Lars Smith wonders: Is geothermal energy the next big thing?

On Iceland, an investment fund, Geysir Green Energy, was recently established with an initial $100 million investment for the purposes of investing in geothermal energy. Given Iceland’s experience in this field, this can been seen as an initial step towards commercializing Icelandic experience and technology worldwide, e.g. that of the company Enex.

Other companies in this field,

Calpine Corporation

Ormat Technologies

It isn't clear if the technologies will be adopted with enthusiasm since money often flows to projects that are subsidized whether they make any sense or not without subsidies. Geothermal makes sense, but may not capture political minds and hearts. I think it will eventually come into its own, but perhaps not soon.

See Heat Mining for some discussion of recent work on enhanced geothermal systems (EGS).