- A
- B
- C
Listen to a lecture in a physics class, take detailed notes while listening.
facility – buildings and equipment used for a particular purpose
harness – to capture and use
pollution – chemicals and dirt that harms the environment
steam – heated water that becomes a gas
sustainable – able to continue without damaging the environment
Fill in the following diagram.
Advantages
Disadvantages
A 1.
A 3.
B 2.
B 4.
Now answer the questions using your notes.
Geothermal Energy
What are the advantages and disadvantages of geothermal energy? Place a check mark in the correct box.
Summarize the text using your notes and diagram.
- 1: Costs are very low.
- 2: Creates no pollution.
- 3: Can only be used in a few places.
- 4: Can run out unpredictably.
Listen again:
W: One sustainable energy source that I'd like to talk about today is called geothermal energy, It uses geothermal technology. Basically, geothermal technology allows us to harness, or, uh, use heat from inside the Earth to meet our energy needs. It involves digging holes into the Earth's crust to collect steam. Sometimes you need to pump steam… I mean water… into the holes to make steam. So the general aim is to harness steam to produce electricity. Geothermal energy has some big advantages over other sources of energy. Namely, they are—um, geothermal energy is a very low-cost form of heating and energy production. Once you build the facilities to capture the heat and steam, there is very little–almost no cost to use it, Another advantage is that geothermal energy produces no pollution. Compare that with burning coal or oil. Geothermal energy is almost 100% clean!
But it also has some serious disadvantages too, like, um, look, you can't find this energy source everywhere. Actually, it is only found in a few locations, So, uh, you can only harness the energy where there are hot spots close to the Earth's surface. Usually, those are places where you already find steam vents, geysers–and by geysers, I mean hot water that shoots up out of the ground–and natural hot springs. Iceland, Norway, and New Zealand have a few such spots. But, locations like that are pretty limited. Also, another problem is, uh, you can set up a geothermal facility at a good location, but later, the location becomes useless. For some reason, it stops producing enough steam to be useful anymore. Geothermal energy can be very unpredictable this way.
