In September 2005 Flannery said, "There are hot rocks in South Australia that potentially have enough embedded energy in them to run Australia's economy for the best part of a century". Also for the Cooper Basin, he proposed the establishment of a fully sustainable city where, "hundreds of thousands of people would live", utilising these geothermal energy reserves. He named the city, "Geothermia". Subsequently, in 2007, an exploration company was established. The company expected to raise at least $11.5m on the Australian Stock Exchange. Flannery took up shares in the company. In 2010, the Federal Government provided the company with another $90m for the development work. In August 2016, the geothermal energy project closed as it was not financially viable.