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State of the Geothermal Energy Industry, 2019

15th Annual State of the Energy Industry Forum

US Energy Association

24 January, 2019 State of the Geothermal Industry, USEA Forum 1

Will Pettitt, PhDExecutive Director

Geothermal Resources Council

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Supporting the Geothermal Community

• Why does society want geothermal power?– Valuable

– Cost effective

– Works well with others

– Negligible emissions

– Small land footprint

– Long-term, wage-earning jobs

– Boosts local economy

– Low risk for end user

– Grid reliability – we can do that!


ID 92823984 © Jacek Dudzinski | Dreamstime.com

Thank you all for being here and thank you to the USEA for the invitation and opportunity to speak

I’m a geophysicist by background, and have been working on industrial applications of geophysics and geomechanics for more than 20 years. As a geophysicist, I’m also a scientist, which means that I like slides! Hopefully some of the data I show will be informative.

The GRC is a professional association that supports the geothermal industry and promotes geothermal energy to a wide audience of government, industry, academia and the general public.

We have over 1200 members from over 40 different countries… that are professionals in the industry and corporate members consisting of the main power generation companies through service companies, consultants, as well as government agencies at federal and state levels, professors, teachers, students and members of the public

There are a whole ton of reasons why we want geothermal energy as a society and as a power industry… I’m not going to go through all these today, but be prepared if we meet in an elevator!

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The GRC represents the geothermal

community

24 January, 2019 State of the Geothermal Industry, USEA Forum 3From: GRC 2017 Photo Contest

So the GRC represents the geothermal community in the USA and internationally

In the past year we have reunified with the GEA, a sister association that represented the industry to policy makers, so the community now speaks with one voice

The geothermal industry a is tight-knit community that is passionate about the technologies that we have, the renewable-energy mission, and the future that our industry has

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GRC Ambassador Program

• Negligible Emissions

• Renewable

• Sustainable

Geothermal energy is heat from beneath our feet. Geothermal technologies and industries extract that heat for a wide range of uses. It can be from a few meters depth to thousands of meters depth.

Studies by the government have shown that the overall emission of green-house gasses are very low, even compared with other renewables.

Heat in a reservoir is recharged from deeper within the earth meaning that geothermal systems are truly renewable

Using re-injection of extracted fluids means that geothermal systems can be completely sustainable

This also means that the geothermal fuel source is effectively “free” – however, capital costs and risk profile of accessing that resource are high… a factor that is also found in oil&gas and mining industries.

>>>>>>>>

In CARB’s (California Air Resources Board) 2016 Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory

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Technical Support Document it is noted: “Certain facilities use a closed loop system (utilizing binary turbines) that keeps the fluids from direct contact with the environment, exchanging heat by means of a heat exchanger. These systems eliminate the emissions of CO2 altogether.”

DOE Website: “Modern closed-loop geothermal power plants emit no greenhouse gasses; life cycle GHG emissions (50 g CO2 eq/kWhe) are four times less than solar PV, and six to 20 times lower than natural gas.” – from Argonne National Lab. Life Cycle Analysis Results of Geothermal Systems in Comparison to Other Power Systems; Figure 16, page 43. August 2010. (https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/geothermal-basics)

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24 January, 2019 State of the Geothermal Industry, USEA Forum 5From: GRC Ambassador Program

From: GRC 2017 Photo Contest

Geothermal industries include:

Extraction of natural hydrothermal hot waters, at temperatures usually well above 100 degrees C and at great depths, to generate electricity

Direct use of cooler water for industrial and community heating systems, usually between 40 and 100 degrees C

Ground-source heat pumps to heat or cool individual buildings or houses

And a fourth type that I’ve separated here known as EGS, Enhanced Geothermal Systems, where deep reservoirs are engineered to circulate water in a rock heat exchanger. These systems are in a research phase but offer huge potential.

I’m going to focus the rest of this talk on conventional hydrothermal power generation, which touches a bit on EGS as part of the future of the industry.

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Geothermal is Flexible Baseload

• Reliable

• Stable

• Flexible

• Balancing

• Facilitator

Renewable Energy that WorksAround the Clock

. . .

. . .. . . .

From: GRC Ambassador Program24 January, 2019 State of the Geothermal Industry, USEA Forum 6

Geothermal power is a flexible baseload. It can provide the electricity grid with resiliency, reliability, and stability as we transition to renewable fuels.

It’s a stable 24/7 power source with Capacity Factors >70% in practice, higher than any other power resource except nuclear.

It can also be ramped up or down, so is flexible to give power when it’s needed and can help balance the grid when intermittent renewables come on or off.

I like to look at it as a facilitator of renewables allowing us to transition to more solar and wind.

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Example: Geothermal as Baseload in California


Renewables Watch for 10th December, 2018, California Independent System Operator, www.caiso.com

This example from California for a single day in December illustrates geothermal as a baseload giving a steady GW of power through the entire night and day. On this particular day it happens to be the largest renewable power source in California in terms of daily production. On typical days Wind, Solar and Geothermal all compete for this position.

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Opportunities in geothermal fall I think into three categories:

Technology and resource developmentImproving US policy, regulation, pricing and marketsInternational market development

If we can improve all three of those areas then I think we can see a large improvement in the geothermal industry and greater market share in terms of total power production

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Installed conventional geothermal

3.6 GWe*

Conventional geothermal under

development

1.2 GWe*

Conventional geothermal by 2050?

6 to 11 GWe**

Viable EGS potential

>100 GWe***

* After: GEA 2015, 2016** From: Young et al., 2017*** From: Ziagos et al., 2013

In the US, current power production is limited to the western states with California being the largest producer and having the largest geothermal field in the world.

However, the earth is hot everywhere it’s just how deep we want to drill and the economics. This map indicates the temperature of the subsurface and access to hot rock.

If commercial Enhanced Geothermal Systems become viable then we can tap into that resource almost anywhere.

Research projects into EGS are being performed all over the world. In USA there are two large projects funded by the DOE’s GTO and by Bill Gate’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures

So in the USA we have about 3.6GW of installed geothermal capacity. We have about 1.2 GW being developed.

A recent study at NREL estimates there will be 6 to 11 GW installed by 2050 using todays technologies and depending on the policy environment.

If EGS is successful then more than 100GW of power is conceivable according to government studies.

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EIA, 2017

Graphics courtesy of Jonathan Weisgall, Berkshire Hathaway Energy – data from various sources

• 2.3% of total renewable power generation and 0.4% of all utility scale generation (in USA in 2017).

• Increased 7% over the past 10 years.

That current geothermal power represents about 2.3% of the total US renewable power generation in 2017 and 0.4% of all utility scale generation.

The geothermal industry has a lot of potential. In California alone there is 3.5GW of known resources that could be developed now under the right economic conditions.

When we look at how these resources have been developed over the past 40 years we can see that in the US we initially led the world in geothermal energy, but then fell back on our rate of installation. The rest of the world however has continued to install geothermal power at a steady rate and now totals over 14GW.

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International Market Growth


Graphics courtesy of ThinkGeoEnergy – data from various sources

The US is still the largest producer in the world but is being caught up by other countries that also have good resources to develop.

The greatest developers of power over the past 10 years have been Turkey and Indonesia, followed by the US, Kenya, and New Zealand.

Development in Kenya has been supported by a USEA project in East Africa.

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Graphic courtesy of Carsten F Sørlie , Statoil/Equinor

Those countries that are currently developing power and have greatest resources are generally close to volcanic areas marked in red on this map.

Again, with the development of EGS then heat resources become more easily available and accessible to many more countries.

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Costs have been reducing but need more efficiencies to be directly cost competitive

The current conventional geothermal industry has a number of hurdles to overcome to be successful. Firstly, the cost of geothermal energy has been reducing but it’s clear that we need more cost efficiencies to be directly cost competitive with utility solar and wind.

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ID 67242499 © Flair Images | Dreamstime.com

As well as bringing costs down, both in operational and capital expenditures, there are other technology and resource development hurdles that could be improved.

Like oil & gas and mining projects, all similarly in the sub surface, geothermal projects have high up front project risks in terms of exploration and characterization.

There are also many technology areas that can be made more efficient and help reduce the risk profile and costs.

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• Lithium Mining

• Hydrogen Production

• Desalination

• Hybrid Solar

• O&G Co-production

• Mining

Increase Value of Geothermal Plants

Graphic courtesy of Berkshire Hathaway Energy – data from

various sources

In order to make more geothermal resources economically viable then the industry is looking at ways of increasing the value of geothermal plants where possible.

In the first example shown here from Berkshire Hathaway Energy the industry is looking at the co-production of Lithium through solution mining the geothermal brine.

The supply of lithium is becoming of national importance as battery markets and technologies develop.

The Salton Sea geothermal field in Southern California is shown to be very cost competitive and could produce a significant portion of the world’s lithium demand.

Other similar opportunities include:

Production of hydrogen for fuel cellsDesalinization for drinking water or to replenish lakes and reservoirsHybrid production with Solar – solar plant helps cover the operational energy consumption at warmest part of the dayCo-production with Oil and Gas as many operations are remote and in deep, hot, reservoirsEnergy production for Mining as many hard rock mines are in similar locations world-wide

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to geothermal resources

>>>>>>

Lithium Solution Mining for use in batteries – from California Energy Commission (CEC) workshop on lithium recovery from geothermal brine –BHE 10% and Salton Sea two thirds of the world’s lithium demand

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• Efficient Permitting and Leasing

• Long-term tax credit extensions

• Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)

• Consider the value of geothermal

• Renewable transmission path upgrades

• “De-risking” efforts for geothermal resources

• Investment in Research and Development

Improve Government Policies and Regulation

There are many areas where government policy and regulation could be improved at both the State and Federal levels to help develop geothermal resources, and I’m not going to go through them all.

The map shows the federal lands and you can see that many of the same areas where there is current geothermal development overlap. Making permitting and leasing of exploration more efficient through government agencies would be a big help.

Another big one on this list is to better consider the latest pricing and value of geothermal energy as a flexible high-capacity baseload power when agencies consider the energy mix, and as a facilitator to increase the total renewable package

And another one is to maintain and strengthen the investment in R&D through the DOE, NSF and other agencies

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Collaboration

Geothermal community needs to collaborate

– Flexible Baseload Power

– Oil and Gas Synergies

– Mining Synergies

– Renewable Energy Community


ID 47305549 © Rawpixelimages | Dreamstime.com

So to conclude, the geothermal community needs to collaborate

We need to work with regulators, policy makers and the power industry to better consider our prices and value

Our technology and resource development has many synergies with the oil and gas and mining sectors

And we need to work with the Renewable Energy Community as a facilitator to increase the total renewable energy mix

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Thank you!

24 January, 2019 State of the Geothermal Industry, USEA Forum 18From: GRC 2017 Photo Contest

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Documents

Pettitt GRC State of Geothermal Industry 24012019B...6XSSRUWLQJ WKH *HRWKHUPDO &RPPXQLW\ :K\ GRHV VRFLHW\ ZDQW JHRWKHUPDO SRZHU" ±9DOXDEOH ±&RVW HIIHFWLYH ±:RUNV ZHOO ZLWK RWKHUV