Geothermal Energy: Renewables' Poor Cousin
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 07. 9.07
Never mind all the talk about biofuels, cellulosic ethanol and other hoped for alternative energy sources. Unbeknownst to most, there is already a widely available source of renewable energy that could readily be harnessed and offer tremendous benefits. At least that's the argument being advanced by Jefferson Tester, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT, who discussed the potential of geothermal energy to solve our energy needs in a recent lecture (available as a free video, which we highly recommend you check out).
Solar and wind power, he believes, will likely not have much of an impact on meeting our energy demands over the next 2 decades. Geothermal energy, on the other hand, has already proven itself to be a viable, sustainable energy source over the last 30 years and is widely found in several areas of the world close to the surface (Yellowstone's geysers, for example). In some of these regions, Tester explains that "instead of mining materials from the ground, we're mining heat." The trick then is "to replicate what nature has done" in all the areas that lack hot springs.
Tester and his colleagues have worked to demonstrate the potential of these enhanced/engineered geothermal systems (EEGS) at several locations around the world over the span of the last few years. Drilling wells down deep enough to reach hot rock (5 km or more), they circulated water into these heat reservoirs to warm it up enough so it could generate electric power. As we've seen before, the way this works is that a heat-exchanger system is set up between the rock and the wells, which helps produce a vast amount of steam and hot water that powers up electric generators on the surface.
With the right amount of funding by the government, which Tester estimates at $600-800 million (less than the cost of a single clean coal plant), EEGS could become major players by 2050 and start supplying energy at the level needed to exert a significant impact. As things stand, "geothermal has no money in the budget," according to Tester (you can thank this administration's budget priorities for that).
With China leading the way, one can only hope that it'll just be a matter of time (see: next administration) before we seriously start tapping into this large reservoir of renewable energy. Granted, as Tester's report points out, if geothermal energy were “going to be anything more than a minor curiosity,” we'd need to supply energy at a fairly high level (at 100 thousand MW, not a done deal yet) and show that its benefits outweigh those of other considered renewable energy sources. We can start by pushing for its wider implementation now.
Via ::MIT World: Geothermal - An Undervalued Primary U.S. Energy Source (news website)
See also: ::Reyka: Geothermal Powered Vodka
Israeli company Ormat has been doing this for years...
Great to see this in the news .... will be installing this system at our house in Canada. Several homes using it already.
Interesting stuff. The more arrows in the quiver, the more secure our energy future becomes!
Just imagine that only a few miles of the earth's crust separate us from the vast quantity of energy inside the Earth. We should thank God and take advantage of this wonderful gift. We can dig oil wells and tunnel through mountains. There is no reason we could not reach the depths required to have enough steam so that nuclear plants would be unnecessary and so that we could reduce the number of coal thermal utility plants.
adrianakau2aol.com
Italy has also been doing that for years as well. Northern Italy, in particular, has been using geothermal power to heat homes and generate electricity.
Several cities in France also use geothermal, mainly as way of heating homes.
The thing about geothermal is that "easy" geothermal is usually located in remote areas.
So, rather than digging deep or trying to transport electricity for long distances, why not use geothermal energy to make hydrogen from water, and methane from hydrogen plus CO2 in the air? These could then be shipped in tankers (powered by hydrogen or methane themselves). Since all the carbon would come from the atmosphere, this would be a carbon-neutral operation every inch of the way.
Nations on the short list for this kind of export would include hotbeds of instability and terror such as New Zealand and Chile; the world energy map would change, for the better.
Iceland has also been doing this. Geothermal heat has been used since the vikings landed there.
The Germans, the Germans, they are all engineers and they plan to use geothermal to augment what they plan to shut down in nuclear. They are tapping into hot rock reservoirs and prodicing regional energy.
Fantastic info...I have been very interested in thermal energy as of late, especially after Gov. Schwarzenegger formed a bill into law that set a CO2 limit on coal plants as a future source of electricity in the West Coast market. This is a good (early) time for geothermal energy production.
I would also recommend this report to everyone...
http://www.whiskeyandgunpowder.com/Report/geoWP.html
-Cheers!