A new battery cell design could help us tap into the vast stores of geothermal energy beneath our feet
Credit: OlgaSinenkoBO/
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One of the largest natural sources of renewable energy could be right under our feet – literally. The Earth itself is a big warm ball just waiting for us to tap into it, with vast stores of geothermal energy lying beneath Australia, the United States and plenty of other areas. Now researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Sanoh Industrial have developed a new type of battery cell that can directly convert heat energy into electricity.

Most geothermal systems work using water heated by hot rocks a few kilometers below the Earth’s surface. That water is either naturally present and pumped to the surface, or pumped down, heated and pumped back up. Such systems often need high temperatures, over 180° C (356° F), to work, and don’t necessarily scale up that well.

But the Japanese researchers […]