Bullet Points: Is America warming up to Geothermal Energy?
IS AMERICA WARMING UP TO GEOTHERMAL ENERGY?
MONDAY, JULY 13, 2009
Senator Merkley (D: Oregon)
The U.S. consumes ~25 percent of the world’s oil annually, with only 3 percent of the world’s reserves available domestically.
The U.S. currently spends $1-2 billion a day – it got up to $2 billion a day on foreign oil: We could create a lot more jobs spending that money here in the United States on renewable energy.
Clean energy creates more jobs than fossil energy. In Oregon, clean-energy jobs are growing at seven times the rate of the rest of the Oregon economy.
Creating far more efficient buildings, both new buildings and revamping our existing buildings, creates a tremendous number of jobs and saves a tremendous amount of energy.
If we had residential cars – our passenger cars – capable of 30+ miles on electricity – electricity from a renewable source – and had regenerative breaking – we would cut, by about 80 percent, the amount of emissions that passenger vehicles produce;
With no complicated cap-and-trade, or cap-and-invest, or cap-and-anything.
In Klamath Falls, Oregon, geothermal energy has been a way of life for decades. The city has utilized the natural energy source to heat homes and buildings.
They have partnerships with various industries, including one that uses a technique to remove pesticides.
It’s used, in another case, to power a local brewery.
And it’s being looked, also, as a complement to wind farms in order to help balance out the load demand and the production – as the wind power comes and goes.
The Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) is working to become the first campus in the U.S. that has a sizable geothermal energy generator.
OIT has used geothermal for decades to heat their buildings.
OIT wants to become the first campus in the country with all of its energy generated through geothermal.
OIT estimates an annual savings of a half-a-million dollars a year, which, for a small college, is a very sizeable sum.
A couple months ago, President Obama announced a geothermal project south of Bend, in Central Oregon that will provide the funding needed to explore new geothermal techniques that inject water into areas of potential geothermal power generation, in order to produce the steam necessary to drive turbines, create energy, power thousands of homes.
Ed Wall – Department of Energy - Geothermal
As recently as two years ago, the geothermal program, at the Department of Energy, was scheduled to be phased out.
The budget request for 2007 and 2008 was zero.
Recovery act funding in the amount of $400 million will allow DOE to pursue a broad portfolio
One that ranges from heat pumps at the low temperature end through low temperature hydrothermal coproduced fluids from oil and gas operations.
Thirteen of the 21 selections that were announced from our solicitation last fall that were announced in October went to new partners that had not worked with the geothermal office at DOE before.
Along with that we’re seeing innovative teaming and we’re actively seeking cross-industry collaboration –
Oil and gas industry;
Mining;
Sequestration for areas of common interest and common application of technologies.
In the area of resources, USGS put out a study last October of resources – the Western third of the United States – and along with 40 gigawatts of conventional hydrothermal, they identified more than 500 gigawatts as the potential for EGS in the Western United States.
For conventional resources we have to find the 30,000 megawatts that USGS has in the western third of the United States
But we don’t know exactly where it is because there is no surface expression, no bubbling hot spring to give it away.
One-quarter of the stimulus funding allocated to geothermal is committed to innovative exploration technologies to find conventional resources and bring them online quickly.
Access to transmission infrastructure is one of the major factors: cost of capital, load consideration, transmission corridors.
There are issues surrounding permitting, leasing and regulation.
West of the Mississippi in the United States, more than 50 percent of the land is federal land.
In some states like Nevada it’s closer to 90 percent.
To put together a prospect to produce geothermal also often means assembling a patchwork that may consist of federal, state and private land.
There are national policy issues:
A continuity of policy – a good example is a production tax credit. We have seen recent extensions of one to three years.
With the geothermal development cycle it’s more like five to seven years long.
As far as induced seismicity goes, anytime you have fluid injected or removed from the ground you are going to have micro earthquakes –
Something geothermal shares with oil and gas production and carbon capture and sequestration.
A New York Times article just a couple weeks ago highlighting the risks of development in any proximity to communities.
We’re undertaking additional analysis related to that.
Water use is also a concern across much of the Western United States.
The USGS may be assigned to develop classification standards for resource maps that other renewables like wind and solar have in place.
A national geothermal data system which will be a virtual database linking data sets around the country is being pursued to help with geothermal exploration and production.
CO2 as a working fluid for EGS is being examined.
DOE is looking at better ways of reservoir management utilizing advanced modeling, tracers, better imaging of fluid flow and fractured characterization.
DOE is working with universities and industry:
to better define the needs of the workforce of the future and
to aid workforce development by putting together cross-cutting geothermal curricula.
Commissioner John Wellinghoff – Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
The map of geothermal hotspots that’s traditionally and generally considered around the world as the areas of highest geothermal activity.
These areas align with the volcanic and seismic faults along the Pacific Rim and in Africa and in Asia
Areas that have traditionally thought to be the most profitable and the most prospective for geothermal resource development.
There are 30-40,000 megawatts of potential of traditional geothermal resources in North America –
Of which 3500 megawatts to date have been developed.
The Newberry volcano is one of the hottest geothermal resources in my opinion in the United States and it remains underdeveloped, primarily due to political issues rather than technical issues.
The higher temperatures are primarily in the Western United States where you have hotter temperatures closer to the surface.
In the great basin and along the faults in California, Oregon and Washington you have much higher potential temperatures -
Therefore you don’t have to drill as far to look for fluids that you can bring up at higher temperatures to produce electricity –
The deeper you drill, the hotter the water.
There are literally billions of gallons of water produced every year in a number of states in the Southeast that have the potential to produce 25 to 30 gigawatts of electrical energy simply by using the existing fluids from oil and gas wells.
In the state of Texas alone, there have been some estimates that it may be as high as 177 gigawatts of energy –
Which would be more than twice the amount of energy used in the entire state of Texas at a 2-percent recovery rate
Potential is extremely high.
1 megawatt of geothermal is worth 3 megawatts of wind
Because at geothermal due to geothermal’s capacity factor of 90+ percent. Wind’s capacity factor is about 30 percent, meaning that geothermal runs all the time; wind only runs when the wind blows.
A much higher utilization and capacity factor with geothermal equates to a better resource to use from a standpoint of providing a constant stream of power if you need a constant stream of power over a period of time;
Whereas, wind power production is intermittent and less predictable.
Andrew Sabin - Navy
There is one geothermal resource on a DOD installation - the Coso Geothermal Field at the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station
Has an installed capacity of 270 megawatts, making it the third-largest geothermal field in North America.
In 1979, the Navy awarded a contract to California energy Company to develop a geothermal field at Coso and to supply power to the Navy, with a demand of 20 megawatts.
In June 1993, the Coso field peaked, with a producing average of greater than 270 megawatts.
Currently, field-wide production totals over 40,000 gigawatt hours of delivered power.
Plant online availability is above 98 percent.
During the 30-plus years of Coso’s exploration and development, neither industry activities nor Navy testing were impacted or compromised.
The power facilities can be operated remotely off-site without encroachment to Navy range operations or mission security.
The military’s initiative is to increase energy demands on military installations through a renewable resource by the year 2025 to 25%.
And are now incentivized to attempt to develop solar, geothermal, and wind power.
Kermit Witherbee – Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the mineral estate on the East Coast, mostly lands under the Forest Service and acquired lands.
By the end of FY 2008, we had 530 geothermal leases, a little over 820,000 acres.
Fifty-eight of those leases are in producing status at that time.
Fifty-two of them actually produce electricity in the 34 power plants,
of which about half of them are actually located on federal lands.
The capacity – this is a net capacity that gets out into the grid, instantaneous, is about 1275, 1280 megawatts, give or take about –
That’s enough to supply electrical needs of about 1.2 million homes.
The royalty income from those 58 leases was about $14 million.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 significantly changed how BLM leases for geothermal.
We now lease competitively at a first round for electrical generation.
The public nominates the lands for leasing;
BLM decides if the lands are available for leasing and -
what special stipulations to mitigate environmental impacts and protect the environment would go onto those leases.
California is the largest producer of geothermal because of the geysers in the Imperial Valley,
But Nevada has the most power plants and operations.
About four-tenths of a percent of the total U.S. electrical supply comes from geothermal.
It’s about the same amount as from solar.
Wind I understand is up to about 1.8 percent.
However, geothermal is base load; it’s on 24/7, high capacity.
BLM operates under two major statutes.
National Environmental Policy Act
Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.
BLM, through the process, combines them into a single document for land-use planning.
The land-use planning process is for allocation of the resources to decide what lands are open, what lands are closed to leasing – and also, if they are open, what special stipulations are required.
77 percent of BLM and the Forest Service managed lands are available for leasing.
BLM sold 150 leases; they all sold.
Some of the bids were over $14,000 an acre down to a low of $2 an acre.
The total acres are over 440,000 acres, which is a little more than half of all of the acres that are out there.
