This piece from TWW’s John Karakoulakis originally was published by Real Clear Energy on February 5, 2024 and can be accessed here.
The U.S. Military Looks to Geothermal for Secure, Firm Power
By John Karakoulakis
February 05, 2024
There’s much more to renewable energy than just wind farms and solar arrays – and some of those renewable sources have more in common with conventional fuels like oil and natural gas than you might think.
That’s especially true in the Western U.S., where some of the latest breakthroughs in renewable energy are based on technologies that have been used for decades to harness our abundant fossil-fuel reserves.
The best example is geothermal energy, which involves the same drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies used in oil and natural gas production. But instead of producing oil and gas, geothermal wells are drilled to access the constant source of heat that exists in deep rock formations.
There are different variations of this technology, but in general, cold water is pumped down the well and circulated back to the surface hundreds of degrees hotter. With the help of a heat exchanger, the hot water is used to drive a turbine that generates electricity without any emissions.
Unlike wind turbines or solar arrays, electricity production from geothermal doesn’t rely on weather conditions, making it extremely reliable. And for this reason, the U.S. military is showing more interest in geothermal technologies to harden its facilities against power grid outages and cyber-attacks.
At Mountain Home Air Force Base, for example, officials recently announced a project that aims to use geothermal electricity as a source of “clean, reliable baseload energy, even in the face of grid outages.”
The U.S. Air Force has contracted with Zanskar Geothermal and Minerals to look at the feasibility of developing an on-site geothermal power plant within three to five years. A similar project is underway in Texas at Joint Base San Antonio with a different geothermal energy developer, Eavor Inc.
These projects will serve as prototypes to test the concept of using round-the-clock geothermal energy as an uninterruptible power source for military installations of all kinds. This work is urgent in light of state-sponsored cyberattacks from America’s geopolitical rivals – first and foremost, China.
“We are in an era of strategic competition with China, which means our installations are no longer a sanctuary from the full spectrum of threats,” said Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Energy, Installations and the Environment. “Geothermal sources strengthen our energy grids and give us the ability to isolate threats before they impact our operations.”
As with so many technologies used by the military, there are major civilian applications as well. Power companies in the Western U.S. already use geothermal technologies to generate some of their electricity, and the level of interest in this zero-carbon energy source continues to grow.
For example: In Utah, startup company Fervo Energy has received federal permits to drill dozens of geothermal wells with a combined generating capacity of about 90 megawatts, after successfully piloting the technology in Nevada. In addition, in Nevada and Colorado, fellow startup Transitional Energy has been exploring the use of existing oil and gas fields as new sources of geothermal energy.
Nationwide, over the next three decades, U.S. officials project that geothermal electric capacity could grow by 60,000 megawatts. For scale, that is the equivalent of building two large scale nuclear plants per year for 30 years.
In addition to supporting our energy needs, just think about the job creation potential, especially for workers in the oil and gas sector, who already know all there is to know about drilling and fracking.
Most good ideas make sense for more than one reason. In the case of geothermal energy, it makes sense for reasons of national security, energy independence and job creation, not just environmental stewardship.
Geothermal also offers an important lesson about what the nation’s energy future will look like. It won’t involve scrapping all the energy sources we currently have and starting over from scratch, as some would have you believe. Instead, the energy technologies of the future will mostly come from new applications of the technologies we have today.
John Karakoulakis is director of The Western Way, a nonprofit that seeks pro-market solutions to environmental challenges.