Chevron's Geothermal Operations Expand in Indonesia

On Monday, the Chevron Corporation announced that it has begun commercial production at its 110-megawatt geothermal power plant in Garut, West Java, India. The power plant is known as Darajat III and is operated by Chevron's subsidiary Chevron Geothermal Indonesia, Ltd.

The combined output from the Darajat III and Chevron's Salak geothermal plants now allows 3.9 million homes in Indonesia to get their electricity needs met by this renewable energy source.

With its geothermal operations in Indonesia and the Philippines, Chevron has made itself a leader in developing the world's geothermal fields. Chevron's global geothermal operations have installed capacity to produce a total of 1273 MW of electrical energy. This wattage accounts for over half of all privately developed geothermal capacity.

The Darajat III plant is approved by the United Nations as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project. This project is a market-based instrument of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, set up to encourage the implementation of economical "greenhouse gas" reductions.

"Chevron is proud to be involved in the development of this significant renewable energy project, which builds on our position as the largest geothermal energy producer in the world. Over the past 30 years, Chevron has been working with countries such as Indonesia to harness their geothermal resources to meet growing energy demand and sustainable development objectives," said John Watson, president of Chevron International Exploration and Production.

Geothermal energy technologies are a largely untapped area of huge renewable energy potential, as they simply tap the energy that's naturally produced by the Earth. Vast amounts of power are present below the surface crust that we live upon. Like the power of flowing water, all we need to do is tap into it and harness it.

At the Earth's core, the temperature is 60 times greater than that of boiling water. The fantastic heat generates pressures that exert themselves only a couple of miles below the earth's crust. The pressures contain enormous amounts of energy.