In March 2019, a government-commissioned research team in South Korea concluded after a year-long study that the 5.4-magnitude earthquake that rattled the city of Pohang in November 2017 was triggered by geothermal power generation. A government-led renewable energy project was scheduled to build South Korea’s first geothermal power plant in Pohang’s Heunghae township by 2018. Different from a traditional geothermal system, which uses underground heat released naturally from the earth to generate electricity, Pohang’s enhanced geothermal system cracked open impermeable rocks to create conduits and infuse water with high pressure to bring the underground heat to the surface. The government research team’s report concluded that the drilling and infusing process initially created micro-earthquakes around the facility, but the accumulated pressure from the water injections over time ultimately led to the Pohang earthquake, the second-largest earthquake in South Korean history. The quake left 1,800 people displaced...
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