Tag: Geothermal

Yale Climate Connections, April 30, 2021

Articles include: Major parties’ climate programs are miles apart; With seas rising, stalled research budgets must also rise; Cities’ notable efforts on climate change; Citrus farming and geothermal energy; Sea-level rise could submerge fiber optic cables, a key component of internet infrastructure; Air pollution from fossil fuels caused 8.7 million premature deaths in 2018, study finds [No study link]; Four electric cargo cycles deliver packages in Miami.

Study: Can Geothermal Power Play a Key Role in the Energy Transition?

Yale Environment 360 discusses Can Geothermal Power Play a Key Role in the Energy Transition? Aided by advances in deep-drilling technology for fracking, engineers are developing new methods of tapping into the earth’s limitless underground supplies of heat and steam. But the costs of accessing deep geothermal energy are high, and initial government support will be crucial.

Ariver of hot water flows some 3,000 feet beneath Boise, Idaho. And since 1983 the city has been using that water to directly heat homes, businesses, and institutions, including the four floors of city hall — all told, about a third of the downtown. It’s the largest geothermal heating system in the country.

Boise didn’t need to drill to access the resource. The 177-degree Fahrenheit water rises to the surface in a geological fault in the foothills outside of town.

It’s a renewable energy dream. Heating the 6 million square feet in the geothermally warmed buildings costs about $1,000 a month for the electricity to pump it. (The total annual cost for depreciation, maintenance, personnel, and repair of the city’s district heating system is about $750,000.)

In a recent report, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) predicted the output of geothermal in Europe could increase eight-fold by 2050. And a 2019 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report — GeoVision: Harnessing the Heat Beneath Our Feet — refers to the “enormous untapped potential for geothermal.” By overcoming technical and financial barriers, the report says, generating electricity through geothermal methods could increase 26-fold by 2050, providing 8.5 percent of the United States’ electricity, as well as direct heat.

Geothermal energy, the forgotten renewable, has finally arrived

QZ.com (Quartz) discusses Geothermal energy, the forgotten renewable, has finally arrived.

Two kilometers below the surface lies a mineral-rich cauldron of hot water where temperatures can exceed 390°C. As the Salton Sea recedes, opportunities to turn that into energy and profits are emerging. If California approves its permit, CTR will start operating its Hell’s Kitchen Lithium and Power project in 2023, one of the first new US geothermal power plants in almost a decade.

And it almost certainly will not be the last. Although the shores of the Salton Sea already hosts 10 geothermal plants—most of them built in the 1980s—geology, politics, and energy demand have aligned to make Hell’s Kitchen, and projects like it, a hot investment once again.

The Earth itself could provide carbon-free heat for buildings

Vox discusses how The Earth itself could provide carbon-free heat for buildings. The world needs clean heat, and geothermal energy has it.

The heat stored in the Earth’s crust, known as geothermal energy, is carbon-free and effectively inexhaustible. There’s enough of it to run all of civilization for generations, if it could be cost-effectively tapped.

Tapping it turns out to be no small feat, but efforts have ramped up recently due to new urgency by the climate crisis and the search for low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels.

The cutting edge technological developments in the field (including, yes, lasers) are devoted to drilling deeper and deeper, into hotter and hotter rock. Heat anywhere from 302°F (150°C) up to 703°F (373°C), where water enters its “supercritical” phase and above, can be used to profitably generate electricity.

Why Canada’s geothermal industry is finally gaining ground

The Narwhal discusses why Canada’s geothermal industry is finally gaining ground. Heat from below the Earth’s surface has provided a reliable source of electricity for decades in many countries — but not Canada. Now, several projects underway in western provinces could herald a new era for this untapped resource and offer job opportunities for former oil and gas workers.

One of the world’s most restless geological regions, the Pacific Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped belt running up the west coast of South and North America and east coast of Asia and the South Pacific, triggering many of our planet’s earthquakes and volcanoes. Canada has long been the only country in this Ring of Fire to not take advantage of its energy potential by commercially generating electricity from the vast underground store of heat.

How Long Could the World Run on Geothermal Power?

Wired discusses how long the world could run on Geothermal Power? If everyone went 100 percent geothermal today, Earth’s store of thermal energy would still outlive the sun.

Pop quiz: Of all the different ways of generating electricity or getting things (like cars) to do work, which of them don’t use energy from the sun?

Fossil fuels? Nope. Millions of years ago, primeval plants drew energy from the sun to grow. But alas, those plants died and turned into stuff like oil, and then you burned it in your car. So, from a certain point of view, that gasoline is liquid solar energy—with a really long build-up time.

Wind energy? Well, where does wind come from? A major contributor is the uneven heating of Earth’s atmosphere. That makes the air in one place expand and push out to other places, and that motion is what we call wind. As the moving air pushes on the blades of a wind turbine, it turns a generator to produce electricity.

Hydroelectric? This uses a decrease in gravitational potential energy as water moves down a river to turn a turbine. But the water gets that potential energy from the sun: Solar radiation heats up water, mostly from the sea, so it evaporates. Eventually that turns into rain and runs into lakes and rivers to repeat the cycle. (OK, water can also evaporate without sunlight, but the sun is a major player here.)

That leaves just two major energy technologies, nuclear and geothermal, that aren’t beholden to the sun.

Yale Climate Connections, February 7, 2020

This week’s articles include:

The ticket to 100% renewable power is underneath our feet

This Grist article discusses how the ticket to 100% renewable power is underneath our feet – geothermal energy.

Imagine if there was a carbon-free form of energy hiding in the ground beneath you. One that we could turn to anytime, even on cloudy, windless days.

There’s no need for imagination: It exists. Research suggests that geothermal energy could be the key to running the country on purely renewable power. A recent memo from the conservative clean-energy think tank ClearPath estimates that geothermal energy could supply as much as 20 percent of the country’s electricity. That would put the United States nearly on par with Iceland, which gets roughly a quarter of its power from underground heat. But getting there depends on loosening regulations and borrowing drilling techniques from the oil and gas drillers.