1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,920 JUDY WOODRUFF: As we reported President Biden and the European Union today announced plans 2 00:00:03,920 --> 00:00:08,400 to enable Europe to become less dependent on Russian oil and gas, 3 00:00:08,400 --> 00:00:12,800 but those efforts will take a lot more money and time to execute. 4 00:00:12,800 --> 00:00:16,560 For now, the Russian invasion is raised much larger questions over 5 00:00:16,560 --> 00:00:21,560 our dependence on fossil fuels and the need to develop cleaner renewable energy. 6 00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:26,760 Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on why geothermal energy is attracting new interest. 7 00:00:28,640 --> 00:00:33,640 MILES O'BRIEN: There's a lot of heat beneath our feet, and that's pretty obvious here, 8 00:00:34,560 --> 00:00:38,080 near the Salton Sea in California's Imperial Valley. 9 00:00:38,080 --> 00:00:39,120 BILLY THOMAS, Berkshire Hathaway Energy: These are 10 00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:42,320 really world-renowned mud pots that occur naturally. 11 00:00:42,320 --> 00:00:47,320 MILES O'BRIEN: Hot water and carbon dioxide create mini-volcanoes at the Davis-Schrimpf mud pots. 12 00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:51,520 BILLY THOMAS: 13 00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:55,760 They just come up in different areas. They all go dormant and just come up somewhere else. 14 00:00:55,760 --> 00:01:00,760 MILES O'BRIEN: They sit right in the middle of one of the largest geothermal generation fields 15 00:01:00,800 --> 00:01:04,800 in the world. It's renewable, sustainable and carbon-free, 16 00:01:05,360 --> 00:01:10,360 so exploring new ways to tap into this resource is now a very hot field. 17 00:01:11,600 --> 00:01:12,480 What are we seeing here? 18 00:01:12,480 --> 00:01:17,480 BILLY THOMAS: So, here, we're looking at some of our production wells for the Region 1 facility. 19 00:01:18,080 --> 00:01:21,920 MILES O'BRIEN: Billy Thomas is a senior geoscientist at Berkshire 20 00:01:21,920 --> 00:01:26,920 Hathaway's CalEnergy project. He showed me some of the 25 wells and 10 power plants 21 00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:33,880 which together generate 345 megawatts, enough to power more than 300,000 homes. 22 00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:39,840 But, he says, they are only scratching the subsurface. 23 00:01:39,840 --> 00:01:44,240 BILLY THOMAS: This field is a perfect example of field that has a lot of potential. 24 00:01:44,240 --> 00:01:47,840 There's about 5,000 gallons per minute flowing through here. 25 00:01:47,840 --> 00:01:51,680 MILES O'BRIEN: Geothermal heat comes from the molten core of our planet, 26 00:01:51,680 --> 00:01:56,680 which, at more than 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, is as hot as the surface of the sun. 27 00:01:57,520 --> 00:02:01,040 As the heat radiates up, it gradually cools. 28 00:02:01,040 --> 00:02:06,040 Here, they drilled wells between 2,000 feet and two miles deep, where the temperature is 29 00:02:06,800 --> 00:02:11,800 only about 600 degrees Fahrenheit. Very salty, very hot water, called brine, 30 00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:18,280 along with steam, race upward. The steam spins turbines, producing electricity, and the brine 31 00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:25,400 is injected back into the ground, where it is reheated by the earth, replenishing the reservoir. 32 00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:31,720 Is this kind of managed well more or less infinitely sustainable? 33 00:02:31,760 --> 00:02:35,920 BILLY THOMAS: So, yes, we have had the benefit here of actually operating for 34 00:02:35,920 --> 00:02:40,920 some of these fields up to 40 years, and we really have a very robust reservoir, 35 00:02:41,360 --> 00:02:45,520 where we don't see a lot of the decline. So we really have a good system set in 36 00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:49,840 place right now to really make this a sustainable renewable baseload energy. 37 00:02:49,840 --> 00:02:54,840 MILES O'BRIEN: Baseload, meaning 24/7/365, steady production that wind and solar cannot provide. 38 00:02:58,400 --> 00:03:03,400 Geothermal is an emerging dark horse in the race to a stable zero-carbon electrical grid, 39 00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:06,000 AMANDA KOLKER, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: The last couple of decades 40 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:08,320 have seen about a 25 percent growth worldwide. 41 00:03:08,320 --> 00:03:13,320 MILES O'BRIEN: Geologist Amanda Kolker is program manager for geothermal technologies 42 00:03:13,600 --> 00:03:17,440 at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. 43 00:03:17,440 --> 00:03:21,440 AMANDA KOLKER: The technology that we're using today really hasn't changed substantially. 44 00:03:21,440 --> 00:03:25,120 There have been little, incremental kind of optimization improvements. 45 00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:28,800 It's a really exciting time, because we are getting a lot more, I think, 46 00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:32,400 innovative ideas in the geothermal sector than we have for decades. 47 00:03:32,400 --> 00:03:35,360 JIM TURNER, Controlled Thermal Resources: So this area is highly fractured underneath. 48 00:03:35,360 --> 00:03:37,680 MILES O'BRIEN: One of the surprising innovations, 49 00:03:37,680 --> 00:03:41,760 geothermal wells can also be a great source of minerals. 50 00:03:41,760 --> 00:03:44,000 JIM TURNER: So, we just drilled two wells. 51 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:46,800 MILES O'BRIEN: Jim Turner is chief operating officer 52 00:03:46,800 --> 00:03:51,800 of the U.S. division of Australia-based Controlled Thermal Resources. He walked me 53 00:03:53,440 --> 00:03:58,440 through the 50-megawatt geothermal power plant the company is building in the Imperial Valley. 54 00:03:59,440 --> 00:04:04,440 The salty brine rising from the wells contains almost the entire periodic table of elements, 55 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:09,760 and Turner says the rocketing demand for electric cars 56 00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:13,520 has made it profitable to extract and sell lithium. 57 00:04:13,520 --> 00:04:16,480 Do you have any projections on how much lithium you might be able to produce? 58 00:04:16,480 --> 00:04:21,480 JIM TURNER: We will produce about 20,000 metric tons a year of lithium product. 59 00:04:21,920 --> 00:04:25,680 MILES O'BRIEN: That would be about 8 percent of the current global production, 60 00:04:25,680 --> 00:04:28,880 four times more than the U.S. provides today. 61 00:04:28,880 --> 00:04:30,240 That's a nice bonus, isn't it? 62 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:33,680 JIM TURNER: It is. It is a very good bonus. In the past, 63 00:04:33,680 --> 00:04:38,680 it just didn't have enough value to warrant the cost of money to develop, 64 00:04:39,040 --> 00:04:43,600 build a plant and operate it to be able to sell the lithium compounds. 65 00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:47,360 MILES O'BRIEN: The rock beneath is naturally fractured and permeable. 66 00:04:47,360 --> 00:04:50,320 This is the end of the famous San Andreas Fault. 67 00:04:50,320 --> 00:04:53,520 AMANDA KOLKER: The types of resources that you need to produce power are not 68 00:04:53,520 --> 00:04:58,520 available everywhere within drillable depths. It's just, at this stage, 69 00:04:58,880 --> 00:05:02,560 not economic to produce steam from extremely deep wells. 70 00:05:02,560 --> 00:05:07,520 MILES O'BRIEN: But that could be changing at the FORGE project in Utah. Here, 71 00:05:07,520 --> 00:05:12,520 the Department of Energy is piloting a technique called Enhanced Geothermal Systems, or EGS. 72 00:05:14,240 --> 00:05:19,240 The plan is to drill two deep wells into low-permeable hot rock, 73 00:05:19,440 --> 00:05:24,440 fracture the rock in between the wells to create a reservoir, and then pump water into 74 00:05:24,560 --> 00:05:29,560 the cracks. It returns to the surface piping hot. The notion is making for some strange bedfellows. 75 00:05:32,080 --> 00:05:37,080 Oil and gas industry veterans are now drilling for hot rock, instead of black gold. 76 00:05:37,840 --> 00:05:41,920 CINDY TAFF, COO, Sage Geosystems: What we want to prove is a single well EGS system. 77 00:05:41,920 --> 00:05:46,920 MILES O'BRIEN: Petroleum engineer Cindy Taff is a 35-year veteran of the oil business. 78 00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:52,880 Now she is chief operating officer of Houston-based Sage Geosystems. 79 00:05:53,520 --> 00:05:58,520 The company is hoping to reduce the cost of EGS. Near McAllen, Texas, 80 00:05:59,040 --> 00:06:04,040 they are testing a single well alternative for harvesting heat from hot dry rock. 81 00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:09,800 They drill down and then horizontally, from here fracturing the sedimentary rock in between. 82 00:06:11,440 --> 00:06:16,440 Cold water is pumped down through the cracks. Now hot enough to generate power, 83 00:06:16,720 --> 00:06:21,600 the water heads up to the turbine in a concentric pipe in the very same well. 84 00:06:21,600 --> 00:06:26,400 CINDY TAFF: The oil and gas industry has fracked in sedimentary rock for years, 85 00:06:26,400 --> 00:06:29,920 and we know how to mitigate induced seismicity. And, quite frankly, 86 00:06:29,920 --> 00:06:34,920 the rock is so soft, you usually don't get to induced seismicity in sedimentary rock. 87 00:06:35,200 --> 00:06:39,200 MILES O'BRIEN: Still, the well is ringed by seismic monitoring sites. 88 00:06:39,840 --> 00:06:43,360 Geothermal fracking has triggered earthquakes in the past. 89 00:06:43,920 --> 00:06:48,920 This one in South Korea in 2017 made news, causing 135 injuries. 90 00:06:49,680 --> 00:06:53,360 AMANDA KOLKER: We don't need stimulation for most geothermal. 91 00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:59,000 Where we do, do stimulation, I think we can be smart about avoiding zones of seismic risk. 92 00:07:01,840 --> 00:07:06,840 MILES O'BRIEN: The shale fracking boom has driven a lot of innovation in the drilling business. In 93 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:13,000 Houston, a small company called Particle Drilling is partnering with a big player, 94 00:07:13,040 --> 00:07:17,680 NOV, to help push drilling technology into a geothermal era. 95 00:07:19,120 --> 00:07:24,120 The bit they are developing fires 12 million ball bearings a minute out of four nozzles. 96 00:07:25,360 --> 00:07:27,840 Jim Schiller is CEO of Particle. 97 00:07:27,840 --> 00:07:30,640 JOHN SCHILLER, CEO, Particle Drilling: It obliterates the rock. What you get 98 00:07:30,640 --> 00:07:33,760 out are some very fine cuttings and every once in a while a bigger piece. 99 00:07:33,760 --> 00:07:37,040 What we envision was always a three-to-five-time improvement. 100 00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:41,360 As we have combined our bits between NOV and Particle and all, we're seeing that. 101 00:07:41,360 --> 00:07:44,800 MILES O'BRIEN: Tony Pink is chief technology officer of NOV. 102 00:07:45,440 --> 00:07:50,320 He says it costs about $100,000 a day to run a typical drilling rig. 103 00:07:50,320 --> 00:07:52,960 TONY PINK, Chief Technology Officer, NOV: We're at that tipping point now. And so, 104 00:07:52,960 --> 00:07:57,960 if we take the particle drilling technology or drill bit technology and make that jump from 105 00:07:58,240 --> 00:08:03,240 60 foot an hour to 80 to 100, then we move that economic needle that you get geothermal anywhere. 106 00:08:04,640 --> 00:08:09,040 MILES O'BRIEN: Geothermal anywhere, it's an enticing prospect. 107 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:14,600 The path to zero carbon may well take us on a journey toward the center of the Earth. 108 00:08:16,560 --> 00:08:21,560 For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Miles O'Brien in Houston.