Soon SMU will be contributing to the alternative energy movement as a major player in geo-thermal energy locating thanks to a near half-million dollar grant from google.org.

Google.org is the philanthropic arm of the Internet giant Google, and it has granted $489,000 to the geothermal lab in the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences to update mapping of geothermal resources.

Many regions have data that is spotty or unavailable due to the lack of geothermal mapping. The Google grant and SMU will take a large step in filling in these holes and tapping potential geothermal resources.

David Blackwell, Hamilton Professor of Geothermal Studies here at SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, has previous experience in geothermal mapping. He worked with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2004 mapping North America.

With so much experience in the matter, former colleagues of Blackwell feel this will be a prime opportunity for Blackwell and SMU to contribute to the geothermal movement.

“Dave Blackwell’s career has been based on collecting heat flow data-he’s done this for 40 years,” Maria Richards, former colleague of Blackwell on the North America mapping project, said.

“But there are parts of the country that have never been researched in detail-whether by Dave or other researchers in the geothermal community,” Richards said. This is an opportunity for the geothermal industry via SMU to collect data in places where there is virtually no data”

Research will begin later in the year and will focus mainly where oil and gas drilling data are sparse, as well as gather data from existing deep-water wells.

Dan Reicher, director of climate and energy initiates for Google.org made the goal to create an energy resource cheaper than coal, and feels the work being done by SMU is a large step in making the goal a reality.