Trump chooses oil fracking boss as energy secretary

Bloomberg News | November 16, 2024  

President-elect Donald Trump nominated Chris Wright, who runs a Colorado-based oil and natural gas fracking services company, to lead the Energy Department.


Wright, the chief executive officer of Liberty Energy Inc., has no previous Washington experience. He’s made a name for himself as a vocal proponent of oil and gas, saying fossil fuels are crucial for spreading prosperity and lifting people from poverty. The threat of global warming, he has said, is exaggerated.

“Chris has been a leading technologist and entrepreneur in Energy,” Trump said in a statement Saturday. “He has worked in nuclear, solar, geothermal, and oil and gas. Most significantly, Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American shale revolution that fueled American energy independence, and transformed the global energy markets and geopolitics.”

Trump said Wright, if confirmed, would also sit on the newly formed Council of National Energy that will be chaired by Doug Burgum, Trump’s nominee to lead the Interior Department.

The Energy Department has a disparate mission that includes helping to maintain the nation’s nuclear warheads, studying supercomputers and maintaining the US’s several hundred million-barrel stockpile of crude oil.

It also plays a key role in approving projects to export liquefied natural gas, something that was paused during Biden’s administration. Trump has vowed to undo the pause.

While the department has little authority over oil and gas development, Wright will play a leading role in helping Trump carry out his energy priorities.

Trump’s selection of Wright, whose company is among the largest providers of fracking services globally, is a show of support for the hot-button oil and gas extraction method that Trump frequently touted during the campaign to attack his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.

Harris said she’d consider banning the technique during her 2020 primary run and reversed course in her 2024 campaign.

‘No climate crisis’

Wright’s company published a 180-page paper this year that concluded climate change “is far from the world’s greatest threat to human life,” and that “hydrocarbons are essential to improving the wealth, health, and life opportunities for the less energized.”

“There is no climate crisis. And we are not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright said in a video posted on his LinkedIn page. “Humans, and all complex life on earth, is simply impossible without carbon dioxide — hence the term carbon pollution is outrageous.”

Wright holds engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. He describes himself on his Denver-based company’s website as a “tech nerd turned entrepreneur and a dedicated humanitarian.”

While Wright has warned that subsidies for wind and solar drive up power prices and increase grid instability, he does support alternative energy. He serves on the board of small modular reactor developer Oklo Inc., and his company is an investor in geothermal energy and sodium-ion battery technology.

“I’m not here to protect market share for oil gas,” he said during a 2022 interview with Bloomberg Television. “We should do credible things, mostly driven by market forces. But shoveling subsidies at wind and solar, which are 3% of global energy, that’s not meaningfully going to change greenhouse gas emissions. But it is going to drive electricity prices up.”

Wright is also on the board EMX Royalty Corp., a global mining royalties firm, according to his company bio.

Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, speaking at the ALEC Annual Meeting in Denver in October 2024. Credit: The American Legislative Exchange Council

Trump named Wright with backing from Continental Resources chairman Harold Hamm, a Trump energy adviser and donor. Hamm said in an interview with the Houston-based trade publication Hart Energy that Wright was his choice for the job.

If confirmed by Congress, Wright would play a leading role in Trump carrying out his campaign pledge to declare a national emergency on energy. Trump has cast such a declaration as helping increase domestic energy production — including for electricity — which he says is needed to help meet booming power needs for artificial intelligence.

Under the first Trump administration, the Energy Department played a critical role in the president-elect’s efforts to revive US coal power, an initiative he’s hinted he may attempt again.

Wright would also oversee Trump’s promise to refill the nation’s emergency cache of crude oil. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which has a capacity of more than 700 million barrels, reached lows not seen since the 1980s following the Biden administration’s unprecedented drawdown of a record 180 million barrels in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Trump’s first energy secretary, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, called for eliminating the agency entirely during a run for president in the 2012 cycle. He later apologized and vowed to defend the agency “after being briefed on so many of the vital functions” it plays.

(By Ari Natter)

Jane Fonda Urges Young People to Vote in 2024 to Push Kamala Harris on Climate Change

Mark Hertsgaard
Tue, September 24, 2024 

ANGELA WEISS/Getty Images

This article is co-published with The Guardian.

Young people’s understandable unhappiness with the Biden administration’s record on oil and gas drilling and the war in Gaza should not deter them from voting to block Donald Trump from again becoming president of the United States, the Hollywood actor and activist Jane Fonda has warned.

“I understand why young people are really angry, and really hurting,” Fonda said. “What I want to say to them is: ‘Do not sit this election out, no matter how angry you are. Do not vote for a third party, no matter how angry you are. Because that will elect somebody who will deny you any voice in the future of the United States … If you really care about Gaza, vote to have a voice, so you can do something about it. And then, be ready to turn out into the streets, in the millions, and fight for it.’”

Fonda’s remarks came in a wide-ranging interview organized by the global media collaborative Covering Climate Now and conducted by the Guardian, CBS News and Rolling Stone magazine.

Making major social change requires massive, non-violent street protests as well as shrewd electoral organizing, Fonda argued. Drawing on more than 50 years of activism, from her anti-Vietnam war and anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s to later agitating for economic democracy, women’s rights and, today, for climate action, Fonda said that: “History shows us that … you need millions of people in the streets, but you [also] need people in the halls of power with ears and a heart to hear the protests, to hear the demands.”


Jane Fonda *21.12.1937- actress, USA with Angela Davis (left) during a demonstration against the war in Vietnam, Campus of the University of Los Angeles, California
Jane Fonda with Angela Davis (left) during a demonstration against the war in Vietnam, Campus of the University of Los Angeles, Californiaullstein bild/Getty ImagesMore

During the Great Depression, she said, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed with helping the masses of unemployed. But FDR said the public had to “make him do it”, or he could not overcome resistance from the status quo. “There is a chance for us to make them do it if it’s Kamala Harris and Tim Walz [in the White House],” she said. “There is no chance if Trump and Vance win this election.”

Scientists have repeatedly warned that greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by half by the next decade, Fonda noted, so a President Harris would have to be pushed “to stop drilling, and fracking, and mining. No new development of fossil fuels.” Trump, on the other hand, has promised to “‘drill, baby, drill.’ For once, let’s believe him. The choice is very clear: do we vote for the future, or do we vote for burning up the planet?”

Fonda launched the Jane Fonda Climate political action committee three years ago to elect “climate champions” at all levels of government: national, state and local. “The Pac focuses down ballot – on mayors, state legislators, county councils,” she said. “It’s incredible how much effect people in these positions can have on climate issues.”

Forty-two of the 60 candidates the Pac endorsed in 2022 won their races. In 2024, the Pac is providing money, voter outreach and publicity to more than 100 candidates in key battleground states and in California, Fonda’s home state. California is “the fifth-biggest economy in the world, and an oil-producing state”, she explained, “so what happens here has an impact far broader than California”.

Fonda is also, for the first time in her life, “very involved” in this year’s presidential campaign, “because of the climate emergency”. She plans to visit each battleground state, she said: “And when I’m there, we give our schedule to the Harris campaign. Then they fold in Harris campaign [get-out-the-vote events], volunteer recruitment, things like that … and then I do them for our Pac candidates” as well.

Her Pac has a strict rule: it endorses only candidates who do not accept money from the fossil fuel industry. The industry’s “stranglehold over our government” explains a crucial disconnect, Fonda said: polls show that most Americans want climate action, yet their elected officials often don’t deliver it. In California, she said, “we’ve had so many moderate Democrats that blocked the climate solutions we need because they take money from the fossil fuel industry … It’s very hard to stand up to the people that are supporting your candidacy.”

Fonda also faulted the mainstream news media for not doing a better job of informing the public about the climate emergency and the abundance of solutions. Watching the Harris-Trump debate, she thought that “Kamala did very well”. But she “was very disturbed that the No 1 crisis facing humanity right now took an hour-and-a-half to come up and was not really addressed”, she added. “People don’t understand what we are facing! The news media has to be more vigilant about tying extreme weather events to climate change. It’s starting to happen, but not enough.”

Given her years of anti-nuclear activism – including producing and starring in a hit Hollywood movie, The China Syndrome, released days before the Three Mile Island reactor accident in 1979 – it’s perhaps no surprise that Fonda rejects the increasingly fashionable idea that nuclear power is a climate solution.

“Every time I speak [in public], someone asks me if these small modular reactors are a solution,” she said. “So I’ve spent time researching it, and there’s one unavoidable problem: no nuclear reactor of any kind – the traditional or the smaller or the modular, none of them – has been built in less than 10 to 20 years. We don’t have that kind of time. We have to deal with the climate crisis by the 2030s. So just on the timeline, nuclear is not a solution.” By contrast, she said: “Solar takes about four years to develop, and pretty soon it’s going to be 30% of the electricity in the world.”

The reason that solar – and wind and geothermal – energy are not prioritized over fossil fuels and nuclear, she argued, is that “big companies don’t make as much money on it”. Noting that air pollution from fossil fuels kills 9 million people a year globally, she added: “We’re being poisoned to death because of petrochemicals and the fossil fuel industry. And we [taxpayers] pay for it! We pay $20bn a year [in government subsidies] to the fossil fuel industry, and we’re dying … We need that industry out of our lives, off of our planet – but they run the world.”

The two-time Academy Award winner’s decades as one of the world’s biggest movie stars has given her an appreciation of the power of celebrity, and she applauds Taylor Swift for exercising that power with her endorsement of the Harris-Walz ticket.

“I think she’s awesome, amazing and very smart,” Fonda said of Swift. “I’m very grateful and excited that she did it, and … I think it’s going to have a big impact.”

“My metaphor for myself, and other celebrities, is a repeater,” Fonda added. “When you look at a big, tall mountain, and you see these antennas on the top, those are repeaters. They pick up the signals from the valley that are weak and distribute them so that they have a larger audience … When I’m doing the work I’m doing, I’m picking up the signals from the people who live in Wilmington and the Central valley and Kern county and are really suffering, and the animals that can’t speak, and trying to lift them up and send [their stories] out to a broader audience. We’re repeaters. It’s a very valid thing to do.”

Climate activism is also “so much fun”, she said, and it does wonders for her mental health.

“I don’t get depressed anymore,” she said. “You know, Greta Thunberg said something really great: ‘Everybody goes looking for hope. Hope is where there’s action, so look for action and hope will come.’” Hope, Fonda added, is “very different than optimism. Optimism is ‘everything’s gonna be fine’, but you don’t do anything to make sure that that’s true. Hope is: I’m hopeful, and I’m gonna work like hell to make it true.”



Jane Fonda on Kamala, Taylor, and Our Existential Climate Crisis

Charisma Madarang
Mon, September 23, 2024


The climate crisis has been keeping Jane Fonda up at night. “I was so angry, it was hard to go to sleep,” she says. “We are being killed with cancer, heart diseases, because of the burning of fossil fuel,” Fonda presses. “We have the solution to the climate crisis, why don’t we employ it, instead of allowing a bunch of rich people to destroy everything that’s been created by humankind? We’ve got to rise up.”

It’s early September and we’re sitting in a sunny Los Angeles living room. Outside, everything appears as if it’s business as usual: traffic humming, glossy palms swaying, and Hollywood Boulevard swelling with tourists. Speaking with Fonda just a day after the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, however, it’s clearer than ever that the country is hurtling toward a seismic change.

Fonda, who has been an activist for over 50 years, beginning with her controversial opposition to the Vietnam War, has often called the 2024 election an “existential” one. It’s the first time she has actively endorsed a candidate, first with President Joe Biden. After he dropped out of the race, Fonda was one of the first leaders in Hollywood to support Harris.

She lays out the stakes in November with a candid urgency, drawing a clear distinction between Harris and Trump’s climate and energy policies. “Every candidate has issues. Nobody’s perfect, but the Harris-Walz ticket is the ticket that will allow us to fight, to get the solutions that climate scientists are saying we need,” she says. “They give us a chance, at least, to fight. They give us a platform on which we can try to pressure.”

The alternative, Fonda points out, is a man who “invited all the CEOs of the fossil fuel industry to Mar-a-Lago” and promised to “drill, baby, drill” and slash environmental regulations in exchange for raising $1 billion to help him win back the White House. “We don’t have four years to lose. We can’t afford to allow him to be elected.”

Herve Berville, secretary of state for the Sea of the Republic of France, Fonda, and Laura Meller of Greenpeace Nordic (from left) at a press briefing at United Nations HQ

When discussing young voters disillusioned with Biden’s and Harris’ handling of U.S. policy amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Fonda says, “I understand why young people are so upset, but to sit this out or to vote for a third party candidate, is to allow fascism.”

“That will elect somebody who will deny you any voice in the future of the United States,” she continues. “Vote for a voice if you really care about Gaza, vote to have a voice so that you can do something about it, and then be ready to turn out into the streets by the millions and fight for it… If the young people stay home, we’re going to lose. They have such power. So show us your power. Vote and then fight.”

With election month less than two months away, artists across the music and entertainment industries have used their voices in an effort to impact America’s future. Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel shortly after the debate and Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris, Fonda celebrated the news on television. “I think she’s awesome. She’s amazing and very smart, and I’m very grateful and excited that she did it,” says Fonda. “I think it’s going to have a big impact.”

When reflecting on her own choice to use her celebrity to garner attention to the climate fight, Fonda quips, “What other way would there be to spend it?”

Left: Fonda attends Fire Drill Friday on Feb. 7, 2020, in Los Angeles. Right: The activist is arrested during a protest on Capitol Hill on Oct. 18, 2019, in Washington, D.C.

Fonda has long emphasized the potency for civil disobedience to create systemic change. The two-time Academy award-winning actress co-founded Fire Drill Fridays in 2019, a recurring climate protest in Washington, D.C., during which she was arrested five times. She later founded the Jane Fonda Climate PAC in 2022 to financially back “climate champions” at the state and local level. “That’s where the really robust work is being done on climate right now — mayors, city council, state legislators, county executives,” Fonda points out. “It’s incredible how much effect people in these positions can have on climate. We have well over 100 candidates all over the country.”

“This is a collective crisis, and it requires a collective solution,” says Fonda. “[Trump] wants to do away with all regulations and open up the floodgates for the fossil fuel industry and the nuclear industry. So the choice is very clear, do we vote for the future, or do we vote for burning up the planet?”

While Fonda has called her activism in the climate fight all-consuming, she underlines that the work is to ensure a healthier planet for future generations. “When you’re on your deathbed, you want to feel that it’s been worthwhile,” she says. “You want people who love you around you, which means you have to deserve their love. And you want to feel that you’ve had meaning in your life. And for the first time, I felt my life has value.”

Fonda’s remarks came in a wide-ranging interview organized by the global media collaborative Covering Climate Now and conducted by the Guardian, CBS News, and Rolling Stone magazine.

How Renewables Could Slash Oil and Gas Production Emissions by 80%

By Rystad Energy - Sep 19, 2024

• Electrifying upstream oil and gas production can reduce emissions by over 80%, offering a significant pathway to decarbonize the industry.
• 
  
• Norway's success in utilizing renewable energy for upstream operations demonstrates the potential for widespread adoption.
• 
  
• Flaring reduction and a focus on Premium Energy Basins are crucial strategies for achieving substantial emissions cuts in the oil and gas sector.

Converting upstream oil and gas production facilities to run on electricity powered by renewables or natural gas that would otherwise be flared could cut more than 80% of associated emissions, according to new research from Rystad Energy. Fully electrified rigs and other assets on the Norwegian Continental Shelf emit 1.2 kilograms of carbon dioxide per barrel of oil equivalent (kg of CO2 per boe) produced, an 86% drop from the 8.4 kg of CO2 per boe emitted by the same assets before electrification.

Norway is in a prime position that is almost unique among major oil and gas producers – it can tap into its abundant renewable energy resources, particularly hydroelectric power, to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from upstream production. The country was an early mover in refitting its assets to run on clean power, and now has plans to cut emissions from the continental shelf by 70% by 2040. Most of the country’s key production sites are strategically located near potential renewable energy sources, facilitating the transition away from fossil fuels. Other producing countries may face logistical hurdles when converting assets, including significant distances from the mainland, a lack of power grid infrastructure and limited renewable power capacity.

However, even a partial electrification will significantly cut emissions. Premium energy basins (PEB) – a term coined by Rystad Energy to describe oil and gas basins with ample hydrocarbon reserves and the potential to incorporate environmentally friendly practices – could hold the key. We have identified 30 such basins worldwide, which collectively contribute more than 80% of the world’s oil and gas this year and will continue to do so until 2050. If PEB assets electrify and reduce emissions by 50%, a total of 5.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (Gt of CO2) would be avoided by 2050. Based on the accepted industry standard calculation, this CO2 reduction would equate to about 0.025 degrees Celsius of global warming avoided during the same period.*

As the world confronts the pressing issue of climate change, the oil and gas industry is under increasing pressure to minimize its carbon footprint and align its practices with global sustainability objectives. Where it’s possible and economically viable, electrification has great potential to lower the industry's emissions while maintaining production output. says Palzor Shenga, vice president of upstream research with Rystad Energy.

Palzor Shenga, Vice President, Upstream Research

*This calculation only includes upstream extraction emissions. It assumes that 222 GtCO2 emitted leads to 0.1°C warming, ref IPCC AR6 SPM D.1.1: "best estimate for TCRE is 0.45 degree per 1000 Gt CO2". Methane emissions are disregarded.

Learn more with Rystad Energy’s Upstream Solution.

Electrification requires careful planning, including the selection of optimal technologies, assessment of total costs and strategies to ensure a continuous energy supply, particularly in remote locations with limited grid access. Economic and financial viability must also be prioritized. A proactive approach to electrification can enhance operational efficiency and open new revenue streams through the sale of excess renewable energy.

To understand the impact of electrification on upstream emissions, we examined the potential for emission reduction in top PEBs. The 28 PEBs identified in the report offer estimated total emission savings of about 1.3 billion tonnes of CO2 between 2025 and 2030. The top 10 PEBs (by emissions savings) alone account for over 80% of these savings (Figure 3), with the Middle Eastern Rub al Khali (370 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent [CO2e]) and Central Arabian (251 million tonnes of CO2e) leading the charts. Electrification in these predominantly onshore basins, if adopted more widely, would largely be driven by drawing power from a clean onshore grid.

Flaring, the practice of burning off excess natural gas that cannot be processed or sold, not only wastes a valuable resource but also emits substantial amounts of CO2 and methane into the environment. Flaring plays a major role in global emissions primarily due to the lack of economic incentives, regulatory frameworks or technical capabilities to develop gas markets and infrastructure. About 140 billion cubic meters per annum of gas has been flared globally in the last 10 years, equaling about 290 million tonnes of CO2e emissions annually. These volumes are primarily driven by major producers in North America, the Middle East and Africa. Hence, flaring avoidance can be an effective way of reducing upstream emissions for both electrified assets and assets with limited electrification potential.

Renewable Energy's Rise Creates Challenges for Traditional Power Utilities

By Rystad Energy - Sep 18, 2024

• The increasing prevalence of renewable energy sources, particularly solar power, is disrupting the traditional power industry and creating challenges for utilities.
• 
  
• To remain competitive, energy companies must adopt holistic thinking, diversify their portfolios, and embrace customer-centric strategies.
• 
  
• The integration of data analytics, software, and smart systems will be crucial for optimizing market performance and navigating the evolving energy landscape.

Renewable energy generation in Europe has surged over 280% since 2000 and now accounts for more than 50% of the continent’s total power generation. Solar power has seen particularly strong growth in recent years due to significant cost declines. However, the rise of renewables has also led to challenges for the power industry, as the sector’s underlying profitability declines and an increasingly competitive energy landscape emerges. 

Apart from hydropower, the operational performance of most renewable power assets is determined by a combination of weather and consumption patterns, meaning they cannot be ‘market optimized’ to generate when prices are high in the way that gas power assets can, for instance. This especially hits solar power plants, as these typically generate power in the middle of the day when, although cooling systems run full throttle during summertime in Europe, demand is not sufficient of offtake generation, which leads to low realized prices. In addition, solar panels do not generate any power at night, when prices often are higher. An increasingly popular solution for asset owners is to pair intermittent renewables with power storage capabilities, such as batteries. However, these only offset the shortcoming in part. As a result, capture rates (the prices attained compared to average market prices over time) for solar power are plummeting along with increased deployment of the technology.  

While initially masked by the power price response in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s ensuing shift away from Russian gas, wholesale power prices across Europe are increasingly under pressure from hybrid renewable projects with close-to-zero marginal costs, which in turn is undercutting the revenue potential of the region’s power market. 

Meanwhile, governmental support for renewable energy is also changing. Renewable projects are underwritten through governmental support mechanisms such as contracts for difference (CfDs) and feed-in tariffs, which guarantee predictable revenue streams for renewable energy producers. However, as the cost of renewable energy technologies have decreased, these support schemes may gradually be scaled back. 

Compounding this is the evolving nature of the energy landscape which has intensified competition within the sector. Europe’s power sector was previously dominated by dedicated renewable developers and utilities, but is now seeing new entrants such as oil and gas companies, power traders and innovative power demand management players. Similarly, new types of demand is emerging such as data center players requiring consistent, high-volume, 24-hour power supply.  

The solution to the current challenges lies in diversification and innovation, driving balanced portfolio generation profiles and enabling market optimization. Beyond building and leveraging the full flexibility of a diversified portfolio of solar, wind, storage, and thermal generation, more customer-centric strategies are emerging. Octopus Energy is a British software and power trading company that works to balance power supply and demand through demand-side smart devices such as electric vehicle (EV) chargers, lighting systems, and heat pumps. Similarly, integrated oil and gas players such as TotalEnergies are using the knowledge attained in business-to-consumer markets through the gasoline and retail end of the business to enter the demand-side power market, mimicking their success in oil and gas.  

The integration and interconnection of systems across the entire power market value chain, along with the efficient processing of large datasets and the automation of energy dispatch, are becoming essential for modern energy companies. Software and smart systems will be key to this, emphasizing advanced technical capabilities and data analytics over the traditional supply-to-market business model that utilities have traditionally subscribed to. By embracing these changes, energy companies can better position themselves for success in a rapidly changing power industry. 

By Rystad Energy

Geothermal Energy Could Outperform Nuclear Power

GEOTHERMAL IS FRACKING

By Haley Zaremba - Sep 19, 2024

• Enhanced geothermal systems, utilizing fracking technology, could unlock vast geothermal resources and make geothermal energy widely accessible.
• 
  
• Geothermal energy offers a reliable, base-load power source with zero carbon emissions, and has the potential to outperform nuclear energy.
• 
  
• With strong bipartisan support and public-private investment, geothermal energy is poised for rapid growth and could play a crucial role in meeting future energy demands and combating climate change.

Geothermal is about to have its moment in the sun. Heat from the Earth’s core could provide a clean, steady, and limitless source of renewable energy to humans. The trick is finding the right technology to harness that heat. 

Until very recently, geothermal energy for commercial use has only been feasible in places where that heat naturally reaches the surface of the Earth, such as geysers and hot springs. For example, Iceland gets a quarter of its energy from geothermal energy. But Iceland is a geological anomaly. Globally, geothermal energy accounts for just 0.5% of renewable energy. But now, the application of fracking technology borrowed from the oil and gas sector could totally revolutionize geothermal energy availability, and possibly even bring it to your own backyard.

Geothermal energy can be tapped anywhere and everywhere, if you have the will and the way to dig deep enough. And this could soon be possible at an economically viable scale through a method known as ‘enhanced geothermal systems’ which can tap into heat far, far below the ground. According to a 2023 report from Esquire, this technology, adapted from hydraulic fracturing used in the oil and gas industry, will “allow us to exploit the energy underfoot across the country, all with a carbon impact that is vanishingly small compared to most sources we depend on now.” These deep wells would pump out hot water, which can be used in turn to produce energy through various methods, before injecting that water back into the ground.

The potential for enhanced geothermal is massive – the Economist even projects that it could outperform nuclear energy output, while offering similar benefits. Like nuclear, geothermal operates with proven technologies, offers base-load, on-demand energy, and produces zero carbon emissions. The United States Department of Energy (DoE) has posited that geothermal energy could power up to 260 million homes nationwide by 2050. 

It also has major bipartisan appeal, a huge boon to any new technologies hoping to get sizable and continued funding from government entities and private interests alike. The DoE projects that as little as  $25 billion in public-private investment (less than the cost of the Vogtle nuclear power plant alone) by 2030 would allow the domestic geothermal sector to “reach liftoff” and set the industry up to reach a commercial scale by mid-century. Already, the federal government is funding research proving early-stage geothermal technology and setting the stage for the privatized acceleration of research and development. 

Just this month, representatives from major oil companies and tech startups, as well as scientists and climate groups, met in Houston to kick off a $10 million series of summits focused on harnessing experience and technology gleaned from oil and gas to “build a new stalwart of the American power sector.” A bustling geothermal startup scene has cropped up in Texas as the stars align for geothermal’s meteoric rise in the United States energy mix.

Despite the groundswell of support for enhanced geothermal technologies and a bullish attitude from the private and public sectors alike, the geothermal sector still has a long way to go to achieve its potential. “As things currently stand, the geothermal sector has struggled with the common problems of emerging industries: the difficulty of raising sufficient money for projects that, however promising, have yet to prove themselves,” The Hill recently reported. 

But if successful, commercial-scale geothermal energy's potential applications and impacts are nearly limitless. It would introduce a critical new source of dependable, zero-carbon power to the energy mix and provide a potential solution to some of our most pressing energy security issues. Already, pundits are positing that geothermal could feed the insatiable energy demands of Artificial Intelligence, as well as providing an avenue to cheaply produce green hydrogen, which could be essential in decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors such as heavy-duty trucking, shipping, aviation, iron and steel, and chemicals and petrochemicals.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com 

 FRACKING  BY ANY OTHER NAME

The Rise of Geothermal Power Networks

By Felicity Bradstock - Aug 13, 2024

• Governments worldwide are increasingly interested in geothermal energy as a clean, renewable source of heating and electricity.
• 
  
• The UK and US have significant untapped geothermal resources that could be developed to power communities and support decarbonization efforts.
• 
  
• Geothermal power networks, which distribute heat from underground reservoirs, are emerging as a promising solution for sustainable energy.
• 
  

As governments rapidly search for ways to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives, there could be huge potential for developing natural geothermal resources underground. Investing in networked geothermal power could provide abundant clean heating and electricity for millions of households and businesses worldwide. Although countries with abundant geothermal resources have been tapping into the natural power source for thousands of years, governments have only recently funded greater research into the use of advanced geothermal systems aimed at expanding the use of the energy source. 

Geothermal energy is a type of renewable energy that comes from the Earth’s core. Energy can be extracted from the thermal sources stored in rocks and fluids several miles below the Earth’s surface. Underground geothermal reservoirs of steam and hot water can be used for electricity generation and other heating and cooling applications in rich geothermal regions. Accessing geothermal energy requires the drilling of a borehole at a depth of between two and three miles underground, flowing cold water at low pressures through hot rocks, and transporting the warm water to the Earth’s surface through a second borehole for use as heating or for electricity generation.  

In the U.K., a 2023 report suggested there is significant potential for the development of the country’s geothermal resources to provide clean heating and electricity. The report highlights several regions of untapped geothermal energy in the U.K., which could be developed to provide networked geothermal power. Many of these areas happen to coincide with towns and cities included in the government’s Levelling Up White Paper, which lists several deprived parts of the U.K. that require greater attention and investment. These areas include Redcar and Cleveland, Middlesbrough, East Lindsey, Hartlepool, Northumberland and Bassetlaw. Other areas of potential for geothermal energy production include Newcastle upon Tyne, Northeast Derbyshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire and Nottingham. 

The MP Kieran Mullan, who managed the production of the report, said there was a “strong overlap” between areas where investment is required and the best geothermal locations, which could encourage greater support for renewable energy development in these areas. Mullan stated of the potential to tap into the U.K.’s geothermal resources, “Unlike wind or solar this technology provides baseload – it is there constantly. And our expertise in drilling in the North Sea means we are well placed to motor ahead.” 

The U.K. has vast amounts of untapped geothermal power, with enough geothermal energy underground to heat every home for a hundred years, according to estimates. However, Mullen emphasised that there is “catching up to do because across Europe there has been much stronger government intervention to support nascent deep geothermal industries in those countries.” 

The U.S. is also looking to tap into the natural energy stored underground through investment in new technologies to tap into geothermal resources and distribute the power. Earlier this year, Eversource Energy commissioned the first networked geothermal neighbourhood in the U.S. to be run by a utility, in Framingham, Massachusetts. There is great optimism around the potential for project expansion, as much of the equipment needed to tap into geothermal sources is already in place. Utilities can use gas line equipment to deploy networked geothermal power, circulating fluid rather than gas., with the potential to set up networks anywhere. 

Audrey Schulman, the executive director of the nonprofit climate-solutions incubator HEETlabs, stated, “In the end, what we would like is if the gas utilities become thermal utilities.” Eversource is using a geothermal loop in Framingham, which could ultimately be connected to an adjacent neighbourhood and another, to expand the network. Schulman explained, “Each individual, shared loop can be interconnected, like Lego blocks, to grow bigger and bigger.”

While a shift to geothermal power may have seemed impossible just a few years ago, there is growing pressure from the White House for utilities to decarbonise. Last year, New York became the first state to ban natural gas hookups in most new buildings. This ban is expected to be rolled out in several other states in the coming years, including California, Vermont and Colorado. This gives utilities little choice other than to look for clean heating alternatives. There is also a wide range of incentives, provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and other climate policies, to invest in renewable energy and clean technologies. Eversource Energy and two dozen other utilities, which together represent 47 percent of the country’s natural gas customers, are joining forces to establish an information-sharing coalition, known as the Utility Networked Geothermal Collaborative, which is expected to encourage more geothermal power networking projects across the U.S. 

Following several decades of stagnation in the geothermal energy sector, governments are once again looking to the abundant renewable energy source to provide heating and power in place of natural gas. Greater investment in the sector could support the development of large networks of geothermal power, offering millions of households clean heating. Some countries, such as Iceland, are already well acquainted with geothermal power, with countries such as the U.K. and U.S. expected to soon follow.  

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

The DOE Is Betting Big On A Geothermal Game-Changer In Utah

By Haley Zaremba - Aug 08, 2023

• Geothermal energy is currently limited to geographical hotspots, but enhanced geothermal seeks to produce energy from deep drilling anywhere.
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• Enhanced geothermal offers a continuous baseload power source, overcoming the intermittency challenges of solar and wind energy.
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• Despite its potential benefits, enhanced geothermal's high upfront costs pose challenges, but its low operational costs and vast potential could make it a significant player in the clean energy sector.

A huge experiment to produce electricity using enhanced geothermal energy is taking place underground in Utah. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is funding an experimental pilot project drilling well over a mile deep into the Earth’s crust to access a continuous heat source for clean energy production. While the technology is in its infancy and there are questions about whether enhanced geothermal could ever be cost-competitive with other forms of clean energy production, the DOE is convinced that it’s a good enough idea to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on. 

Today, geothermal energy makes up a tiny fraction of energy production on a global scale. All told, it makes up less than 1% of the world’s primary energy supply. This is because currently, geothermal is only produced in geologically anomalous places where water carrying the residual heat of the Earth’s core has cracked through to the surface via hot water vents like hot springs or geysers. “Iceland, straddling two diverging tectonic plates, hits a geological jackpot and produces about a quarter of its electricity that way; in Kenya, volcanism in the Great Rift Valley helps push that figure to more than 40 percent,” Wired recently reported. “In the US, it’s just 0.4 percent, almost all of it coming from California and Nevada.”

The idea behind enhanced geothermal energy is that if you drill down deep enough, geothermal energy can be produced anywhere – not just the places where heat happens to be more accessible closer to the surface. Until recently, the idea was a bit more science fiction than fact, but drilling technologies have improved immensely thanks to the fracking boom of the last few decades. Whereas deep drilling and cracking through rock used to be a headache with little guarantee of success, it’s now a much more exact science.

What’s more, geothermal offers some extremely enticing benefits that other clean energies do not. First and most importantly, it’s a potential baseload power source, meaning that it produces steadily and continuously. This is a huge advantage over more popular renewable energies like wind and solar power, which are variable, as they depend on weather, seasons, and the time of day for production. And peaks of production rarely line up neatly with peaks of demand. This creates a huge challenge for the nascent energy storage sector, as well as our aging power grids, which were not designed with variable energy in mind. As such, a baseload clean energy source solves a number of the clean energy revolution’s most wicked problems – if it can be effectively scaled up and out. 

Second, enhanced geothermal energy takes up much less surface area than other forms of renewable energy production. Land use is currently one of the biggest hurdles for clean energy expansion as disputes and competition for land tie up industrial-scale solar and wind farms around the country and around the world. Late last year, global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company released an analytic report naming land shortages as one of three key challenges facing the renewable revolution, along with long permitting processes and gravely under-prepared power grids. “Utility-scale solar and wind farms require at least ten times as much space per unit of power as coal- or natural gas–fired power plants, including the land used to produce and transport the fossil fuels,” McKinsey reports, adding that “wind turbines are often placed half a mile apart, while large solar farms span thousands of acres.” Since enhanced geothermal’s reach is down into the earth, and not across landscapes, it could be a key workaround for such issues. 

While geothermal presents some key advantages and circumvents some of the biggest pitfalls of the renewable revolution, however, enhanced geothermal is still wickedly expensive, and by no means easy. While the up-front costs are considerable, however, the operational costs are relatively low. And once the heat source is tapped, it’s a gift that keeps on giving, forever. “The question is whether [enhanced geothermal systems] will be more or less practical than building a nuclear plant or a dam or installing carbon capture at a natural gas plant,” says journalist Gregory Barber, who has written about geothermal energy for Wired. “There are good reasons to think it will be—especially if you factor in safety and ecological concerns presented by the alternatives—but it's early.”

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com