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I’m of the firm conviction, that without significant Geo-Engineering Technological solutions, our modern-day energy-dependent civilization is in for a world of hurt. Due to the acceleration effects of Climate Change. As they say, a lot of those impacts, are already baked into the cake.
Here is another of those significant Geo-Engineering Technological solutions, that may have a promising, as well as practical future:
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Jamie Beard is the founder and executive director of Project InnerSpace, a non-profit focused on expanding the use of geothermal energy around the world.
Previously, she founded and served as executive director for the Geothermal Entrepreneurship Organization, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded program that recruits talent from the fossil fuel industry to launch geothermal energy startups.
Beard earned her bachelor's degree from Appalachian State University and her JD from Boston University.
Transcript: www.wbur.org
BEARD: Geothermal is beneath us anywhere and everywhere in the world. And the only difference between Iceland and right here in Boston, where I'm sitting, is the depth that you need to drill to get to the heat, right? In some places, you have to go deeper. It's not right at the surface. But that - it's still there. You know, that's what's really, really exciting about it to me.
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
BEARD: The core of the earth is 6,000 degrees Celsius. It's the same temperature as the surface of the sun. But it's not 94 million miles away. It is right here beneath our feet.
ZOMORODI: Jamie Beard continues from the TED stage.
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
BEARD: There are teams of innovators that are working on figuring out how to most efficiently and effectively tap this enormous heat source beneath us. But in order to do that, we've got to figure out how to mimic the conditions that occur in places like Iceland that make geothermal easy to tap and extract and harvest. And those conditions are hot rocks, pore space in the rocks and water filling those pores. Those conditions seem simple, but they actually occur naturally in very, very few places in the world.
But the past couple of decades, there have been really disruptive and breakthrough technological innovations that enable us to engineer the subsurface to mimic Mother Nature's geothermal. So technological innovations like directional drilling, where no longer we can just drill straight down, but instead we can actually turn and steer drill bits to reach very precise and specific locations in the subsurface miles underground. And we can also fracture rock now, which means that we can create pore space where pore space does not exist naturally.
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BEARD: Yeah. So the second concept that's really interesting is closed-loop systems. And closed loop is actually - it leans really heavy on the use of directional drilling techniques. And that's essentially the ability to turn your drill bit and to aim for a specific place underground that you want to go. And you don't need to use fractures in closed loops because they're closed, right? And so you have an underground radiator that you circulate a fluid through. And that fluid is produced at the surface and runs a power plant just like in EGS.
(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)
BEARD: These are not moonshots. We are talking about making very incremental changes to existing technologies with an eye on more hotter and deeper geothermal developments. There are teams in the field demonstrating these concepts - teams like Sage Geosystems, a team that I mentor.
This is a well in - get this - Texas. This is a Texas pasture where you would never suspect the enormous geothermal resources that lie below. And this well is an existing abandoned oil and gas well that they have repurposed for this geothermal demonstration.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BEARD: In the past 18 months, more geothermal startups have launched than in the past 10 years combined. If even one of these startups is successful at proving a scalable geothermal concept, we are literally off to the races in developing this massive, reliable 24/7 clean energy source anywhere in the world.
ZOMORODI: So if we've got the technology, what's holding us back from a geothermal power boom? Jamie says it's politics. When we come back, her proposal for bringing together the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.
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BEARD: To scale geothermal, we need to efficiently, effectively and safely drill below the surface over and over and over and over again. And who does that now? The oil and gas industry does that now. The oil and gas industry is a global, specialized workforce of millions, backed by almost 200 years of breakthrough technological innovation, all aimed at producing energy from deep underground. You flip the switch and you have green drilling, and oil and gas keeps its current business model, the business model that keeps them firmly rooted in hydrocarbons now. They're doing what they know how to do, which is exploring for, drilling for and producing a subsurface energy asset.
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Transcript provided by NPR
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I know its not the perfect solution — but what nearly limitless, tap-able, clean energy source ever is.
But it doesn’t have the waste problems of nuclear; nor the storage problems of wind and solar.
And we have a built-in labor force waiting to be “re-purposed” — as the age of easy oil winds down.
The Climate Clock is ticking. We need to ramp up and switch over to clean energy sources ASAP — as fast as humanly, and technologically possible.
Tapping the resources of Geothermal waiting beneath our feet, just might help meet the pivot-point urgency, that our accelerating Carbon-Methane pipeline demands.
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PS. YES! I see Solar and Wind farms as a vital part of the solution too. As well as Carbon-scrubbing Technologies, like artificial trees, algae farms, and carbon sequestering.
GeoThermal is just another high-tech solution, that has a good chance of rapid deployment, given the capabilities of the drilling industry. And the lack of lead times, we as a civilization are facing — as that Climate Train hurtles down its tracks.
Every clean energy solution helps.
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