WebProNews

Utility bills are always annoying, and as energy costs continue to rise, they'll become even worse.  Google wants to combat this problem, though, and so Google.org has invested $10.25 million in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS).

"EGS expands the potential of geothermal energy by orders of magnitude," explains an official release.  "The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water.  The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine."

 Google.org

It sounds like a process of creating and then harnessing hundreds of Old Faithfuls.  Even accounting for concerns about causing seismic activity, this is about as safe and clean as things get.

It also has the potential to pretty much meet all needs, with Google.org stating, "A recent MIT report on EGS estimates that just 2% of the heat below the continental United States between 3 and 10 kilometers, depths within the range of current drilling technology, is more than 2,500 times the country's total annual energy use."

A tiny portion of the $10.25 million will go towards mapping all this renewable geothermal energy.  The rest will be aimed at making EGS technologies cheaper and more efficient.