APPENDIX A

Worldwide State of Geothermal Power Plant Development as of August 2011

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”

Lord Kelvin

As of the writing of this book (August 2011), there are 28 countries that either currently produce electricity from geothermal energy or used to do so. Four countries (Argentina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Greece, and Zambia) have shut down very small power plants.

The growth of geothermal power worldwide is shown in a semi-log plot in Fig. A.1. It can be seen that the geothermal industry has experienced several different periods of development. Until World War II, Italy was the only country with commercial geothermal power plants. From 1930 to 1944, the average annual growth was about 14%. ...

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