It turns out that you can generate electricity from very hot water. The basic technology to do this has been around since 1905. 

The way it works is deep wells are drilled anywhere from 1 –4 km into the Earth to intersect subterranean reservoirs of hot, usually salty geothermal waters.  These geothermal reservoirs are hot –almost always above the boiling point and they sometimes exceed 300 °C. They are usually found near volcanoes, in portions of the earth’s crust that are unusually hot and fractured, or at the bottom of deep sedimentary basins. Once found, the hot geothermal water is then pumped out of the wells, fed into a power plant (that converts the energy in the hot water to electricity), and then the water is pumped back deep underground to re-heat and start the cycle all over again. 

This is called geothermal electricity generation and it is utilized in 26 countries worldwide to produce clean, green, non-polluting, and renewable electrical energy. Two significant benefits of geothermal energy over other renewables are that it provides baseload power generation (i.e. it’s always on) and the environmental footprint is small (i.e. just a small power plant and pipes on the surface). 

Furthermore, advantages of geothermal energy over fossil fuels include essentially no greenhouse gas emissions and freedom from high and volatile fuel costs (i.e. the hot water you pump out of the ground is free). If managed properly, a subterranean geothermal reservoir can supply power basically forever because heat is continuously replenished to the reservoir from deep within the Earth. 

Geothermal electricity generation is, therefore, a long-term, sustainable power source that can provide benefits for generations to come.