U.S. Seeks to Expand Geothermal Power

The Department of Energy is planning to announce an initiative today that seeks to spur the development of the geothermal energy industry, a highly productive but still evolving source of renewable energy.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson will present his GeoPowering the West project and set out ambitious goals that call for geothermal energy to provide as much as 10% of the West’s electricity by 2020, supply the electric power or heating needs of 7 million homes by 2010 and double the number of states with geothermal power facilities to eight by 2006.

Richardson will also announce $4.8 million in grants to advance research in geothermal energy technology, which taps heat energy from reservoirs under the Earth’s surface, officials told The Times. Because of its unique geology, this renewable energy source is available mainly in the West.

“Geothermal power is one such resource that calls out for greater utilization,” Richardson says in a prepared statement. “It is a clean, reliable and renewable energy source. In fact, it is already a significant supplier of electricity to the Western grid with 2,800 megawatts installed in California, Nevada and Hawaii. Still, that is only a fraction of its potential.”

California’s plants are the nation’s most productive. Led by The Geysers, a field of plants near Santa Rosa, the state produces about 1,600 megawatts of power, providing roughly 7% of California’s yearly power needs. The grant program will fund research in California as well as Texas, Utah, North Dakota, Idaho and Nevada.

Thus far the main impediments to the industry’s growth have been locating the best places for drilling and making the process cost-effective.

The initiative will be funded from DOE’s $23-million budget for geothermal projects. Officials said both the overall budget and the money for the plan will be increased in the next fiscal year.

Administration officials believe that public education about the benefits of geothermal energy is as important as helping the industry finance research to bring down production costs and increase output.

“There is something to the bully pulpit,” said a high-ranking Energy Department official, who asked not to be named. “These are not self-evident technologies. There’s a lot of education of the public to be done. Geothermal deserves a hearing, just as the other renewable sources have gotten.”

Other renewable energy sources are wind, solar, hydroelectric and biomass, which uses biological products to produce energy or heat. One example is burning corn cobs.

Richardson’s energy-production goals were called “pie in the sky” by at least one industry consultant, Lou Capuano, president of Thermasource, a drilling and engineering company in Santa Rosa. But federal officials say the emphasis is on moving geothermal power--often called the stepchild of the renewable energy sources--in the right direction.

“These are pretty aggressive goals, but it’s going to take good public policy and research to get this technology where we know it can be,” said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Washington-based Geothermal Energy Assn.

Geothermal electric production began in Italy in 1904, but the first geothermal plant in the United States, at The Geysers, didn’t come on line until 1960. The Geysers remains the largest producing geothermal plant in the world.

While California is the top producer of geothermal energy, Nevada is projected as having the most potential because of its extensive heat reservoirs. “Nevada is the Holy Grail,” said the DOE official.

Capuano said geothermal’s advantages are its minimal environmental impact and the relative simplicity of the technology.

“What we do is nothing more than mining heat,” he said. “Enhanced geothermal systems inject water down a hole and bring it out as steam, then pump the condensed water back. It’s almost like a perpetual motion machine. Our challenge now is to find the reservoirs . . . and to make this more economical. Right now we are competing with natural gas. It’s hard for anybody to compete with natural gas, as cheap as it is.”

Capuano said experts estimate that only 10% to 15% of the total reserves have been explored.