Gosh, thank god there are people like Ricky here in Taiwan. Ricky (Huang Yeh-tang 黃業棠) has been talking about geothermal last year as well.
There was a geothermal conference, the TIGC, held in Taiwan a week ago.
Waipapa Taumata Rau is a technical partner. New Zealand officials and scholars shared their experiences in building a successful geothermal power industry and how to partner with indigenous Māori iwis.
Expert from the Philippines and Indonesia sharing their experiences.
I especially like this Indonesian expert, Ali Fahrurrozie’s presentation.
Adding on to the assessments of geothermal energy potential in Taiwan: the president of l’Association France-Formosa, a paradiplomatic association, has a detailed and sober feature-length account published in Friday’s Taipei Times.
Discussing a “path forward,” the report concludes:
Industry participants agree that Taiwan cannot scale its geothermal sector without policy changes. Lin [Po-keng (林伯耕), deputy general manager at FengYeu Green Energy (豐宇綠能)] identified three requirements.
Taiwan needs clearer permitting processes, government risk-sharing mechanisms and financial instruments tailored to long development timelines.
Whether Taiwan establishes these mechanisms will determine if its geothermal industry achieves meaningful scale, Lin said.
The numbers speak for themselves. Taiwan’s 33,000 MW of recoverable resources could cover a large share of national demand. Even a fraction of that would cut import dependence.
Geologists have mapped Taiwan’s heat for 50 years. What no one has built is the framework to tap into it.
Guy
I feel like most of those concerns are already addressed in the Geothermal Energy Act. For example, the newest rule allows the company who did the initial drilling exclusive rights for 18 years.
The government should probably share the cost for an updated survey using the newest technology.
People who live near volcanoes know to appreciate the delicacy of trying to drill holes in huge lava plumes.
People who don’t think that should be easy pickings.
There is a reason why these plants are few and far in between. And no, its not an “anti-lava conspiracy”.
Anti-magma conspiracy? 
What are you on about , we don’t have active volcanoes in Taiwan lol.
The problem with these geothermal plants in Taiwan will be a) low power gen makes them largely inconsequential versus demand b) needs water c ) could be competing with tourism operators, farmers and factories for said water supply d ) last but not least frequent earthquakes would seem to add plenty of financial risk
None of this will stop people promoting it and trying to make money.
For reference: more discussion of geothermal power appears in the dedicated thread on this topic:
Guy
The problem with subterranean thermal power plants all-over-the globe is that they are subterranean.
The world “down there” isn’t kind to high tech installations. Mostly because they were never meant to be planted there. Sulfuric solutions are highly acidic. Heat increases corrosion and any kind of maintenance a few miles into the earth’s mantle becomes a logistical nightmare.
As closer the heat source is to the surface as greater the danger of you burning your bum while sitting on it. As deeper the heat source as more costly it gets to just get there.
Besides many other ills of modern day society Hollywood has instilled this deep fear of “the atom” in us, mostly through badly made CGI catastrophe flicks.
But a modern day atomic reactor is explosion proof. And a lot easier to get to, than miles and miles of high pressure pipes floating in a boiling hot lake of acid, deep underground.
Is it a problem, sure. Is it a solved problem, definitely. There are geothermal plants that’s been running for decades with capacity of 500MW, like the Mak–Ban station in the Philippines. The plant has been around since 1979.
Oh yeah, I totally forgot the industrial power hub of South East Asia. The Philippines. So brimming with excess energy that they are completely unfazed by current events around the strait of Hormuz.
Tux Felix Philippines! 
Both the Philippines and Indonesia are global leaders in geothermal energy. The Philippines running low in petroleum based fuel in the current crisis has more to do with its lack of preparedness for such crisis, and would have been more dire without their geothermal energy.
When geothermal energy becomes a limited and unreliable energy, the earth would no longer support life.
Aaaargh! Geothermal energy is limited by the very fact that you can not simply drill into the earth’s core to extract it. There is a finite supply of energy being transferred to the upper regions of the earth’s mantle. Its finite because everything else leads to a volcanic eruption!
And even those are limited in energy output, based on the pressure from the lower region of mantle plume that pushed those lava flows upwards to begin with.
Any halfway decent engineer knows about the planetary mechanics behind the heat transports from the regions surrounding the earth’s core to the planet’s surface. Heat can not be transported to the surface faster that is is being produced in its interior.
And it requires regions of weaker crust for that heat to reach the surface. Anything else and we’d all be sinking into a planet wide lava lake.
All these factors make the amount the energy you can extract from those regions absolutely finite. There are fixed numbers in existence for the energy output each geothermal field could maximally produce. And since regions of weaker crust are sparsely populated and have - for damn good reason - next to no industrial capacity located on them, transporting that energy to centers of dense human population and industry raises the cost of the whole undertaking significantly.
What the heck is wrong with people like you? You have no understanding of the technology nor any appreciation of the cost involved or of business necessity. But you got that pink colored pipe dream of Disney’s Bambi dancing in a circle with the vegan wolf and the quadruple gendered lion, with no smelly pollution source nearby. Yet your room is warm in winter and cool in summer. Your tablet is always fully powered and your refrigeration never runs on empty.
Its a myth, a fantasy., It has no relation to anything in real life. Its like Helen of Detroit. The face that launched a thousand cribs.
Its a fairy tale, not reality!
Are you OK?
Guy
Give me one example where drilling has led to a volcano eruotion.
What causes eruptions is accumulated pressure in the magma chamber that exceeds the ability of the rocks’s ability to contain it. If anything, drilling might create pathways to vent the pressure.
Fracking can have a change to cause might seismic activity due to faults sliding, but for a country with hardened building code against earthquakes, they don’t pose a threat at all.
At least they have 1900MW, which is 6% of their energy output, of built geothermal capacity. If Taiwan’s geothermal output can take up 11% of the total electricity ptoduced, that would already replace the againg nuclear power plant that was shutdown.
It isn’t that simple. Taiwan generates roughly 250-290 TWh of electricity per year, while the Philippines generates around 120-130 TWh. In other words, Taiwan’s electricity system is more than twice the size. Therefore Taiwan would need quadruple the capacity of the Philippines to meet their 12%
And what makes you think Taiwan couldn’t? Do we lack the money to survey for suitable locations? Are we technologically behind? Do we lack capable enigneers and construction knowhow? What says Taiwan, an island sitting on the Pacific’s rim of fire couldn’t get more out of geothermal if the government actually does something about it? Cause right now Taiwan doesn’t have 1900MW of geothermal power, we have 7.49 MW, and that’s after the DPP passed the geothermal energy act 2 years ago. Prior to that we have something like 0.8MW.
Indonesia right now has 2.74 GW of geothermal capacity.