Steam power gets funding in Australia

The Australian government announced plans to invest Aus$50 million in geothermal development, launching a program to support the cost of drilling deep geothermal wells in the country.

The Geothermal Drilling Program will provide grants of up to Aus$7 million in matching funding for geothermal wells and to help finance proof-of-concept projects.

"The potential of the geothermal industry in Australia is truly staggering," said Martin Ferguson, Australia's minister for resources and energy.

"Geoscience Australia estimates that if just one percent of Australia's geothermal energy was extracted, it would equate to 26,000 times Australia's total annual energy consumption."

The funding launch follows news from Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), which is putting more than $10 million into two companies and a university lab to support enhanced geothermal systems (see Google pushes for enhanced geothermal).

In Australia, prospective geothermal resources have been identified in every state.

Ferguson said the program "will help get the industry over the short-term hurdle of high drilling costs and assist in developing the technologies and techniques needed to efficiently extract heat from deep below the Earth's surface."

The minister said the allocation of the funding will be competitive and merit-based and will encourage collaborative partnerships to accelerate geothermal development. With the Geothermal Drilling Program, Ferguson said Australia could see its first commercially viable geothermal power plants in place within four to five years.

Cleantech developments making news in the past 24 hours

• Qteros claims 15-fold improvements in cellulosic ethanol yield
• Solairedirect raises €20M to move into commercial solar
• Intel, Numonyx open $20M water treatment plant in Israel
• Booming data-center business creates troubles for India

View the last week of cleantech developments here | Subscribe to full feed