Share This Article

Facebook LinkedIn
Twitter Reddit
Print Email
Pinterest Gmail
Yahoo
Money Morning
×
  • Invest
    • Best Stocks to Buy
    • Stock Forecasts
    • Stocks to Sell Now
    • Stock Market Predictions
    • Technology Stocks
    • Best REITs to Buy Now
    • IPO Stocks
    • Penny Stocks
    • Dividend Stocks
    • Cryptocurrencies
    • Cannabis Investing
    • Angel Investing
  • Trade
    • How to Trade Options
    • Best Trades to Make Now
    • Options Trading Strategies
    • Weekly Trade Recommendations
  • Retire
    • Income Investing Guide
    • Retirement Articles
  • More
    • Money Morning LIVE
    • Special Investing Reports
    • Our ELetters
    • Our Premium Services
    • Videos
    • Meet Our Experts
    • Profit Academy
Login My Member Benefits Archives Research Your Team About Us FAQ
  • Invest
    • Best Stocks to Buy
    • Stock Forecasts
    • Stocks to Sell Now
    • Stock Market Predictions
    • Technology Stocks
    • Best REITs to Buy Now
    • IPO Stocks
    • Penny Stocks
    • Dividend Stocks
    • Cryptocurrencies
    • Cannabis Investing
    • Angel Investing
    ×
  • Trade
    • How to Trade Options
    • Best Trades to Make Now
    • Options Trading Strategies
    • Weekly Trade Recommendations
    ×
  • Retire
    • Income Investing Guide
    • Retirement Articles
    ×
  • More
    • Money Morning LIVE
    • Special Investing Reports
    • Our ELetters
    • Our Premium Services
    • Videos
    • Meet Our Experts
    • Profit Academy
    ×
  • Subscribe
Enter stock ticker or keyword
×
5 Ways to Beat the Fed (and Crush Inflation)

Email this Article

Send with mail | ahoo instead.
Required Needs to be a valid email
Required Needs to be a valid email
Just 2% of U.S. Geothermal Power Could Supply 2,500 Times Our Energy Needs
http://mney.co/1d0qFHq
Required Please enter the correct value.
Twitter

Just 2% of U.S. Geothermal Power Could Supply 2,500 Times Our Energy Needs

By G.S. Early, Money Morning • November 28, 2012

View Comments

Start the conversation

Comment on This Story Click here to cancel reply.

Or to contact Money Morning Customer Service, click here.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Some HTML is OK

There's a story about a king in India.

He asks the royal leather worker to cover his kingdom in leather, so wherever he walks, he will never stub his toes.

The leather worker pauses and then suggests to the king that if he covered his feet in leather he could walk wherever he chose, anywhere in the world.

This is the story about the first pair of shoes.

It's emblematic of the way many people look at renewable energy. Right now we are trying to cover the world with solar panels or wind turbines.

But what if we decided to look at the world as its own solar panel?

I'm talking about geothermal power and the good news is we already have the technology to tap into it.

So how big is U.S. geothermal power?...

MIT estimates that just 2% of the heat below the United States at depths of 3-10 kilometers would be enough to supply 2,500 times the nation's current energy needs.

The compelling part about geothermal energy is that it isn't as cost-intensive as solar or wind. It's also far more reliable - available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at consistent, predictable levels.

That means more geothermal energy can be uploaded to the grid far more efficiently and on a larger scale than either solar or wind.

This technology is also proven and is already in commercial and industrial use west of the Mississippi and for residential applications around the globe.

And now, there are two factors that have the potential to put this clean energy resource on a level far beyond its previously limited scope.

Geothermal Power for Your Home

There are two types of geothermal that work off the same underlying principle.

Residential geothermal - the kind you would run a house on, uses the "earth-as-solar panel" concept.

In this case, geothermal heat pumps take advantage of the solar energy stored just below the surface of the ground.

If you're a solar power fan, then consider this a passive solar unit because the earth is a highly efficient photovoltaic panel: 40% - 60% of the Sun's energy is directly absorbed into the ground.

In cold months the pump pulls the heat from the earth and heats your house. Residual heat is used to heat your water.

Conversely, in the summer months the heat is pulled from the house and pumped into the earth loop where it dissipates into the earth and the cool solution in the pipes acts as a refrigerant.

This video from GeoSystems does a good job of giving you an overview of the process.

Believe it or not, with geothermal energy, you can cut your heating and cooling bills by 70% and have virtually free hot water whether you live in southern Florida or northern Minnesota.

In fact, its potential for residential use is so strong both the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency have dubbed individual geothermal as "the heating system of the 21st Century."

Industrial Scale Geothermal Power

Industrial geothermal is a slightly different animal.

It uses the heat in the earth's core to generate electricity much in the same way that hydroelectric power sources are used to run cities.

Whereas residential geothermal uses the differential between surface temperature and Earth's stable temperature found 100 feet below the surface, industrial geothermal drills down two miles or more to tap into the heat in the earth's mantle.

It works by bringing up the natural steam found at those depths to the surface, where it powers a turbine and generates electricity.

Geothermal Power

Right now, most industrial geothermal operations are located around "The Ring of Fire" or the tectonic plates that comprise the U.S. West Coast and the coast of Asia on the other side of the Pacific.

Up to now this resource has been tapped at relatively shallow depths where it was easy to access geothermal energy near the surface.

For example, the Geysers in northern California contain a set of 22 fields run by Calpine Corp. (NYSE: CPN) and represents about one-third of all geothermal energy production in the world.

U.S. Geothermal Power and Beyond

The new developments that are changing the face of geothermal are:

1. New Drilling Technologies: These new methods are allowing access to fields that were inaccessible before. The new technologies that oil and gas drillers have been developing to access super-deepwater reserves, and horizontal drilling and unconventional methods to access shale deposits now mean that geothermal isn't restricted to conventional "near-surface" sources.

For example, the New Madrid tectonic plate that runs down the Mississippi River runs too deep for conventional drilling to access. But now, with new technology these types of plates and fields can be tapped.

2. Repurposing Old Projects: Again, thanks to efforts by the oil and gas industry and the scientists they employ, a new source, or more accurately an old source, for new geothermal has been discovered, or re-discovered. Or repurposed.

In this case, the U.S. Department of Energy spent approximately $180 million some two decades ago looking into the thermal energy that exists at the bottom of some abandoned oil and gas wells.

They focused their efforts in Texas because there were 1 million-plus abandoned oil and gas wells with reservoirs of hot brine or hot sea water, down about two miles. That sea water also contains residual amounts of natural gas.

Using that research, companies have recently returned to see if they could get that hot brine to come up those abandoned well bores and make electricity with newer technologies, that flash off the natural gas, make steam to create turbine electricity. Finally, they use the thermal energy from that brine to make electricity again in an organic rank and cycle type of engine.

And now there are a few companies that are looking at harvesting this energy in a practical, commercial way.

One of them is Greenwell Power Corporation. This Canadian-based company is planning to tap abandoned wells and generate electricity from the hot brine and from flashing off the gas using conventional mobile turbines.

Their first project, slated for late spring 2013 with the first wells in the San Antonio region and along the coast, is expected to generate 3 megawatts of energy from each well. The broader plans include approximately 75 wells each one 3 MW of power.

This one is worth watching since it means any abandoned well can be repurposed and doesn't need to rely on deep drilling or tectonics. In short, its geothermal power that can pop up anywhere there's a rig.

As far as publically traded companies, the big players to look at include: Calpine, Ormat Technologies (NYSE: ORA), and NV Energy Inc. (NYSE: NVE). Meanwhile, on the Asian side, Primary Energy Corporation (PENGF) currently has three projects in the Philippines.

Related Articles and News:

  • Money Morning:
    2 Tech Stocks for the Next 10 Years...and Neither One is Apple
  • Money Morning:
    Investing in Uranium Stocks: Time to Buy the Industry's Biggest Player
  • Money Morning:
    Investing in Defense Stocks: Why Lockheed Martin (LMT) Is Too Big to Fail
  • Money Morning:
    Investing in Smart Grid Technology: Two Stocks to Power Up Your Portfolio

Join the conversation. Click here to jump to comments…

Login
guest
guest
1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Kevin Eber
Kevin Eber
10 years ago

Well, you got it half right, or maybe 2/3. There is indeed a huge amount of thermal energy below our feet, as the MIT report indicated. It's also true that geothermal power is a fairly cost-effective technology when there's an existing underground reservoir of either hot water or steam that can be readily tapped for energy … the heat transfers to the water or steam, providing an easy way to transport that heat to the surface.

Unfortunately, such underground reservoirs are fairly rare. So, to tap the heat that lies beneath most of our feet requires a technology quite similar to the fracking technology currently being used to tap natural gas and oil. I think fracking was actually developed for this purpose, but unfortunately, it's more difficult to use in the hot, typically hard rock that exists in geothermal hot spots. So technology to exploit the heat beneath our feet&emdash;called "hot dry rock" technology by some, "enhanced geothermal systems" by others&emdash;hasn't really been successful to date. There are some projects in Australia that are trying to make it work, but they've had their share of drilling problems. The bottom line, though, is that this technology will NOT be cheap, at least not anytime in the future.

0
Reply
LIVE
Visit Money Morning Live


Latest News

January 19, 2023 • By Money Morning Stock Research Team

These Stocks Could Go To $0

January 9, 2023 • By Money Morning Stock Research Team

The Government Is Pouring $391 Billion Into These Stocks - Buy Now

December 27, 2022 • By Money Morning Staff Reports

6 IPOs in 2023 You Can’t Afford to Miss
Trending Stories
ABOUT MONEY MORNING

Money Morning gives you access to a team of market experts with more than 250 years of combined investing experience – for free. Our experts – who have appeared on FOXBusiness, CNBC, NPR, and BloombergTV – deliver daily investing tips and stock picks, provide analysis with actions to take, and answer your biggest market questions. Our goal is to help our millions of e-newsletter subscribers and Moneymorning.com visitors become smarter, more confident investors.

QUICK LINKS
About Us COVID-19 Announcements How Money Morning Works FAQs Contact Us Search Article Archive Forgot Username/Password Archives Profit Academy Research Your Team Videos Text Messaging Terms of Use
FREE NEWSLETTERS
Total Wealth Research Power Profit Trades Profit Takeover This Is VWAP Penny Hawk Trading Today Midday Momentum Pump Up the Close
PREMIUM SERVICES
Money Map Press Home Money Map Report Fast Fortune Club Weekly Cash Clock Night Trader Microcurrency Trader Hyperdrive Portfolio Rocket Wealth Initiative Extreme Profit Hunters Profit Revolution Warlock's World Penny Nation Quantum Data Profits Live Trading Alliance Trade The Close Inside Money Trader Expiration Trader Vega Burst Trader Flashpoint Trader Darknet Hyper Momentum Trader

© 2023 Money Morning All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright of the United States and international treaties. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including the world wide web), of content from this webpage, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Money Morning.

Address: 1125 N Charles St. | Baltimore, MD, 21201 | USA | Phone: 888.384.8339 | Disclaimer | Sitemap | Privacy Policy | Whitelist Us | Do Not Sell My Info

wpDiscuz