what is it, how could it fight climate change?
The iconic Old Faithful Geyser springs to life (every 90 minutes) in Yellowstone National Park’s Upper Geyser Basin on September 18, 2022, in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Sitting atop an active volcanic caldera, Yellowstone, America’s first National Park, is home to more geological hydrothermal features (geysers, mud pots, hot springs, fumaroles) than are found in the rest of the world combined.
George Rose | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The future of clean, renewable energy is underneath our feet. Quite literally.
The core of the earth is very hot — somewhere between 7,952 degrees and 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit at the very center. If we can drill down from the surface into what’s called superhot rock, then we could access the heat of the earth and turn it into a massive source of zero-carbon, always available energy.
A new report out Friday from the Clean Air Task Force, a non-profit climate organization, finds that this category of clean, baseload superhot rock energy has the potential to be cost-competitive with other zero-carbon technologies — while also, very critically, having a small land footprint.
The Clean Air Task Force commissioned a non-profit geothermal organization, the Hot Rock Energy Research Organization, and an international clean energy consultancy, LucidCatalyst, to estimate the levelized cost of commercial-scale superhot rock electricity. They determined that it could eventually cost between $20 and $35 per megawatt hour, which is competitive with what energy from natural gas plants costs today.
This is not reality yet. Currently, there are no superhot rock geothermal energy systems operating and delivering energy, Bruce Hill, the chief geoscientist at Clean Air Task Force and the author of the report, told CNBC. But money is flowing into research projects and companies that are working to develop the technology.
The report posits that superhot rock energy can be commercialized in the 2030s, and argues that its unique set of features — it’s a clean source of inexhaustible baseload energy with a small footprint — make the investment worthwhile.
“It will take public and private investment similar to those being allocated to nuclear, carbon capture, and hydrogen fuels,” Hill told CNBC. “Geothermal programs receive far less funding from Congress and the U.S. Department of Energy than these other programs. Superhot rock geothermal isn’t even in the decarbonization debate — but given a decade or two of aggressive investment it could be producing baseload power — local, energy dense, clean-firm (baseload) and competitive,” from a price perspective.
The graphic here shows that if technology develops allowing the drilling into hot, dry rock, superhot rock geothermal energy can be available virtually anywhere.
Graphic courtesy Clear Air Task Force
Regular versus superhot geothermal
While energy from superhot rocks is not being used now, geothermal energy is being used in a few places…