grabbed the spotlight when there's plenty of energy to be extracted quickly using conventional techniques. Still, she credits Google for helping pump life into a dormant sector.

"This country is in an energy crisis," she said. "We need energy now, and this is a proven way to get it."

Dickerson is a Times staff writer.

[mintelo]

Übrigens taucht Daldrup hier ebenfalls nicht auf:
http://www.iwr.de/geo/hersteller/index.html

Werde ich auch mal nachfragen...

[mintelo]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 35.763.995 von zeitklau am 30.10.08 14:38:27

Ich fürchte, mit der Veröffentlichung der Adressdaten habe ich ein Eigentor geschossen, habe einen Mod gebeten mein Posting zu löschen.

Als Aktionär bin ich mit der Antwort jedenfalls sehr zufrieden, weil positiv. Hier nochmal anonymisiert:


Sehr geehrter Herr ...,

zunächst begrüßen wir Sie als Aktionär unserer gemeinsamen Daldrup&Söhne AG.

Als Mitglied der "Geothermischen Vereinigung - Bundesverband Geothermie e.V." sind wir den Betreibern der Internetseite dieser Vereinigung selbstverständlich bekannt. Zudem gehören wir, wie Sie zu Recht anmerken, zu den Markführern in Deutschland im Bereich der Geothermiebohrungen.

Nach Ihrem Hinweis haben wir Kontakt zur Geothermischen Vereinigung aufgenommen. Deren Internetseite wird demnächst überarbeitet.

Vielen Dank für Ihre Aufmerksamkeit und Ihren Hinweis.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen ...

[zeitklau]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 35.761.773 von mintelo am 30.10.08 12:16:08

Vielen Dank an "mintelo" - auch wenn ich mich bisher noch nicht beteiligt habe, verfolge ich den Thread doch regelmäßig. Aufmerksam gemacht durch den Beitrag Nr.: 35.748.256 habe ich mir die Frage auch gestellt und finde das Hineinstellen der Antwort sehr nett.