By way of introduction, I must say that I'm a bit of a renewable energy enthusiast and I usually give myself a fair amount of credit for staying more or less aware of the latest developments in alternatives and renewables.
But the news (pdf) I saw yesterday from the Geothermal Energy Association made me feel like I'd been asleep under a big rock somewhere.
When completed, these projects will add over 7,000 MW of baseload power capacity; enough to provide electricity for 7.6 million people, or 20% of California’s total power needs, and roughly equivalent to the total power used in California from coal-fired power plants. (emphasis added)
This is exciting stuff.
So which states are out in the lead on this? Progressive states, mostly, right? Take a look at this:
Nevada continued to be the leading state for new geothermal energy, with over 3,000 MW under development. The fastest growing geothermal power states were Utah which quadrupled its geothermal power under development, New Mexico which tripled, Idaho which doubled, and Oregon which reported a 50% increase. In addition, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas all reported their first geothermal projects compared with a year earlier.
Utah? Idaho? Lousiana, Mississippi and Texas getting into the business?
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting these Republican-voting states are getting into geothermal because they've decided that liberals were really right all along and it's time to join up with the tree huggers.
Like alot of things, I'm guessing it's much more to do with daily economic reality than pure politics. Like everyone else, they need electricty and lots of it. Their businesses need electricity. And some really smart business folks know a good deal when they see one, and know how to get out ahead of a trend (same source, pdf):
"The federal stimulus, tax incentives, and strong state renewable standards continue to fuel the growth in geothermal power," said [GEA's Executive Director, Karl] Gawell. "Many geothermal developers are building several projects in the US, and the cash grant provides them an effective incentive that quickly reduces their debt -- an important fact in the present economic recession."
This is exciting stuff. For all sorts of reasons. These projects are creating green and green-related jobs, 29,750 of them, according to the GEA. This is a major success for the green economy goals of the stimulus package. The megawattage is seriously impressive, and represets a major advance in deliverable renewable power. And maybe, just maybe, because of some really thoughtful government policy decisions, renewable energy might be about to transcend politics.
For those of us that get all jazzed about a windfarm coming online with a bunch of 1.5 MW turbines spinning away, this really gets the blood pumping. Granted, these new geothermal plants won't be online tomorrow, but do you have any idea how many wind turbines it takes to generate 7,000 MW of power? Since most on-shore windfarms use turbines cranking out 1.5 MW each, you'd need more than 4,600 turbines, but you also need wind, 24x7x365, year after year after year.
This announcement means that geothermal isn't just for folks living in Iceland anymore. It's not just for homeowners putting in little heat pumps with ground loops buried under their back yards or driveways (don't get me wrong, those are very cool too). You don't have to be living near a volcano.
Geothermal plants just sit there, doing what they do, generating their megawatts, at relatively low operating and maintenance costs. Newer (closed cycle) plants, which are being invested in and are coming online, have essentially no emissions. They don't need to have the sun up and shining, they don't need wind, and the resource (the earth's heat) will never run out. Using hot dry rock methods, they can be built almost anywhere (surface conditions permitting), meaning we can prevent the power loss from transmission, which over long distances can be as much as 30%. Not only that, 10 years ago someone really smart figured out you can use sequestered CO2 to make the process work even better.
Now I'm a realist, and I know that all renewable energy sources have issues. The perfect source has yet to be discovered. Wind turbines are said to kill birds and some folks say they make noise and are ugly. Solar panels are made using materials that are really not very nice to the environment, especially if managed/regulated poorly. Hydro often causes all kinds of problems, like silting, habitat destruction or even an earthquake. Geothermal requires a power plant, and most are not that aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and some forms of that technology use lots of water.
But c'mon, folks, after 29 more miners lost their lives digging for coal, can we wait for the perfect source to be developed? Can't we move onto a roadmap to a different energy future, even if we don't know what the end of the road looks like (or even if there is an end of the road)? How many more miners must lose their lives, how many more towns need to be engulfed by fly ash sludge? How much more arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and chromium do we need to spew into the atmosphere before we say, "Enough"?
Why does something have to be perfect before it can replace something awful?
We ought to be thinking about this long and hard while we are contemplating a major expansion of nuclear for the first time since Three Mile Island. Nuclear. Really? We still haven't figured out where to put the nuclear waste. No hole has been determined to be deep enough, no container stable enough to keep us and it separated for the thousands or millions of years it will take for it to render itself safe. And the cost, totally being borne by the taxpayers, as the conservatives whine for expanding nuclear while balancing the budget. Never mind those two goals are at odds over the long term.
Here's where I see the progressive agenda in all this. Geothermal needs a much larger place in our political dialog, in our rally speeches, in progressive budget goals, even in public education. It seems like it flies under the radar, compared to wind and solar. All the politicians give speeches talking about wind and solar, but geothermal, not so much. We need to elevate the public's awareness of geothermal as a source of mega/gigawatts, that it's not just some silly thing that liberal scientists do just to prove they can do it, that it absolutely can significantly add to the electrical generation portfolio of this country.
We need to keep moving with wind and solar, too, but geothermal can scale, and that's what we've been missing for years. Progressive talking points always seem to feel the need to apologize for not having a scalable alternative to Big Fossil. We always have to throw in research and development when we talk about renewables. No longer.
So continue the R&D, it's necessary, but let's step away from the timidity caused by the misperception that we don't have a scalable renewable solution. Let's get moving with what scales. Let's keep building wind turbines, even as we try to make them produce more power in the same footprint.
But at the same time, we must reject nuclear as a responsible, reasonable power source. We must get on a path that ends our dependence on coal burning. Let's keep that precious resource - natural gas - for something more useful than making a turbine spin.