🌋⚡ A Quick Q&A on ... advanced geothermal energy with Arnab Datta

'American industry has unique advantages — we’ve pioneered technologies like fracking and horizontal drilling that allow us to dig deeper and create reservoirs.'

Quote of the Issue

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The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised

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Q&A

🌋⚡ A Quick Q&A on ... advanced geothermal energy with Arnab Datta

In the quest for clean energy, geothermal has never been the center of attention (it currently produces just 0.4 percent of the electricity in the US). Geographical constraints severely limited its potential to natural hydrothermal sites. Now, thanks to “next generation” technology, geothermal is having a moment of its own. No longer confined to niche locations, huge  amounts of energy can potentially be generated by replicating the heating process where natural conditions ordinarily wouldn’t allow. Deeper drills can now access greater levels of heat, further from the earth’s surface. Could geothermal energy be on the road to becoming a major global power source?

To learn more about its potential impact, and the innovations taking place to maximize its capacity, I asked Arnab Datta a few quick questions. Datta is the director of infrastructure policy at the Institute for Progress, and is a senior counsel at Employ America. The two organizations recently joint-published his series, Hot Rocks: Commercializing Next-Generation Geothermal Energy.

1/ How commercially viable is the current geothermal energy technology compared to other renewable energy sources?

Conventional geothermal energy, often called “hydrothermal,” has been around since the 1960s and is generally commercially viable, at least on a cost basis. The challenge is geographical viability. Conventional geothermal relies on the presence of three factors: heat, fluid, and permeability. Power can only be produced in places where water naturally moves through heated rock near the earth’s surface, like hot springs. This is why only regions in the US like the Mayacamas Mountains or Hawaii, or countries like Iceland or Kenya produce significant geothermal energy—there is a natural limitation. As of 2022, only about 0.4 percent of the US’s electricity came from geothermal energy.

“Next-generation” geothermal energy gets past this by utilizing modern drilling techniques to dig deeper, fracking to create reservoirs and permeability, and then injection techniques to place fluid. Companies are demonstrating technological viability with demonstration projects. But compared to mature technologies like solar and wind, on a cost basis, they are not commercially viable—yet. The cost curve is rapidly coming down. Fervo Energy recently cut down its drilling time by 70 percent.

2/ Why is the US uniquely well-positioned to take advantage of geothermal energy?

Heat from the earth is available anywhere, if you can drill deep enough. The challenge is drilling and then finding techniques to inject fluid into a permeable reservoir (including ones artificially created). 

That’s where American industry has unique advantages—we’ve pioneered technologies like fracking and horizontal drilling that allow us to dig deeper and create reservoirs. An ecosystem of federal support through research and development funding, cost-sharing for early drilling, and risk-taking by companies like Mitchell Energy in the Barnett Shale led to the shale revolution. Now, we’ve got a new set of top companies like Fervo Energy, Quaise, and Sage Geosystems willing to experiment and take on the technological risk. We still have a world-class public research and development sector that can put public resources into solving technical problems.

Finally, because of the success of our oil and gas industry, we have a workforce that can transfer its skills to geothermal, and we have an already-developed supply chain for fracking and horizontal drilling. There are still gaps in the regulatory space and fiscal space, but with the right policy interventions, the US is primed to lead a geothermal revolution.

3/ Can geothermal technology be implemented globally? Are there any geographical or geological factors that could limit its deployment in certain areas of the world?