UTILISING EARTH’S HEAT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20291, 27 December 1927, Page 14

UTILISING EARTH’S HEAT.

The possibility of putting down bore holes four or five miles apart over most of tho land areas of the globe to utilise the earth’s internal heat for mans purposes was discussed in a paper read to the engineering section of the British Association by Mr J. L. Hodgson, a civil engineer (reports the London Daily Telegraph). Mr Hodgson said the heat stored in the hot rocks of the earths interior was immense—at least 30,000,000 times the heat reserves in the worlds’ coal reserves. Only the heat available down to a depth of, say, 30 miles under the land areas was likely to be of interest to engineers during the next few hundred years, but even this was 10 times the heat contained in the world’s coal reserves, and if it could be used instead of coal would provide the heat required by mankind for many thousands of years. He declared that exploitation of this heat seemed to be on the border line of practicability. g3=!Sr! ■ -