The Metropolis Magazine has been holding Next Generation Design Competition since 2003. They want to provide a platform for young designers to promote the spirit of activism, social involvement, and entrepreneurship. They offer prize money of $ 10,000. But the real attraction is the publicity given to the projects of winners and runners-up. This recognition helps abstract ideas take concrete forms. For 2009, the theme for the Next Generation Design Competition was: How do we fix our energy addiction? They offered some guidelines, "Think about how we live and work, what we use, how we get where we need to go, hidden costs to our pocket books and the environment, across the whole design spectrum. Focus on one area that needs fixing—products, interiors, buildings and landscape, communication systems, or anything else you can imagine—and develop your idea fully. And above all, think of our energy addiction as a design problem at all scales."
"What is geothermal energy? Simply put, it is energy from the Earth. Geo refers to the solid part of the Earth and thermal refers to heat energy. Anywhere the Earth's surface is in close proximity to magma or volcanic activity under or near the Earth's surface, we can harness the energy. According to the Department of Energy,"Geothermal energy technologies use the heat of the earth for direct-use applications, geothermal heat pumps, and electrical power production. Resources of geothermal energy range from the shallow ground to hot water and hot rock found a few miles beneath the Earth's surface and down even deeper to the extremely high temperatures of molten rock called magma. Three power plant technologies are being used to convert hydrothermal fluids to electricity. The type of conversion used depends on whether the fluid is steam or water and its temperature."
