Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say that there are two reasons.
I think one is the two-for-one. You may have heard that geothermal is costly. For example, an average international statistic to take with you is $5 million per megawatt installed. That's about double what it costs for wind and double what it costs for natural gas. Of course, you get that with having no emissions, and you get that with basically a 100% online factor versus wind perhaps being at 25% or 33%. On the levelized cost, even though the installed cost is higher, you actually get more electricity out of that power plant.
But here is where it gets better: from that power plant you also get heat. I don't want to call heat “waste”, because it's obviously a very valuable product, but in that paradigm shift of people thinking that geothermal is expensive, they're not considering that you're going to be selling two different things. In some cases—and B.C. and Alberta are prime examples—there is already a carbon tariff or a carbon tax, and that's obviously coming federally by 2022, so now you're selling three things for that same capital build: carbon credits, heat, and power—all renewable. There is the number one thing.
Second, we cannot talk about this industry without thinking about the jobs. There are 1.7 jobs per megawatt. We are the highest job creator of all energies. The first thing people say to me is, “Oh, your operating costs must be huge if you have so many jobs”, but these aren't jobs that are just associated with the operating costs. These are induced jobs that are created because people are using the heat.
Here's an example: 175 megawatts of power employ 60 people at the power plants, but employs 840 people in the geothermal industrial park or the geopark. That tiny half a megawatt....
You have a 500 kilowatt demonstration project, Sustainaville, that's looking for test turbine treatment. That's aimed at creating 50 to 80 jobs—these are clean-tech jobs—in using clean technology.