Interior Department To Open 190 Million Acres to Geothermal Power

October 31, 2008 | 8 Comments

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) announced last week that it plans to make more than 190 million acres of federal land in 12 western states available for geothermal energy development. DOI's Final Geothermal Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) identifies 118 million acres of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and 79 million acres of National Forest System lands that could be opened to future geothermal leasing, potentially leading to 5,540 megawatts (MW) of new geothermal power capacity by 2015.

The PEIS excludes wilderness areas, wilderness study areas and national parks. It will amend 122 BLM land use plans to allow for geothermal development, while allowing the Forest Service the discretion of evaluating geothermal leasing and considering whether to amend its land use plans.

The document also includes site-specific environmental analyses for 19 pending geothermal lease applications for seven sites in Alaska, California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. The plan will take effect via a Record of Decision, which will not be issued until the governors of the 12 states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — are able to review the document and resolve any conflicts with state plans, programs or policies.

The Interior Department's estimates of potential geothermal power production may actually be low, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). In late September, the USGS released its first assessment of geothermal resources in more than 30 years. The study found that identified geothermal resources in the West could produce 9,057 MW of power, while another 30,033 MW of power could be generated from conventional geothermal resources that have not yet been discovered.

The use of Enhanced Geothermal Systems, which involves creating or expanding a geothermal resource through the high-pressure injection of a fluid, opens another 517,800 MW to potential development. For comparison, the U.S. currently has an installed geothermal power capacity of about 2,500 MW.

One example of a company willing to explore new resources is Ormat Technologies Inc., which has secured 15 of the 16 tracts offered for lease on Mount Spurr, Alaska, an active volcanic region about 75 miles west of Anchorage. Ormat is also working with DOE on a project to produce geothermal power using hot water from a producing oil well. Ormat recently validated the feasibility of the technology at the Rocky Mountain Oil Test Center near Casper, Wyoming.

In recent weeks, geothermal power development in Utah has hit several milestones. Raser Technologies Inc. announced last week that it has completed major construction of its Thermo geothermal plant, the first commercial geothermal power plant built in Utah in more than two decades. The 10-MW facility combined 50 modular, low-temperature PureCycle power units from UTC Power, which meant that power plant construction could be completed in just a few months.

Utah is also slated to host a new 100-MW geothermal power plant, to be located on lands owned by the Northwest Band of the Shoshone Nation. LotusWorks, an Irish company, will work with Meridian Clean Fuels and the tribal-owned Shoshone Renaissance LLC to develop the plant. Drilling has begun for the first 32-MW phase of the project, scheduled for completion in mid-2010, followed in successive years by the second and third phases of the project.

The Shoshone Renaissance plant will likely be the first geothermal power project located on tribal lands in the United States. Power from the first two phases will be sold to Riverside Public Utilities in Riverside, California.

This article was first published in the U.S. Department of Energy's EERE Network News and was reprinted with permission.

8 Comments

Jeff Anderson
November 6, 2008

Geothermal power is under utilized energy source here in the US. As for Geo energy source being used up after a period of time is not true. Geothermal heat rises from the earths core. The traditional plants they are talking about are steam based plants. That require very hot rock to super heat the water into steam. Their is another type geothermal plant called a binary plant. A binary plant uses two step process. It uses hot water from the hot rock to heat the water. The water passer threw a heat exchanger, that heats a fluid that has lower boiling point. This expanding gas is used to drive a turbine that is connect to generator.
Good news about this system is that it will work in more locations than traditional geothermal power plants.
The buildings exterior could be blended into the background.
A solar power plant requires far more space than a Geothermal plant. Thus leaving a bigger visual impact.

Joseph Hartvigsen
November 5, 2008

The question about cutting trees illustrates a common misunderstanding about "National Forests". Look at the photo by Renner of the INL attached to the story.
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=53980#imageGallery
This is more typical of the type of land being discussed. The US Gov. owns a very large percentage of the land area in the west. Most of it is managed by the Forest Service or the BLM. Some is spectacularly beautiful, but much is desolate and barren. The area is too arid to support the type of forests common to coastal regions. In fact, the availability of water to support Geothermal operations and the potential impact on historical water use/rights is probably a bigger challenge for geothermal developers than any need for tree removal. Trees may be few and far enough between to simply drill where they won't be bothered.

Robert Orr
November 5, 2008

Correct, Geothermal is the future and with Organic Rankine Cycle is baseline, but can be boosted with Solar thermal to cover peaks in demand.

john e johnson
November 3, 2008

Matt - I understand your concerns, but there are ways around the environmental impacts of energy production. Take KAPS for example. Its an Icelandic based company that provides smaller distributed power production. They use containers (like those on rail cars) that can be blended into the natural surroundings so they can hardly be see. This is also a baseload power that can be run at 90 to 95% capacity.

http://www.kaldara.com/

James Sutton
November 3, 2008

Correction to my last post...it is on SSP, not NERC.
http://www.ercot.com/content/news/mediakit/maps/NERC_Regions.jpg

James Sutton
November 3, 2008

I'm sure that the geothermal industry will do feasbility studies to find idea sites without major environmental impact and nearest to load centers.

Areas like Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Southern California, etc. are great for geothermal an become near net-zero with geothermal baseload power and solar thermal peak power. Natural gas to supplement as needed.

While other areas, like South East U.S. need geothermal in a BAAAD way! They have little to no hydro resourse, very poor wind capacities, not as ideal solar capacities as one would think. In those areas, that guy formally from greenpeace is not lobbying for nuclear power and lots of it (I guess he got paid) to get off coal. I would love for most of the geothermal concentration start in the ERCOT grid areas (Dallas-Fort Worth area) and find their way to the east coast. A lot of the wind power installed in Texas is actually on the NERC, transmission grid so the major load centers don't get a huge amount of renewables.

After the SE is covered, then I would focus on the rest of the US.

Alexander Georgiou
November 2, 2008

Geothermal is the future of baseline energy. I understand your concern - removing trees to have an environmental benefit seems counter-intuitive. However, the problem will dwindle as time goes on. The power plants that they are building here (100-200 MW plants) are using existing pockets of steam to drive their turbines. These will last 20 years or so and need to be above existing steam pockets, which is why there is specific land that needs to be used. However, enhanced geothermal, mentioned also in the article, is the way of the future, because it creates its own steam pockets by creating fractures in rock over 3 miles underground. This technology can be used nearly anywhere on the Earth, since 3 miles deep nearly anywhere has super hot rock.

When thinking about renewable energy, we have to distinguish between baseline and peak power. Baseline power is the power that needs to be produced 24/7. Peak power is used when there are surges in energy demand, like in the summer for A/C for example. For peak power, solar and wind are great technologies, because they produce power using natural resources that are not fuels (sun and wind). However, these are not enough because civilizations need power consistently. Because of this, baseline power will not go away. Currently, the forms of baseline power are Coal, Nuclear, Hydro, and Geothermal. Coal emits CO2 (2.08 pounds per kw hr), SO2, and NOX, all dangerous chemicals. Also coal miners are constantly sick. Nuclear poses similar problems, sick workers and family deformities (effects of radiation), plus storage and the possibility (though small) for a nuclear explosion. Hydro is clean, but it is not available everywhere. And thus, enhanced Geothermal is the most promising of the technologies for BASELINE POWER, the key here. Keep in mind the scale of these plants: we are talking 600MW or 1GW here. Check out Google's video on geothermal here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6r_3AgI49Y&feature=user

Matthew Earleywine
October 31, 2008

What is the environtmental impact of this? This article talks about possibly using land from the Natioal forest system and tribal lands. Though geothermal is renewable and doen't emit greenhouse gasses, it seems that setting up a large plant in the middle of the National Forest System will require clearcutting trees and destroying natural wildlife habitats. It seems counter productive as we are destroying one part of the environment (land and natural habitat) to save another (air quality). I don't know a lot about these geothermal plants or their true environmental impact, so I hope somebody can prove me wrong. If not, I'm not sure I support it.

Matt