Industrial heat has always been the awkward uncle at the decarbonization dinner table. Loud, a bit old-fashioned, and responsible for about 20% of global carbon emissions, but nobody really wants to talk about him. The climate conversation has been dominated by glitzier topics like electric vehicles and green hydrogen, the … [continued]
Mark Z. Jacobson has proposed converting the entire energy production of the world to clean energy. He regards “Wind, Water, and Solar” (WWS) as the only methods that can do this practically, quickly, and economically. Of those, hydroelectric power is the only relatively continuous source, but it cannot be easily … [continued]
With US energy policy in a state of flux, US clean energy investors are picking up their money and taking it overseas.
When China starts scaling a technology at massive levels, the rest of the world should take notice. That’s not a geopolitical statement, it’s a thermodynamic and logistical one. China doesn’t mess around when it comes to heat, power, and infrastructure. And in the case of ground-source heat pumps used for … [continued]
Renewable energy resources are kicking gas power plants to the curb in the US, with solar capacity additions leading the way over the next three years.
One of the things I’ve found amusing while researching this series on geothermal is how much the sector’s rhetoric mirrors the natural gas and nuclear industry’s. It’s not the flex they think it is, highlighting clearly that they are the poor cousins trying to compare favorably to the affluent and … [continued]
A research team at Penn State University indicates that geothermal energy supports the case for repurposing abandoned oil and gas wells as long duration, compressed air energy storage systems for wind and solar power.
Deep drilling isn’t optional for enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), it’s the whole point. To understand why, think of the Earth’s crust as a hot soup. Near the surface, it’s merely lukewarm, barely useful beyond warming your house if you’re lucky. Go deeper, however, and temperatures rise rapidly, roughly 25 to … [continued]
Despite being mostly underground, enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are having a moment in the sun. At its core, EGS involves drilling deep into hot, solid rock formations, artificially creating permeability by fracturing the rock, and circulating fluids to harness and produce power from the Earth’s heat. Unlike conventional geothermal, which … [continued]
Geothermal energy has long been the quiet workhorse of the clean energy sector—steady, reliable, and utterly unsexy compared to its flashier solar and wind counterparts. It’s also been stubbornly constrained by geography. Traditional geothermal requires naturally occurring underground reservoirs of hot water and steam, which means it’s only viable in … [continued]
