WV’s very good geothermal energy is deep (30,000 feet)

From an Article by Blaine Friedlander, Cornell Chronicle, November 11, 2021

Welcome to the Cornell University Borehole Observatory – known as CUBO. An unremarkable gravel parking lot just off campus will soon house one of Cornell’s most important living laboratories.

By summer 2022, the university plans to drill a 10,000-foot hole to verify whether conditions underground will allow clean, reliable and renewable Earth Source Heat – Cornell’s name for direct heating with geothermal liquids – to warm the entire Cornell campus during the winter and help reduce the university’s carbon footprint to zero.

The first important step is drilling this exploration well to confirm the technical viability and ensure the safe operation of the system. About 80 students, faculty, staff and Tompkins County neighbors learned all about Earth Source Heat and how it would work at an open house hosted by the university on Nov. 9 in that parking lot.

“Cornell has been advancing research, monitoring and modeling for years,” said Sarah Carson Zemanick, director of the Campus Sustainability Office. “This open house, and the interactions with those Cornellians involved, helped bring Earth Source Heat out of our labs and into a tangible and exciting reality for the community.”

The test borehole aims to understand Earth Source Heat’s viability and safety prospects. At the surface, the diameter of the hole will be about the size of a hula hoop. The sides of the hole will be encased in cement and steel, and will narrow as it deepens. When the hole reaches 10,000 feet – about two miles below the surface – its diameter will be about 8 inches, the size of a small frying pan. For perspective, the hole’s depth equals more than 7 Empire State Buildings.

Linda and Buzz Lavine, from Dryden, New York, peppered Cornell geologist Ole Gustafson, Ph.D. ‘20, of Facilities and Campus Services, with questions about the physical borehole. Linda Lavine asked, “How long will it take to drill the hole?”

Engineers expect it takes about two months to drill a well down to 10,000 feet, where the Earth’s temperature approaches nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit – close to water’s boiling point, Gustafson replied. He said that the CUBO well drilling operation will take a bit longer, since he, along with engineering and geology professors, will want to extract a lot of data during the test’s drilling stages.

If this initial borehole test confirms the right subsurface conditions, Cornell may propose a demonstration: Two new wells would be drilled so that hot subsurface water can be extracted from one well and returned down a second well for reheating by the Earth. At the surface, heat exchangers would transfer the warmth of the hot fluid from the subsurface to another loop of water to circulate around campus and warm the buildings.

Local environmental scientist Noah Mark, of the nonprofit Community Science Institute, attended the open house to learn more about the Earth Source Heat process and discuss the quality of the recirculating water.

With a long poster showing the borehole layers in hand, Terry Jordan and Patrick Fulton, professors of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (College of Engineering) explained the strata to attendees. Anthony Ingraffea, the Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering Emeritus, never paused talking to the large crowd at his station. Also answering questions were Jeff Tester, professor of sustainable energy systems in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Steve Beyers, the lead Earth Source Heat engineer with Facilities and Campus Services.

Danielle Bucci ’23 and Jay Sangwan ’23 stayed well past sunset and asked Sarah Brylinsky, assistant director of the Campus Sustainability Office, if this form of heat harmed the environment. Brylinsky said Earth Source Heat poses very little ecological disturbance. “There’s no taking down trees or disrupting the environment,” she answered.

Bucci, an environmental and sustainability major (CALS) said of combining Earth Source Heat and Lake Source Cooling: “There are really no environmental drawbacks and the environmental risks are low,” she said. “Cornell is the only university in the Northeast doing this.”

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See also: Geothermal Energy Research in West Virginia, WV Geological & Economic Survey, Morgantown, WV

The CPP or an ACE in the hole

Editorial of the Morgantown Dominion Post, Sunday, June 23, 2019

Call it a policy of diminishing returns or retreats from a worsening climate crisis. We’re never going to sway the Trump administration on its decision to short circuit the Clean Power Plan. But technological trends and markets might, not to mention the power sector continuing to decarbonize faster than expected.

Yet, last week the Trump administration finalized its so-called Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule.

Our first question to those who put politics and self-interest above competitive markets is: How can we ever expect to win a war against the primary laws of economics? You know, if there’s a demand, someone will provide the supply, as long as the incentives are high enough.

And why even if Longview Power’s president and CEO, that operates the cleanest and most efficient coal-fired plant in the world, according to him, says it’s probably the last of its kind why think otherwise Especially when he tells you next thing that’s why Longview is developing an advanced gas-fired combine cycle plant beside its coal plant.

Finally, why would you ignore gains, that by some estimates show our country is already anywhere from a third to two-thirds of the way to meeting the Clean Power Plan’s goal of reducing carbon emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030?

After all, aren’t happy days here again for the economy, despite the nation’s utilities already having drastically lowered emissions.

Most have no delusions about coal ever reaching the production numbers of the past and the outlook for this industry here and nationwide is uncertain, at best; grim, at worst.

Though some maintain you dance with the one that brought you, natural gas ditched coal more than a decade ago. More exactly, the advent of fracking around 2008 was to natural gas production what Elvis was to rock ’n’ roll.

But that was hardly the only front where the “war on coal” was waged. Increased use of renewables; heightened energy efficiencies; volatile international markets; and the depletion of thick, easy-to-mine seams all followed.

The decline in the coal industry is relentless, and though this decline may be slow and drawn out it’s just a matter of how low must it go. We reject any efforts, and hope courts do too, to roll back carbon restrictions, especially with the concerns about the amount of methane in the atmosphere.

Our country and our planet has a lot to lose, including our health, if we fail to address climate change. Rewrite the rules however you want, but any notion of coal’s resurgence is contrary to the way markets work and technology advances.

The ACE is certainly no ace in the hole for the coal industry. Indeed, it can only dig it and us into an even deeper one — at our own peril.

Residents Leaving Homes near Huge Gas Leak

AMERICAN CLEAN ENERGY AGENDA –A new effort to promote a truly clean energy agenda

From Jen Filiault, American Clean Energy Committee, February 2016

A new effort to promote a truly clean energy agenda has emerged from the collaborative efforts of grassroots organizations all around the country.

Initiated by the Civil Society Institute and the Environmental Working Group, and endorsed by 120 organizations around the country representing over 2 million Americans, the American Clean Energy Agenda calls for a number of bold steps to move the United States toward a clean, safe energy future.

Principles:

As crafted by the groups, the new American Clean Energy Agenda calls for a number of bold steps.

These steps include: phasing out nuclear power, natural gas, coal and industrial biomass in favor of efficient use of renewable, non-polluting resources; opposition to a “clean energy standard” that includes coal, nuclear, oil, gas and unsustainable biomass; retooling federal “loan guarantees” to make smarter investments in renewable energy; greater emphasis on renewable energy and energy efficiency programs; and avoiding a future in which Americans suffer the consequences of mountaintop mining for coal and fracking of shale gas that is then exported for use in other nations.

The Agenda is guided by the Precautionary Principle, which dictates that lawmakers’ priority must be protecting public health and natural resources. This principle should guide future policy toward a safe and sustainable energy future. We know there are alternatives with energy efficiency and off the shelf, sustainable energy wind and solar. A critical move away from the political power of the industry-driven ‘business as usual’ and ‘all of the above’ approach will only happen with grassroots organizing and a coming together around actionable political demands rooted in a principled approach to policy that puts the public welfare above politics and corporate influence.

Committee Contact:  Jennifer Filiault, Jennifer@americancleanenergyagenda.org

>>>>> You can read the Principles here. >>>>>

See also:  “Will California Gas Leak Mark a Turning Point in the Energy Debate?”