5 Comments

While geothermal is certainly worth pursuing as a carbon emission free energy source, it would need to develop to the point of completely displacing all coal and oil fired power plants before making a significance difference. Current annual carbon dioxide emissions are over 35 billion tons. Nine gigatons over 30 years will not have much impact considering over 1,000 billion tons (1000 gigatons) will have been released at the current annual rate.

Expand full comment

Yes! But such perspective is a downer, and usually people omit it. Instead, it's about building excitement, as with the opening quote above:

"Geothermal is hot! Project Drawdown projects that geothermal power will contribute to the avoidance of 6.15 GT to 9.17 GT of CO2 emissions globally between 2020 and 2050."

The numbers look impressive (to two decimal points! It must be legit), and figuring out the scale requires you do math (2050-2020? Gigatons divided by years? Fractions?) and know about that global totals. Most people won't know or bother.

My vote: It's the responsibility of authors of these articles to frontload that information for everyone. And it's not hard to do.

Just give people a clearer global perspective. Say, OK, sure. Let's be optimistic. 9GT. Globally. Over 30 years. That's 300MT equivalent per year. Out of 35GT, that's 300/35,000 - 0.85%. Just shy of 1% of the solution. Or hey, let's get some US state scale perspective: 300MT is about one California's worth of emissions. https://www.eia.gov/state/rankings/?sid=CA#series/226

Wow. Just realized this means California is almost 1% of world emissions.

Anyway. It's not hard to give people endgame scale perspective.

Need to normalize that.

Speaking of: this is my mission! To normalize perspective & scale clarity default. Also to help people see the connection between GT, GWyr and the Ground Game. #FirstGigawattDown

Expand full comment

Don`t miss out on GA Drilling https://planet-a.com/startups/ga-drilling/ They developed a new type of contactless drill that destroys hard rock using high-powered plasma pulses. Compared to legacy mechanical drilling, this contactless technology is key, as it overcomes the “tripping” challenge.

Their innovative technology is now able to exploit ultra-deep geothermal energy and could give us access to a permanent supply of renewable heating, cooling and power, provided anywhere, as well as providing a future-proof transition for skilled oil and gas workers, as existing infrastructure can be easily used. Their plasma driller leads to reducing drilling costs for geothermal projects, allowing the energy price to remain competitive even at deep depth.

Expand full comment

All we do is run off looking to generate questionably new clean energy sources. Would be some day in dreamland when human western societies started to cut back on energy production. use less, create less, do with less. There is NO substitution for less,it's more stupid, more of a future on this planet and its children, more spendingt ime away from the Screaming Screens. This geothermal has potential for some good and plenty of potential for some bad effects on the climate. anything drilling into or near drinking water aquifers is a mistake. The planet already has a fresh water issue.

Expand full comment