Geothermal energy is on the verge of a big breakthrough

By digging deep, we could harness enough energy to power generations to come.

But it involves fracking.

AMANDA WINKLER21 August, 2021

Credit: Austin Farrington via Unsplash
This article was originally published by our sister site, Freethink, and is an installment of The Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology

Geothermal energy may finally be on the cusp of its big breakthrough. The often-overlooked energy option has seen a big uptick in demand, investments, and new technologies this past year.

Why this matters

As concerns about climate change grow, we're looking for ways to decarbonize, and renewable energy sources — such as wind and solar — are all the rage. In fact, in 2019 the U.S. energy consumption from renewables exceeded that of coal for the first time since 1885.

Geothermal could make clean energy accessible to everyone.

There's just one teeny-tiny problem with solar and wind: they only work when the sun is out or the wind is blowing. So, if you're completely reliant on solar to generate electricity for your house, you're going to be stumbling around in the dark at night.

That's why we need other energy sources that can pinch-hit for solar and wind.

Battery storage is one proposed solution. Another solution could be geothermal power and — if it can be proven to work reliably — it could be a cheap, reliable, renewable energy source that could make clean energy accessible to everyone.

Tap, tap, tap

4,000 miles below you — the very center of the Earth — is an incredibly hot place…hotter than the surface of the sun. That heat drifts upward so that even the Earth's crust is hot — as Vox reports, just a few miles below the ground you're standing on, there's enough energy to "power all of human civilization for generations to come."

Geothermal energy, as the name suggests, is all about harnessing that power. The concept is nothing new; we've actually been using some geothermal energy for centuries, tapping into geysers and hot springs for bathing, cooking, etc.

But to make electricity, you've got to go deeper.

Just digging a few miles below the surface can provide enough energy to generate electricity. In fact, the first commercial geothermal plant opened in 1960 in California, and there are 64 in operation today. These plants are located in areas with hot pressurized water — like a hot spring. Then, wells are drilled. As the hot water rises through the well, the heat is extracted…and voila, you've got sustainable electricity. The cooled water is then returned to the ground to be reheated.

That's all great — the problem is, doing it this way is pretty location-dependent. It works best in places like California or Iceland, where there's a lot of moving tectonic plates or volcanic activity to create these reservoirs.

But what about the rest of us?

Deeper into the furnace

Conventional geothermal depends on natural reservoirs because that's the easiest. But Earth's energy is everywhere, including in the dry deserts. The next-level form of geothermal energy (called enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS) is all about drilling into dry rock and creating man-made reservoirs by injecting pressurized water into the well, which fractures the rocks around it. The water passes through the hot, fractured rock and is collected and drawn up through another well on the side of the fractured area.

In theory, these artificial underground furnaces could be made anywhere in the world.

While EGS plants do exist (the first experiment dates back to 1974), due to the enormous expense and rudimentary techniques, they haven't shown a lot of promise — until recently. Thanks to better technology and an increase in funding, several successful EGS reservoirs can now generate electricity at "close to commercial prices," according to Quartz.

But as we drill deeper into dryer land, the engineering obstacles get bigger.

Baggage

In order to transition from the conventional location-dependent geothermal to EGS, a little support from the public is needed. That can be tricky because technically EGS is "fracking" — shooting liquid into the ground in order to fracture a rock. And fracking has some baggage when it comes to public opinion — in fact, in some areas it's completely banned.

But as David Roberts at Vox points out, EGS fracking is safer than gas fracking — the fluids used here have no risk of contaminating the water.

Still, it remains a dicey political issue. But without public support, experts fear that geothermal energy will remain an overlooked energy source, limited to states with natural reservoirs and no fracking bans.
The upshot

If the technology continues to advance and the public support is won, geothermal energy could be a game-changer — we could technically harness this energy anywhere. The DOE estimates that geothermal could provide around 5,157 gigawatts of electricity — about five times the electricity generation capacity in the US, enough to sustain us for years.

Or, if geothermal was used for direct heat, the DOE writes that it would be "theoretically sufficient to heat every US home and commercial building for at least 8,500 years."


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Geothermal energy poised for boom, as U.S. looks to follow Iceland’s lead

Some experts believe geothermal development could help reduce American emissions and help avert catastrophic climate change.

LONG READ

Ben Adler
·Senior Editor
Sat, January 7, 2023 

The Climeworks AG Orca direct air capture and storage facility, right, and Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, left, in Hellisheidi, Iceland, in September 2021.

 (Arnaldur Halldorsson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The small island nation of Iceland is known among environmentalists for its low greenhouse emissions — per capita, roughly one-third of those of the United States — thanks in part to its reliance on clean, geothermal energy derived from the more than 30 active volcanic systems that also power its famous hot springs.

Yet, in terms of total geothermal energy output, the U.S. is actually the world’s single biggest generator of geothermal energy — and some experts believe further development of that sector, including digging deep into the Earth, could reduce American emissions and help avert catastrophic climate change.


“It just really seems as though geothermal has an upward trajectory at the moment, in terms of innovation, funding, interest at all levels of business, but also the government,” Kelly Blake, president of the board of directors at Geothermal Rising, a geothermal-focused trade association, told Politico earlier this week.

“We’re kind of on the cusp of moving into the cost-effective range [for geothermal], just like we did with solar, over the next 20 years,” Roland Horne, a professor of earth sciences at Stanford University, told Yahoo News.

At present, geothermal energy, which is derived by using steam heat from underground to generate power, accounts for less than 1% of the U.S. electricity portfolio. Unlike wind and solar energy, which do not produce as much energy in certain conditions, geothermal energy is much more constant. Yet the cost of tapping it can be expensive in places that require extensive digging. In 2021, a kilowatt hour of electricity generated by geothermal cost an average of $3,991 in G20 countries, compared to $857 for utility-scale solar power and $1,325 for on-shore wind.

A geothermal plant outside Myvatn, Iceland, in on April 2017. (Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images)

Recent technological advances, such as “enhanced geothermal systems,” also known as EGS in the industry jargon, may solve that problem, however. Traditionally, geothermal has only been economical in places like Iceland, where heat and water are close to the Earth’s surface. In an EGS, much as in a fracking well, fluid is injected deep underground, causing fractures to open in the rock, which allows hot fluid to rise from far below.

That’s why in June, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $165 million investment in geothermal energy research and deployment, and the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law included $84 million for research into enhanced geothermal demonstration projects.

The private sector is also taking tentative steps into geothermal energy. A slew of geothermal energy startups have each raised millions of dollars in capital. Last month, the oil and gas giant Chevron partnered its Chevron New Energies with Sweden’s Baseload Capital to develop geothermal projects in the United States. In 2021, Chevron and BP invested $40 million in Eavor Technologies, a Canadian geothermal energy company. In November of that year, Hawaiian Electric, the Aloha State’s energy utility, unveiled a plan to increase its geothermal generation capacity to help meet its goal of a 70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

“It’s like solar: If you look at solar 20 years ago, nobody’s interested in solar because it costs too much. But as solar has grown, the cost has come down as it’s improved in scale,” Horne said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, is greeted by Iceland's minister of foreign affairs, Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson, at a meeting of Arctic Council Ministers in Reykjavik, Iceland, on May 19, 2021. (Brynjar Gunnarsson/AP Photo)

“It’s unbelievable how geothermal has gone under the radar,” Iceland’s environment minister, Gudlaugur Thór Thórdarson, told Yahoo News. Iceland’s use of geothermal for heating and a mix of geothermal and hydropower for electricity has given it uninterrupted access to affordable heat and power, insulating its economy from the natural gas price shocks being felt by the rest of Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Now, when you see the bills [in] electricity and the gas prices go up everywhere — at least, around us — it doesn’t affect us,” he said.

“This can be done all around the world,” Thórdarson added. “You don't need to be the most active volcanic island in the world to use geothermal.”

In January 2022, a Danish company signed an agreement to develop the largest geothermal heating plant in the European Union, and Icelandic companies are currently developing geothermal heating and energy projects in other countries. Under a partnership between Iceland’s Orka Energy Holding Ehf and China’s state oil and gas company Sinopec, the 390,000-person Chinese county of Xiong is being converted to rely solely on geothermal for residential heating.

Wells roughly 1,500 to 1,900 meters (4,900 to 6,200 feet) deep bring up water at 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit) that is used to heat homes. In an area where families previously burned coal for heat, the result has been a dramatic cut in carbon emissions and conventional air pollutants like smog. Orka and the Icelandic firm Mannvit are also building power plants that will produce electricity from geothermal in countries including Slovenia and Hungary.

“And we can do it in a lot of other places,” Thórdarson said. “It’s not very complicated. It’s just drilling for hot water.”

The Reykjanes geothermal power station is pictured on March 23, 2017, in Reykjanes, at the southwestern tip of Iceland. (Halldor Kolbeins/AFP via Getty Images)

Geothermal accounts for 6% of the electricity produced in California and 10% in Nevada. Hawaii, Utah, Oregon and Idaho have geothermal plants as well. Like Iceland, where 27% of the electricity and heating in 90% of homes comes from geothermal, these western states have volcanic activity that brings heat close to the Earth’s surface. That makes geothermal more economically viable than in the eastern half of the U.S., where heat tends to be buried deeper underground.

“The reason we have [geothermal] in the western states, and the reason they have it in Iceland, is basically geological advantage,” Horne said. “If you go to New York state, you don’t find that sort of recent volcanic activity, so to get to higher temperatures, you’ve got to drill a lot deeper, and that, of course, is expensive.”

Skeptics of geothermal’s potential note the technological challenges to drilling deeper.

“You have to remove all the rock you’ve cut from the hole, which gets harder and harder as the hole gets deeper,” writes Alice Friedemann, author of “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy,” on her website, Energy Skeptic. “The deeper you go, the hotter it gets, and the more expensive the drilling equipment gets, using special metallurgy.”

The Strokkur geyser in the Haukadalur geothermal park in Reykjavik, Oct. 21, 2022. (Jorge Mantilla/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Some energy companies hope to facilitate deeper drilling through EGS, which offers the possibility of a geothermal boom similar to the way fracking has transformed oil and gas extraction. The Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Office, which supports EGS research and demonstration projects, calls EGS “the next frontier for renewable energy deployment.”

“There have been more than 40 projects worldwide of so-called ‘enhanced geothermal systems,’” Horne said. “There’s even been some commercial ones in Germany and France, but at the moment, the cost is higher than other resources, which is what’s held it back.”

Horne expects that over the next decade or so, increased research and development in EGS will bring the cost down enough to make geothermal energy economically competitive.

“[Geothermal] is sort of the unwanted stepchild of renewable energy,” Geoffrey Garrison, vice president and senior geochemist at AltaRock Energy, a geothermal energy company, told Yahoo News. “The marginal cost of electricity from geothermal is more than solar and wind. Solar’s gotten so cheap, and wind has gotten so cheap, that when the power utilities look to renewables, those are the ones they go to.”

Since wind and solar are intermittent power sources, they need to be complemented with “peaker plants,” which burn coal or gas to even out the ups and downs in solar or wind production. Geothermal doesn’t have that problem.

An array of solar panels and windmills in Kern County, an hour north of Los Angeles, on Nov. 15, 2022, near Mojave, Calif. (George Rose/Getty Images)

Garrison is working on making geothermal energy cost-competitive by finding cheaper ways of drilling deeper, where the heat is greater and would deliver more electricity production. Altarock is building a demonstration project at the Newberry Volcano in Oregon, to bring up water of more than 400 degrees Centigrade from 14,000 feet below ground. At 374 degrees Centigrade, water reaches a state known as “supercritical,” at which it flows with the ease of gas but carries the energy density of a liquid, so it would provide far more bang for the buck when piped to the surface.

“You couple that with the fact that, at the surface, power plants work much more efficiently at higher temperatures,” Garrison said. “So a power plant using an input of 400C is going to be twice as efficient as 200C water.”

Bringing up water that hot in states like New York would require going 20,000 to 30,000 feet below ground. So, with support from DOE, AltaRock is currently working in a laboratory with a company called Quaise Energy on using millimeter wave technology — essentially a heat ray — to vaporize rock.

Whether anything that futuristic pans out, experts and industry observers say the U.S. geothermal energy industry may be on the cusp of its own, fracking-like boom.

Still, even enhanced geothermal could be limited in scope. The DOE estimates that there is potentially 40 times as much economically viable geothermal capacity as is currently generated in the continental U.S. But if that were all developed, it would still represent only 10% of current U.S. electricity capacity.

The John L. Featherstone Hudson Ranch Power 1 geothermal facility produces electrical power from underground volcanic-heated steam, on May 10, 2021, near Calipatria, Calif. (George Rose/Getty Images)

Skeptics point out that enhanced geothermal systems will have plenty of technical obstacles. Friedemann’s list includes, among other things, water escaping into the rock cracks, the need for materials that can withstand incredibly high temperatures, and the fact that new techniques that work in one area may not apply everywhere, given the variability in geology around the country.

Then there are the potential political and economic roadblocks, such as objections of nearby residents who — like those who have sometimes blocked fracked gas wells — may worry about chemical exposure and earthquakes that could be triggered by injecting liquid into the Earth. There are also steep costs that utilities would have to bear, such as bringing transmission lines to the sites of future geothermal power plants and the fact that a water-intensive process may not be feasible in areas with water scarcity.

“The depth to be drilled down to is so deep that it is likely this technology will always be too expensive and use more energy to drill than obtained,” Friedemann concludes.

Nonetheless, oil and gas companies are increasingly interested. “Baker Hughes, one of the largest drilling companies in the world, is expanding its geothermal business and has formed a partnership with Continental Resources and Chesapeake Energy — two giants in the independent oil and gas sector — to test whether they can profitably turn spent natural gas wells into geothermal facilities,” Politico recently reported.

A natural gas flare stack at an oil well in Midland, Texas, on April 4, 2022. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It makes sense, geothermal industry leaders say, because oil and gas companies have the technology and know-how to drill deep below the ground.

“Over the last 15 years, huge numbers of wells have been drilled in the United States because of the shale revolution,” said Sarah Jewett, head of strategy at Fervo Energy, a geothermal energy company that has raised over $177 million, told Politico. “All of this technology has evolved and grown, and that can be directly applied to geothermal power.”

That’s what Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was thinking when she implored oil executives at a December meeting of the National Petroleum Council to pivot to geothermal energy.

“Think: You drill holes, too,” Granholm said. “You go beneath the surface, you know where things are. And fracking really opens up a huge opportunity for enhanced geothermal.”

As Granholm told Yahoo News in November 2021, “The Holy Grail is to identify clean baseload power.” The search for that Holy Grail is on.

Tapping into the heat beneath Nevadans’ feet

Amy Alonzo, The Nevada Independent
April 29, 2024

Nevada (Verena Wolff/dpa)

This story was originally published by The Nevada Independent. Sign up for its newsletters here.


With highly fractured, permeable ground, the Great Basin’s geology makes it one of the most geothermally rich areas in the world. Hot fluid rises easily toward the surface, ideal for driving power plants, and present-day Nevada is the second-largest producer of geothermal energy in the nation behind California.

Tapping into hot fluids below the ground to spin turbines in power plants that generate electricity and boasting a lower carbon footprint than many other power sources, geothermal accounts for about 9 percent of energy generated in Nevada. But that number could be much higher, scientists say. The Silver State could produce about 30 gigawatts (GW) of geothermal power — about 30 times more than it does now.

“We truly live in a classic geothermal province, one of the largest on Earth,” said Jim Faulds, state geologist and member of UNR’s Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy, at a geothermal symposium hosted earlier this month at the university.

Established in 2000 and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the center aims to accelerate discoveries of commercially viable hidden geothermal systems in the Great Basin while reducing exploration and development risks.

The takeaway from the symposium’s panel of geothermal producers? Renewable energy developers are looking to the state to be an even larger player in the geothermal energy market.

“Nevada is uniquely well positioned in the world with geothermal,” said Kerry Rohrmeier, government affairs manager for Ormat Technologies, an international company based in Reno.

The DOE estimates the nation needs between 700 and 900 GW of clean power by 2050 for a decarbonized economy, and geothermal has the potential to account for nearly 10 percent of that.

The United States has the most installed geothermal capacity in the world, generating 3.7 gigawatts of geothermal power at plants across the West, including more than two dozen in Nevada. Yet geothermal accounts for just 0.4 percent of the nation’s overall electricity.


The production of geothermal energy has taken off in fits and starts because it’s not as simple as putting up a solar panel or wind turbine, Faulds said.

“The Earth is complicated. You think you have a decent resource, and it doesn’t pan out,” he said. “There’s those kinds of things that make geothermal a little bit slower than some other forms of renewable energy.”

But with a low carbon footprint and the ability to continuously produce energy, scientists and energy experts think it has the potential to be a game changer in the nation’s push for clean energy.

And Nevada, the state with the greatest geothermal resources in the nation, has the chance to lead that charge, according to scientists and geothermal energy producers. Recently, major power purchase agreements were signed between geothermal producers and entities such as the University of Utah, Google, Southern California Public Power Authority and NV Energy for geothermal energy produced in Nevada, with some contracts extending as long as 40 years.

“We are now in a new wave of geothermal exploration,” said Cary Lindsey, geothermal research scientist with the Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy.

Jim Faulds, state geologist and member of UNR’s Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy, speaks at a geothermal symposium April 16, 2024, at UNR. (Amy Alonzo/The Nevada Independent)

The heat beneath our feet

Across the Great Basin, particularly in northwestern Nevada, the state’s crust is being pulled apart due to tectonic forces. That pulling motion results in the state’s land mass growing by roughly 2 acres per year.

That pulling of the crust is good for geothermal energy production, Faulds said.

“If the crust gets pulled apart, it gets thin, and you’re bringing hot mantle closer to the surface and you have a high geothermal gradient,” he said.

Geothermal power plants tap into those hot fluids below the ground to spin turbines in power plants that generate electricity. Power can be generated from fluids with temperatures higher than 194 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nevada has 27 geothermal plants, mostly in the northern portion of the state, that combined have the capacity to generate up to 827 megawatts of power at any given time, although many don’t operate at full capacity and only about half that amount is transferred to the grid. A megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts, enough to power as many as 800 households.

That number is likely to grow substantially.

The Nevada Division of Minerals has received more than three dozen permit applications for geothermal exploration so far this year, a number fluid minerals manager Dustin Holcomb calls “just bonkers.”

Revenue from geothermal in the state is increasing as well. The state collected $14.3 million in geothermal leases and royalties last year, up from slightly less than $10 million in 2022 and $8.5 million in 2021. All geothermal rentals and royalties are split 50/25/25 between the state, the generating county and the federal government.

The DOE is pouring substantial funding into geothermal research across the Great Basin. The focus is largely on enhanced geothermal, which often utilizes horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technology developed by the oil and gas industry. This technology reaches heat in areas untappable by conventional geothermal plants, using drilling and hydraulic fracturing to allow fluid to move through hot rock that was previously impermeable.

The DOE has an enhanced geothermal test site in Utah — FORGE — focused on higher drilling speeds and decreased implementation costs. The technologies tested at FORGE are being utilized in Nevada at a project developed by Fervo Energy in partnership with Google and being used to power its data centers.

While the technology for enhanced geothermal continues to get fleshed out, the department is also focusing on conventional geothermal energy production.


UNR’s Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy’s INGENIOUS project received $10 million in federal funding to map out and build a playbook for conventional geothermal energy production — geothermal that doesn’t rely on fracking.

The goal is to map geothermally favorable resources across the Great Basin and create a template for geothermal exploration, Faulds said. Nearly half of the region’s geothermal resources are hidden, meaning they have no above-ground outlet such as a hot spring, and they are often discovered by accident, Faulds said, during mineral exploration or while drilling an agricultural well.

The Dixie Valley toad. (Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity)

The need for more data and environmental oversight

Geothermal isn’t a panacea though.

“Solar, wind, geothermal — they all have their own environmental impacts. Some are more well understood than others,” Jaina Moan, external affairs director for The Nature Conservancy’s Northern Nevada Field Office, said after the symposium. “There’s drawbacks to any technology we deploy.”

Historically, conventional geothermal exploration didn’t take surface expressions such as hot springs into consideration, as evidenced by the ongoing battle over a proposed geothermal plant in the Dixie Valley area that could threaten an endangered toad. Hot springs in the area are home to the endangered Dixie Valley toad, and a report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — the agency that listed the toad as endangered at the behest of the Center for Biological Diversity — found that operating a geothermal plant in the area would have significant impact in Dixie Valley by reducing or eliminating discharge into the wetlands.

But technology and science are increasing understanding of the Earth's subsurface, its complexity and the relationship between hydrology and geology and mitigating those issues, Faulds said, adding that creating a database documenting hot springs, nearby energy developments and ensuing environmental impacts — a database that is currently lacking — would benefit industry and conservationists alike and could help prevent environmental issues in the future.

But the federal government seems to be heading in the opposite direction.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Land Management adopted categorical exclusions to expedite geothermal exploration permitting. If the agency determines an exploratory project meets exclusionary criteria, the exploratory project can bypass the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and avoid drafting an environmental assessment for permitting exploration, although any subsequent development would require NEPA analysis.

The details of the exclusions have not been outlined by the Bureau of Land Management and is a confusing approach to policy making, Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a call with The Nevada Independent.

“Why would you issue these categorical exclusions without sharing what they are?” he asked. “Without having seen the exclusions, we don’t know if there’s an issue or not … but how are we to know?”

And ultimately, much of the renewable energy produced in the Silver State is exported across state lines, according to Faulds.

This exporting of geothermal power means that Nevada’s landscape — yet again — bears the brunt of clean energy generation while reaping just a fraction of the benefits.

This story was updated at 10:17 a.m. 4/25/24 to correct that Nevada receives 9 percent of its power from geothermal sources, not 4 percent.

Fracking-induced earthquakes possible in these Canadian regions, study says

Isabella O'Malley, M.Env.Sc - 

 The Weather Network

In March 2018, earthquakes caused numerous disruptions across Alberta — the power went out in parts of Sylvan Lake and homes in Red Deer shook as tremors travelled through the ground. This is a familiar phenomenon in parts of Western Canada and Alberta Energy Regulator later confirmed the seismic activity was caused by nearby hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Fracking is an oil and natural gas extraction process that can cause seismic activity and researchers from the University of Waterloo have now mapped the areas that are most likely to see fracking-induced earthquakes.

“We are trying to better understand and therefore better predict the phenomenon of induced seismicity during sub-surface engineering processes,” Maurice Dusseault, a professor of engineering geology at the University of Waterloo, said in a press release.


The map shows earthquakes related to hydraulic fracture. Major earthquakes are represented with red and white graphics. (Scientific Reports, 2022, 12:11551)

Essentially, the researchers have provided a deeper understanding of the risk the oil industry’s extraction practices — as well as some newer methods of putting carbon back into the ground — pose for the region. The area analyzed in their study, a 130,000 km2 section of western Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, is home to some of the world’s largest petroleum and natural gas reserves and is where most Canadian fracking activity occurs.
Areas in Western Canada have experienced some of the most intense fracking-induced earthquakes that have been reported worldwide. Recently, a 4.2 magnitude quake struck near Fort St. John, B.C. on November 30, 2018 and dozens reported light shaking. Based on the rapid change in underground pore pressure, the study concluded that fracking triggered this quake in Fort St. John.

The researchers revealed that this region will continue to face the risk of fracking-induced earthquakes in the coming years. “Injection-induced seismicity in this region has been increasing since 2010, as well as the rate of seismicity,” Ali Yaghoubi, study lead author and PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, told The Weather Network.


Medic trucks at entrance of fracking site in northern British Columbia, Canada. 

(Aaron Black/ The Image Bank/ Getty Images)

Fracking involves injecting a pressurized mixture of water, sand, and chemicals far below the Earth’s surface to break up the rock formation. The sand helps the rock fractures stay open, which allows natural gas to escape and travel through a pipe up to the surface where it can be used for energy.

Fracking is related to seismic activity because injecting fluid deep into the ground can destabilize fractures in the Earth’s crust and affect other aspects of the rock formation, such as pore pressure and areas of accumulated stress. Eventually, the stress can become too high and force tectonic plates to quickly slide past each. Waves of energy then travel through the crust, resulting in an earthquake and shaking that can be felt on the surface.

Watch: Scientists look to Earth’s interior for future carbon capture research

View on Watch

In addition to seismicity concerns, fracking processes are energy-intensive and in some instances have contaminated underground water with dangerous toxins and cancer-causing chemicals. Numerous multi-million dollar settlements have been paid out in the U.S. as a result of fracking activity that led to contamination of private properties and sickness in the occupants.

Environmentalists say that drilling for natural gas, a source of methane and carbon dioxide, is not a viable option as a future energy resource in a warming world. However, some sustainable strategies also involve injecting fluids underground, which could impact the stability of the Earth’s crust, namely geothermal energy extraction and underground carbon storage.

“Any injection project like geothermal and carbon sequestration is the same process. When you inject fluid, you change the stress and the pore pressure. So, if there is a fault in this region, it might be reactivated,” said Yaghoubi.

Grande Prairie, Alta. is home to Alberta No.1 Geothermal Project, which generates 10 megawatts of energy annually while offsetting over 97,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The study found that even though over 700 multistage hydraulic fracturing operations have occurred in the region, this city is in an area that is “far less prone” to experiencing significant levels of induced seismicity.

Yaghoubi explained that the research team’s analysis confirmed that the seismic stations have not detected earthquake activity from Grand Prairie drilling, which bolsters the reliability of using this region’s rock formations for geothermal energy extraction.

The researchers conclude that the map and study findings can be used for planning future underground energy extraction projects and wastewater disposal, which is essential knowledge as sustainable initiatives look to expand carbon sequestration and geothermal energy in Canada.

Thumbnail image: Drone view of a fracking rig pad in the U.S. (Joey Ingelhart/ iStock /Getty Images Plus)

GEOTHERMAL
There’s a Vast Source of Clean Energy Beneath Our Feet. And a Race to Tap It.

Brad Plumer
Tue, August 29, 2023 

Steam rises from the Roosevelt Hot Springs, near the FORGE and Fervo geothermal sites outside of Milford, Utah, on July 31, 2023. 

(Brandon Thibodeaux/The New York Times)


BEAVER COUNTY, Utah — In a sagebrush valley full of wind turbines and solar panels in western Utah, Tim Latimer gazed up at a very different device he believes could be just as powerful for fighting climate change — maybe even more.

It was a drilling rig, of all things, transplanted from the oil fields of North Dakota. But the softly whirring rig wasn’t searching for fossil fuels. It was drilling for heat.

Latimer’s company, Fervo Energy, is part of an ambitious effort to unlock vast amounts of geothermal energy from Earth’s hot interior, a source of renewable power that could help displace fossil fuels that are dangerously warming the planet.

“There’s a virtually unlimited resource down there if we can get at it,” Latimer said. “Geothermal doesn’t use much land, it doesn’t produce emissions, it can complement wind and solar power. Everyone who looks into it gets obsessed with it.”

Traditional geothermal plants, which have existed for decades, work by tapping natural hot water reservoirs underground to power turbines that can generate electricity 24 hours a day. Few sites have the right conditions for this, however, so geothermal only produces 0.4% of America’s electricity.

But hot, dry rocks lie below the surface everywhere on the planet. And by using advanced drilling techniques developed by the oil and gas industry, some experts think it’s possible to tap that larger store of heat and create geothermal energy almost anywhere. The potential is enormous: The Energy Department estimates there’s enough energy in those rocks to power the entire country five times over and has launched a major push to develop technologies to harvest that heat.

Dozens of geothermal companies have emerged with ideas.

Fervo is using fracking techniques — similar to those used for oil and gas — to crack open dry, hot rock and inject water into the fractures, creating artificial geothermal reservoirs. Eavor, a Canadian startup, is building large underground radiators with drilling methods pioneered in Alberta’s oil sands. Others dream of using plasma or energy waves to drill even deeper and tap “superhot” temperatures that could cleanly power thousands of coal-fired power plants by substituting steam for coal.

Still, obstacles to geothermal expansion loom. Investors are wary of the cost and risks of novel geothermal projects. Some worry about water use or earthquakes from drilling. Permitting is difficult. And geothermal gets less federal support than other technologies.

Still, the growing interest in geothermal is driven by the fact that the United States has gotten extraordinarily good at drilling since the 2000s. Innovations like horizontal drilling and magnetic sensing have pushed oil and gas production to record highs, much to the dismay of environmentalists. But these innovations can be adapted for geothermal, where drilling can make up half the cost of projects.

“Everyone knows about cost declines for wind and solar,” said Cindy Taff, who worked at Shell for 36 years before joining Sage Geosystems, a geothermal startup in Houston. “But we also saw steep cost declines for oil and gas drilling during the shale revolution. If we can bring that to geothermal, the growth could be huge.”

States like California are increasingly desperate for clean energy sources that can run at all hours. While wind and solar power are growing fast, they rely on fossil fuels like natural gas for backup when the sun sets and wind fades. Finding a replacement for gas is an acute climate challenge, and geothermal is one of the few plausible options.

“Geothermal has historically been overlooked,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said at a hearing. But with innovation, she added, “the potential is out there, I think, that’s pretty extraordinary.”

Fracking for Clean Energy

Near the town of Milford, Utah, sits the Blundell geothermal plant, surrounded by boiling mud pits, hissing steam vents and the skeletal ruins of a hot springs resort. Built in 1984, the 38-megawatt plant produces enough electricity for about 31,000 homes.

The Blundell plant relies on ancient volcanism and quirks of geology: Just below the surface are hot, naturally porous rocks that allow groundwater to percolate and heat up enough to create steam for generating electricity. But such conditions are rare. In much of the region, the underground hot rock is hard granite, and water can’t flow easily.

Three miles east, two teams are trying to tap that hot granite. One is Utah FORGE, a $220 million research effort funded by the Energy Department. The other is Fervo, a Houston-based startup.

Both use similar methods: First, drill two wells shaped like giant L’s, extending thousands of feet down into hot granite before curving and extending thousands of feet horizontally. Then, use fracking, which involves controlled explosives and high-pressure fluids, to create a series of cracks between the two wells. Finally, inject water into one well, where it will hopefully migrate through the cracks, heat up past 300 degrees Fahrenheit and come out the other well.

This is “enhanced geothermal,” and people have struggled with the engineering difficulties since the 1970s.

But in July, FORGE announced it had successfully sent water between two wells. Two weeks later, Fervo announced its own breakthrough: A 30-day test in Nevada found the process could produce enough heat for electricity. Fervo is now drilling wells for its first 400-megawatt commercial power plant in Utah, next to the FORGE site.

“Those are major accomplishments, in a time frame faster than we expected,” said Lauren Boyd, head of the Energy Department’s Geothermal Technologies Office, which estimates that geothermal could supply 12% of America’s electricity by 2050 if technology improves.

Latimer seemed less surprised. Before founding Fervo in 2017, he worked as a drilling engineer for BHP, an oil and gas firm. There, he became convinced that previous attempts at enhanced geothermal failed because they hadn’t taken advantage of oil and gas innovations like horizontal drilling or fiber-optic sensors.

Fervo didn’t invent many of the tools it uses. In Utah, drilling is conducted by Helmerich & Payne, a major oil and gas contractor that developed a high-tech rig with software and sensors that allow operators to precisely steer drill bits underground. Sixty percent of Fervo’s employees came from oil and gas.

“If we had to invent this stuff ourselves it would have taken years or decades,” Latimer said. “Our big insight was that people in geothermal simply weren’t talking enough to people in oil and gas.”

The hard part now is making enhanced geothermal affordable. The Energy Department wants costs to plummet to $45 per megawatt-hour for widespread deployment. Fervo’s costs are “much higher,” Latimer said, though he thinks repeated drilling can lower them.

Research at FORGE could help. Drilling deeper and hotter can make projects more cost-effective, since more heat means more energy. But existing oil and gas equipment wasn’t designed for temperatures above 350 degrees, so FORGE is testing new tools in hotter rock.

“No one else is willing to take the risks we can take,” said Joseph Moore, a University of Utah geologist who leads FORGE.

Enhanced geothermal faces other challenges, Moore cautioned. Underground geology is complex, and it’s tricky to create fractures that maintain heat and don’t lose too much water over time. Drillers must avoid triggering earthquakes, a problem that plagued geothermal projects in South Korea and Switzerland. FORGE closely monitors its Utah site for seismic activity and has found nothing worrisome.

Permitting is tough. While enhanced geothermal could, in theory, work anywhere, the best resources are on federal land, where regulatory reviews take years and it’s often easier to win permission for oil and gas drilling because of exemptions won by fossil fuel companies.

Still, interest is rising. California is struggling with electricity shortfalls and recently had to extend the life of three old, polluting gas plants. Regulators have ordered utilities to add 1,000 megawatts of electricity from clean sources that can run at all hours to backstop fluctuating wind and solar supplies. One electricity provider, Clean Power Alliance, agreed to buy 33 megawatts from Fervo’s Utah plant.

“If we can find it, we have a pretty big appetite for geothermal,” said Ted Bardacke, Clean Power Alliance’s CEO. “We’re adding more solar every year for daytime and have a huge build-out of batteries to shift power to the evening. But what do we do at night? That’s where geothermal can really help out.”

Underground Radiators and Superhot Rocks

Fervo faces fierce competition for the future of geothermal.

One alternative is a “closed loop” system, which involves drilling sealed pipes into hot, dry rocks and then circulating fluid through the pipes, creating a giant radiator. This avoids the unpredictability of water flowing through underground rock and doesn’t involve fracking, which is banned in some areas. The downside: more complicated drilling.

Eavor, a Calgary-based company, has already tested a closed-loop system in Alberta and is now building its first 65-megawatt plant in Germany.

“If geothermal is ever going to scale, it has to be a repeatable process you can do over and over,” said John Redfern, Eavor’s CEO. “We think we’ve got the best way to do that.”

In Texas, Sage Geosystems is pursuing fracked wells that act as batteries. When there’s surplus electricity on the grid, water gets pumped into the well. In times of need, pressure and heat in the fractures pushes water back up, delivering energy.

The most audacious vision for geothermal is to drill 6 miles or more underground where temperatures exceed 750 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, water goes supercritical and can hold five to 10 times as much energy as normal steam. If it works, experts say, “superhot” geothermal could provide cheap, abundant clean energy anywhere.

“The ultimate goal should be to get to the superhot stuff,” said Bruce Hill of the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.

But going that deep requires futuristic tools. GA Drilling, a Slovakian company, is developing plasma torches for drilling at high temperatures. Quaise, a Massachusetts-based startup, wants to use millimeter waves — high-frequency microwaves — to pulverize rock and reach depths of up to 12 miles.

“There are huge engineering challenges,” said Carlos Araque, Quaise’s CEO.

“But,” he added, “imagine if you could drill down next to a coal plant and get steam that’s hot enough to power that plant’s turbines. Replacing coal at thousands of coal plants around the world. That’s the level of geothermal we’re trying to unlock.”

Oil Interest

The U.S. government plays a leading role in nurturing risky new energy technologies. But lawmakers often overlook geothermal. The recent infrastructure bill provided $9.5 billion for clean hydrogen but just $84 million for advanced geothermal.

“It’s been hard for geothermal to fight its way into the conversation,” said Jamie Beard, founder of Project InnerSpace, a Texas-based nonprofit that promotes geothermal.

Beard has spent years trying to get oil and gas companies excited about geothermal. That’s slowly happening: Devon Energy invested $10 million into Fervo, while BP and Chevron are backing Eavor. Nabors, a drilling-service provider, has invested in GA Drilling, Quaise and Sage.

In Oklahoma, a consortium of oil and gas firms led by Baker Hughes recently launched an effort to explore converting abandoned wells into geothermal plants.

“Historically, the upfront costs and risks of geothermal have been challenging,” said Ajit Menon, vice president for geothermal at Baker Hughes. “But we think it’s got a huge role to play. And we have workers with the right skills, the right technology. You can see why it makes sense for us.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

UK

Proposed North Yorkshire fracking site becomes source of clean, geothermal energy

An underground well in the North Yorkshire village of Kirby Misperton was drilled but never fracked after a fightback by protesters. It has now taken on a "second life" as a source of clean, green, geothermal energy.

Tom Heap
Climate presenter @tomheapmedia
Saturday 21 October 2023


Tom Heap learns about how we can reuse gas wells for geothermal energy

Amid the fields of North Yorkshire, people who once eyed each other with enmity across rolls of razor wire are now walking side by side.

A proposed and highly contested fracking site has become the source of clean, green, geothermal energy.


In 2016, the North Yorkshire village of Kirby Misperton, like many others across Yorkshire and Lancashire, was a magnet for protest campaigners drawn by the threat of fracking.

Deep beneath the surface was a potential shale gas reserve and the way to extract it was to hydraulically fracture the rock, using water under enormous pressure.

If it went ahead, earth tremors were feared - and extracting fossil fuel was a certainty.

Steve Mason, then head of anti-fracking group Frack Free Ryedale, didn't like it.

"The proposal to frack in the area came along and, as a local resident, I looked into it," he said.

"The industrialisation, climate change and the need to get away from fossil fuels really motivated me."

Steve helped organise a protest locally and coordinated political pressure too - and, after two years of confrontation and 80 arrests, the opponents won.

The well was drilled but never fracked - leaving the site owners, Third Energy, with a deep hole in the ground.

Tom Heap with Steve Mason and Russell Hoare at the once highly-contested proposed fracking site

Its managing director, Russell Hoare, showed me the well and explained its second life. They are even re-using the two metre-high gas valve which caps the hole.

"This is the actual well that was drilled for fracking and it's about 3,000 metres deep, but the protesters were successful, and Steve was successful, in stopping that operation.

"But it's perfect for testing geothermal energy. There's hot water at the bottom. All we're doing is bringing it to the surface."

The well, in the North Yorkshire village of Kirby Misperton, is "perfect" for testing geothermal energy

How does geothermal energy work?

Geothermal energy comes from heat radiating from the Earth's molten core, with rocks beneath the surface warming by 30C for every 1,000 metres down.

So if you circulate water down a deep well and up again, you've got hot water on tap.

In a volcanic region, such as Iceland, you can get super hot steam for driving electricity generators - but here, they are more interested in showers and radiators.

The idea has garnered so much "green love" that Steve has now become a director of Third Energy.

"When we were campaigning, we had to say what the solution was," he said.

"You can't just say 'No, no, no' all the time. We need to be telling people this can be done and this is a solution."

The company, which spent a generation supplying gas into Yorkshire, including backing fracking, is now fossil fuel free.

Third Energy managing director, Russell Hoare, tells Sky News' Tom Heap he is not tempted to return to using fossil fuels

'No going back to fossil fuels'

But despite the huge profits being made by gas companies right now, Russell is not tempted to return to using fossil fuels.

"I think once you've seen what the potential is and you see people in the community come and feel the radiator and see the excitement, there's no interest in the company going back to fossil fuels."

On this site, the water heated by the Earth's core is making a couple of radiators nice and toasty in their shipping container "show home".

Once commercially exploited, they reckon this well could supply 300 homes, so we would need a lot more deep drilling to keep Britain warm.

Gas to geothermal conversion company, CeraPhi, thinks there are 680 wells in the UK ripe for conversion together with millions around the world, and that new wells can be sunk cheaply enough to expand further.

Such potential provokes interest. While we are on the site, chief executive Karl Farrow is showing around a group of academics and industry players.

They've had more than 100 such visitors in the past month.

Academics and customers being shown around the site in North Yorkshire - which has attracted 100 visitors in the past month

Karl told me: "Wells at the end of life can be repurposed and reused for energy.

"Using direct heat from the ground is a natural resource. It's there 24/7. It's baseload. It's on demand and it's infinite".

For now, geothermal energy is still very rare, but widespread cheap extraction of energy from the Earth's core would be a climate solutions gamechanger.

But more locally, what do the villagers of Kirby Misperton make of what is still an industry on their doorstep?

Tom Heap with Reverend Jackie Cray

Reverend Jackie Cray, a resident who was arrested during the protest, said she was "absolutely delighted".

"I think now the village has something positive to focus on, something that will provide local jobs.

"It does feel redemptive that something so bad - not just for the village, but actually for the environment and nationally - has completely turned full circle.

"And that's what redemption is in baptism. There's hope for the future and not just for our generation, but for the generations to come."

GEOTHERMAL

Why Fracking May Start To Embrace A New Form Of Energy


Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, January 9, 2023

With the global transition to clean energy in full swing, traditional renewable energy sources such as solar and wind have, unsurprisingly, been hogging the limelight. Unfortunately, one powerful renewable energy source has been conspicuously missing in the conversation: Geothermal energy. Despite its many obvious benefits, geothermal energy--which taps the heat within the earth’s crust--is criminally underutilized in the United States. In 2019, the U.S. generated ~18,300 GWh from geothermal sources. While that appears impressive at first glance, here’s the kicker: that figure works out to just 0.4% of U.S. power generation.

Geothermal energy has two primary applications: electricity generation and heating/cooling.

Geothermal energy can be found almost anywhere: other than seismically active hotspots, there is a steady supply of milder heat--useful for direct heating purposes--at depths of anywhere from 10 to a few hundred feet below the surface. This heat can be found in virtually any location on Earth since it has its origins from when the planet formed and accreted, frictional heating caused by denser core material sinking to the center of the planet as well as heat from the decay of radioactive elements. Indeed, just 10,000 meters (about 33,000 feet) of the Earth's surface contains 50,000 times more energy than all the oil and natural gas resources in the world. Further, unlike solar and wind which are intermittent energy sources, geothermal is highly reliable with a high capacity factor of 74.3% vs. 24.9% for solar and 35.4% for wind.

Related: Europe’s Warm Winter May Not Be Such Good News For Energy

Another key benefit: geothermal is much cleaner than any fossil fuel out there. Whereas geothermal power plants are frequently associated with sulfur dioxide and silica emissions as well as traces of toxic heavy metals including arsenic, mercury, and boron, the emissions profile of geothermal energy is nowhere near as bad as those of fossil fuels. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says geothermal power plants emit about 99% less carbon dioxide and 97% less acid rain-causing sulfur compounds than fossil fuel power plants of similar size. Further, geothermal power plants are frequently equipped with scrubbers to remove the hydrogen sulfide naturally found in geothermal reservoirs. It’s, therefore, hardly surprising that a country like Iceland--which derives ~two-thirds of its primary energy from geothermal sources--has only one-third the greenhouse gas emission per capita as the United States.

But the same technology that powered the U.S. shale boom might help unlock the full potential of U.S. geothermal resources.
Source: Center for Sustainable Systems

Geothermal ‘Shale’ Boom

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, continental U.S. has over 100 GW of geothermal electric capacity or 40 times the current installed geothermal capacity, meaning geothermal has the potential to supply 10% of the country’s power needs.

Unfortunately, high drilling and production costs compared to other clean energy sources has impeded growth for the geothermal sector. Indeed, in 2021, the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for geothermal energy in the U.S. clocked in at $84.80/MWh, much higher than $36.60/MWh for utility-scale solar and $40.90/MWh for onshore wind projects.

LCOE calculates the present value of the total cost of building and operating a power plant over an assumed lifetime. Even more worrying is the fact that geothermal development costs have been expanding, increasing by 47% from 2010-2021 at a time when solar PV costs fell 82%; onshore wind development declined 35% while offshore wind costs decreased by 41%.

Enter “enhanced geothermal systems” (EGS) …

EGS promises to not only boost the energy output of wells over a smaller footprint but also increase the areas where geothermal energy can be exploited.

For the most part, geothermal has only made economic sense in countries such as Iceland, where heat and water can be found close to the surface of the Earth. However, much like shale drilling, EGS creates a subsurface fracture system that increases the permeability of rock and allows for the injection of a heat transfer fluid (typically water). The injected fluid is then heated by the rock and returned to the surface to generate electricity. In June, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $165 million investment in geothermal energy research and deployment. The Enhanced Geothermal initiative by the DOE aims to lower the cost of EGS projects to $45 per MWh by 2035, thereby vastly increasing the competitiveness of geothermal power. Further, the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law included $84 million for research into EGS projects.

The private sector is also beginning to take tentative steps into geothermal energy, with a slew of geothermal energy startups raising millions of dollars in capital. Last month, Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) partnered its clean energy subsidiary Chevron New Energies with Sweden’s Baseload Capital to develop geothermal projects in the United States. Two years ago, Chevron and BP Inc. (NYSE: BP) invested $40 million in Canadian geothermal energy company, Eavor Technologies. In the same year, Aloha State energy utility Hawaiian Electric unveiled a plan to increase its geothermal generation capacity as part of its goal to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2030.

“It’s like solar: If you look at solar 20 years ago, nobody’s interested in solar because it costs too much. But as solar has grown, the cost has come down as it’s improved in scale. We’re kind of on the cusp of moving into the cost-effective range [for geothermal], just like we did with solar, over the next 20 years,” Roland Horne, a professor of earth sciences at Stanford University, has told Yahoo News.

But it’s not just about technology and lower costs, the global energy crisis has triggered a sense of urgency by governments everywhere to enhance their energy security.

“It’s unbelievable how geothermal has gone under the radar. Now, when you see the bills [in] electricity and the gas prices go up everywhere--at least, around us--it doesn’t affect us. This can be done all around the world. you don't need to be the most active volcanic island in the world to use geothermal” Iceland’s environment minister, Gudlaugur Thór Thórdarson, has told Yahoo News.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

FRACKING BY ANY OTHER NAME

For geothermal power, small earthquakes can cause a big headache

geothermal energy plants can add pressure into the subsurface,

Story by Doug Johnson • Yesterday
The Weather Network

Preventing earthquakes as geothermal gains steam

Duration 2:09
View on Watch

The Weather Network   Preventing earthquakes as geothermal gains steam
2:09

India Today Did you know about earthquake lights?
1:23

Alberta’s subsurface zone is getting a little crowded, potentially posing a challenge for geothermal energy operations in the province.

Companies in Alberta have been fracking, a form of waste water disposal in the oil and gas industry, since the 1950s. Carbon capture and storage projects have also been piping CO2 into subsurface formations like depleted gas reservoirs. More recently, plans to set up geothermal energy operations are poised to get involved as well, pumping geothermically heated liquid from and back to reservoirs deep underground.

All of these activities change the pressure and temperature in underground rock formations. If these get high enough they can cause earthquakes, though often small ones. The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) also offers a map of earthquakes, including so-called induced seismic activity. Factors like depth of the liquid, ground temperature, rock composition, and proximity to a fault line can increase the likelihood of induced seismic activity.

Recent research, which involved modelling Alberta’s subsurface, could be a tool to ensure geothermal operations steer clear from zones with a higher risk of seismic activity, and avoid inducing it themselves.

READ MORE: Fracking-induced earthquakes possible in these Canadian regions, study says

“We've learned over the years that either injection or production can give rise to induced seismicity. But it depends upon the initial conditions in the ground, and it depends upon the behavior of the materials involved,” Maurice Dusseault, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Waterloo and one of the paper’s authors, told The Weather Network.

In general, geothermal power involves pumping liquid — often salty water, sometimes with small amounts of petroleum products — from the subsurface from and back into the geological formation it came from, like porous rock. This liquid is usually heated either by the earth’s core or other processes like the friction between rocks. Once it is pumped up to the surface, the liquid, which can get hotter than 120 C, is used to heat water to produce steam which turns a turbine, producing electricity. The spent liquid is then pumped back into the earth to heat up again.

According to the AER, geothermal energy is expected to produce 294.6 GWh by 2030, enough to power 49,100 average Alberta homes (600 kilowatt hours) for a month. While the AER’s website notes that cheap solar and wind energy “could slow the pace of geothermal commercialization in the province,” it doesn’t rely on the sun shining or a windy day. As such, it can provide energy when solar and wind power can’t operate.

One upcoming development, the Alberta No. 1 geothermal project, is slated to open in the District of Greenview south of Grande Prairie, Alta. The recent paper was also provided to the AER as a risk assessment for their application.

“We're doing everything that we can to understand the risk before we build the facility,” Catherine Hickson, CEO of Alberta No. 1, president of the nonprofit organization Geothermal Canada, and an author listed on the paper, told The Weather Network.



For geothermal power, small earthquakes can cause a big headache© Provided by The Weather NetworkAn image taken from a 2023 paper which aims to predict the risk of seismic activity at Alberta geothermal operations. (Supplied)

In the research, Ali Yaghoubi, a researcher who was PhD student at the University of Waterloo’s department of earth and environmental sciences while writing the paper, developed a three-dimensional model of parts of Alberta near the site.

The team used data on several factors including stress and various material qualities such as strength using the analytics platform geoSCOUT. They paired this with data on the location of faults and past earthquakes. Yaghoubi explained that there’s a great deal of uncertainty in terms of these factors: temperature and material in the subsurface at different depths can vary from place to place, for instance. As such, the team developed statistical ranges to represent each factor in an area.

The team then ran different simulations in the model with various factors, including the pressure and temperature changes in the subsurface due to the geothermal plant’s operations. From there, the model can provide a probability of seismic activity in an area under certain conditions.

In all, the team found that the location, despite being located near an area with a lot of fracking, was not likely to see much seismic activity when the facility is up and running. Hickson noted that other geothermal operations could use this model as well when picking a site.

READ MORE: How a Supreme Court case could decide the future of Canadian climate policy

Dusseault said that seismic activity in Alberta, either caused or experienced by geothermal operations, are unlikely to cause damage to the facilities. Most of the subsurface activities in the province don’t happen deep enough, often between three and five kilometers, to cause large earthquakes.

Most likely, they’d be under magnitude four. Some of them could be felt, but would be unlikely to cause any damage. However, he noted, people nearby may find them unnerving.

“But if we were generating repeated earthquakes of magnitude, four, 4.1 … the people in the vicinity are not going to be happy campers,” he said.

Plus, Alberta has a “traffic light” system for seismic activity for developments like geothermal energy. Red, yellow, and green events all confer different magnitudes, which vary depending on the site, how close it is to infrastructure or communities, and other factors. Should a green seismic event occur at the site, nothing needs to happen. A yellow event means that the operation needs to change, for instance, how much pressure it’s producing in the subsurface. A red event (which is a magnitude 3.5 event or higher in the case of Alberta No. 1) means that the operation needs to cease operating altogether, and figure out what the problem is.

While earthquakes aren’t likely to cause any physical damage to a geothermal facility, it can represent a sizable practical and economic challenge. While this has yet to happen in Alberta, one 2009 case in Switzerland saw a geothermal project permanently closed its doors after a magnitude 3.4 earthquake occurred. Shutting down cost them, at the time, £5.35 million.

“Well, I mean, it’s financially catastrophic for projects to be shut down. So that’s a big financial incentive to avoid being shut down,” Dusseault said.

 

Geothermal Energy: A Win-Win for Democrats and Republicans?

By Haley Zaremba - Apr 18, 2024

• Geothermal energy has the potential to provide significant clean energy, but currently accounts for only a small portion of the global energy mix.
• 
  
• Enhanced geothermal systems and deep-drilling technologies are making geothermal energy more cost-effective and accessible.
• 
  
• Political divisions in the United States may hinder the rapid development of geothermal energy, despite its potential as a bipartisan solution to climate change.
• 
  

Geothermal energy is at the precipice of a major breakthrough in the United States. As technology rapidly advances, it’s seeming more possible than ever that the once niche energy production method could soon scale up for mass deployment in nearly any environment. Pilot projects are taking off across the country as federal funding rolls in for research and development of these new methods, but the future of geothermal remains mired in political uncertainty. While it currently enjoys bipartisan support, many pundits worry that a lack of cooperation could lead to geothermal’s demise before it even has a chance to get started at a commercial level.

Currently, geothermal energy accounts for just a tiny sliver of the world’s overall energy mix, representing just 0.5% of renewable energy globally. This is because traditional methods of geothermal energy production only take advantage of unusual geologic locations where heat from the Earth’s core bubbles up to the surface and is readily accessed, such as geysers or hot springs. But the Earth’s heat can be accessed from anywhere on Earth if you’re willing to dig for it. 

The issue, of course, is profitability. “To grow as a national solution, geothermal must overcome significant technical and non-technical barriers in order to reduce cost and risk,” says the introduction to a 2019 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report — GeoVision: Harnessing the Heat Beneath Our Feet. “The subsurface exploration required for geothermal energy is foremost among these barriers, given the expense, complexity, and risk of such activities.” 

Drilling deep enough to access sufficient heat to run a power plant is no small feat. But experimental ‘enhanced geothermal energy systems’ have made incredible leaps and bounds in recent years by adopting deep-drilling technologies from the fossil fuel industry, among other novel approaches. Using hydraulic fracking technology has been a major boon to the emerging sector’s bottom line, and investors are eagerly funding research into whether nuclear fusion could provide the next big geothermal tech breakthrough. 

The Biden Administration is particularly bullish about geothermal’s potential to contribute to the country’s decarbonization goals as a reliable baseload energy with zero carbon emissions. As such, the feds have introduced a sweeping initiative to speed up the development of enhanced geothermal systems (ESG). A 2019 Department of Energy report projected that if ESG progresses as planned, geothermal power could represent around 60 gigawatts of installed capacity in the United States by 2050 and 8.5 percent of the nation’s electricity – more than 20 times higher than current levels. 

There’s only one problem: politics. Currently, geothermal enjoys relatively bipartisan support, but there is some cause for concern that that spirit of cooperation won’t last, or won’t be strong enough to push geothermal investment forward quickly or intensely enough to make a dent in the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “While [geothermal energy] has begun to attract significant investment from oil companies and the Biden administration, political and ideological divisions are fueling tensions between its supporters,” The Hill recently reported.

In theory, geothermal energy is a win-win for everyone, on both sides of the aisle. The Democrats get forward movement on expanded and diversified clean energy deployment, and the Republicans get a novel form of energy production that stands to enormously benefit the fossil fuels industry and its considerable workforce that risks being orphaned by the clean energy transition. As geothermal energy tech fits perfectly with existing fossil fuel extraction methods, the oil and gas industry has a huge leg up on existing infrastructure and a trained workforce that could easily transition to geothermal production without skipping a beat. 

The only problem with a win-win solution in the United States is that neither party wants to see the other one win, regardless of their own benefit. And with the upcoming elections, a politicized geothermal strategy could soon be dead in the water. According to Jamie Beard, the head pro-geothermal nonprofit Project InnerSpace, the geothermal industry and its supporters have to do “some really fast, really hard work to figure out how to agree on a path — so geothermal doesn’t get stuck in lawsuits and friction and fail to launch, and we, you know, burn up the planet.”

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com