Category Archives: Geothermal

Do We Need Nuclear Power? Part 3

Aerial photo of Indian Point, courtesy Columbia University Earth Institute

Indian Point, Aerial view, courtesy Earth Institute

Indian Point’s two reactors, operating since 1974 and 1976, generate up to 30 percent of New York City and Westchester’s power. Yet the plant remains controversial.

March 1, 2012, Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law, moderated  the Forum on the Future of Indian Point held at Columbia Law School. The forum asked whether Indian Point was “Safe, Secure and Vital or an Unacceptable Risk?”   Renee Cho covered it on the Columbia Earth Institute blog, here.

I was not there. However, have some thoughts …

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100% Clean Renewable Energy in 25 Years

Dolphins surfing
Follow LJF97 on Twitter Tweet The  observable fact that dolphins surf is something we humans need to think about.

Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, coined the term “Negawatt” when he said “The cheapest unit of energy is the one you don’t have to buy.” The next cheapest, the “Nega-Fuel-Watt” is the unit of energy that doesn’t require fuel.

  • Insulation Nega-Watts allow less power to heat or cool a given space.
  • Solar Nega-Fuel-Watts transform photons into electricity or heat.
  • Wind Nega-Fuel-Watts transform moving particles of air into electricity.
  • Geothermal Nega-Fuel-Watts transform the heat of the earth into heat or electricity, or use thermal gradients to cool a space.
  • Hydro Nega-Fuel-Watts transform moving particles of water – currents – to generate electricity.
100% Clean Energy
100 Gigawatts Wind $300 Billion
100 GW Marine Hydro $300 B
50 GW Solar $200 B
50 GW Geothermal $200 B
200 GW Equiv Efficiency $200 B
A Smart Grid $100 B
500 GW or GW Equiv. $1.3 Trillion

I’m not sure if Lovins first public use of the term Negawatts was in Montreal in 1989 (here) or in Foreign Affairs in 1976 (abstract here), whether 22 or 35 years ago. Regardless, our current energy paradigm today is the hard fuel based path Lovins criticized 35 years ago. While we are turning away from nuclear, as documented by Mycle Schneider in the WorldWatch Report (here) – the latest radioactive nail in the radioactive coffin being the fatal explosion at a reprocessing facility in France on Monday, Sept. 12, 2011 (here) – we burn literally mountains of coal and oceans of oil and gas (According to the DoE, in 2010 we burned 1,085,281 thousand short tons of coal and 15,022 thousand short tons of coke (here). And there are consequences.  We suffer oil spills, polluted water, mercury, coal mine disasters, nuclear power plant melt-downs, we fight wars …

Wind and solar don’t burn fuel. The winds blow, the sun shines, you put a widget in the path of those moving particles in the air or those photons of light and you get electricity – without greenhouse gases, radioactive wastes, toxic wastes, and it costs less. So the question is not ‘Can we meet our energy needs with clean, sustainable renewable energy technologies?” The real question are How? How Much? And How quickly?

We could do it in 25 years if we wanted to.  And we should, for our children, our grandchildren, the cetaceans with whom we share our oceans, and other charismatic megafauna with whom we share our world.

Renewable Energy, The Wall St. Journal, Faux News

George Gilder, writing in the Wall Street Journal, 11/18/10, in California’s Destructive Green Jobs Lobby complained of the defeat of the repeal of the “Global Warming Solutions Act.”

“Economic sanity lost out in what may have been the most important election on Nov. 2—and, no, I’m not talking about the gubernatorial or senate races. … This was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state’s economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That’s a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new energy cap dooms the state to bankruptcy.”

Gilder also wrote: “California officials acknowledged last Thursday that the state faces $20 billion deficits every year from now to 2016.” That’s $120 Billion over the next 6 years. This is a state of 37 million people (US Census). It should be able to borrow that money at 4% or 5% – which is $3083 per capita. Borrowed at 5% interest over 20 years, it’s $20.35 per person per month – which does not seem to be enough to push someone into bankruptcy.

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Deep Geothermal

Dig 5 km, hit 200º C. Watch out for earthquakes!Actually, it’s a bit more complicated.  You dig two holes, each 5 km (3 miles) deep.  You lay a pipe in each hole, then pump water down into one hole, and up the other. The water heats up, and can turn a turbine. 

Geothermalfor heat is old news. Teams at Virginia Tech and Johns Hopkinsare studying atDeep Geothermal

for space heating atCrisfield (click here )and at the Institute of Geophysics ETH, in Zurich, Switzerland(click here).

Deep Geothermal could, theoretically, use the earth’s heat to generate steam for industrial process power. But is this feasible? What is the temperature at the bottom of a coal mine or an empty oil well? How hot is it down there? With what efficiency, if any, can this differential be tapped to boil water to create steam to turn a turbine to generate power? How deep a hole do we need to drill? What are the potentially harmful side effects?

According toNew Energy News, Article

Deep Geothermalis potentially the cheapest and most consistent, predictable form of renewable energy. The geothermal sources being probed are 400 degrees Fahrenheit and 3 miles into the earth’s crust (not the 1000 degree heat of the earth’s core). A scientist compared it to scratching the earth’s “shell.” Geodynamics Limited and Geothermal Basel (English) are racing to be the first to produce electricity in commercial quantities from the deep hot waters. When drilling reaches the deep enough, cold surface water will be pumped down to lift the hot water up where its steam will drive generators.

The Geopower Basel project is being drilled near Basel, Switzerland. Geodynamics Limited, Queensland-based, is drilling near the southern Australian town of Innamincka. Who will finish first?