Building the new order
Written by Pablo González and Pedro Nonay, trying to know how the new world will be.
Entry 13
There is hope: geothermal energy
December 9, 2023
You already know that I try to make each entry independent of the previous one, but that I have a common thread: I seek to deduce how the new world order is going to be organized after everything that is happening.
My new context selection.
For some time now I have been starting all my entries with this “new context” heading, in which I summarize what has happened since the previous entry regarding the evolution of the new order. My selection today is as follows:
- As horrific as any war is, the best news about the one just started in Gaza is that it has not yet escalated to WWIII. And that it may not (fingers crossed).
Related to the WAR, is the possibility that Israel sees the time is right to resume the Ben Gurion Canal project (see here). This would be to rival the Suez Canal through Israel (and Gaza), with a canal 100 km longer than the current nearly 200 km Suez Canal. If done, there would be a major geopolitical shift in shipping.
- Venezuela wants to annex an important part of Guyana (Esequiba). They have even held a referendum (see here).
- As an irony, I say that perhaps it has something to do with the fact that in that area there are few inhabitants and a lot of oil. I also comment below that Venezuela may be in the process of being “signed up” for the Western bloc, despite the traditional enmity.
- In Argentina, Milei has won the elections. Despite all the talk of being a “madman”, the consequence may be the recovery of Argentina for the Western bloc. In fact, Milei has already announced that he will decline the offer to join the BRICS+ bloc in January.
- There has been a kind of “soap opera” at OpenAI with the firing and reinstatement of Sam Altman because of his artificial intelligence projects. The truth is not known, but it is clear that, if there is that kind of fights there, it is because the project is very advanced and can change the world a lot. Here is a good article, and I talk more about it at the end of the entry.
- Antonio Guterres, who is the UN Secretary General, has invoked last December 6 Article 99 (news here). He calls for a cease-fire in Gaza because of the humanitarian situation. This will widen the division of international support for Israel in its retaliation for the heavy terrorists attacks it suffered.
- COP 28, the UN conference on climate change, is currently being held in Dubai. It has not yet concluded and we do not know if there will be any relevant agreement. What we do know is that it has been rejected for being organized by large oil producers.
As agreements there have to be reached unanimously, the likelihood of them reaching any relevant ones is very small. As can be seen here, the 100-country proposal to reduce fossil fuels has been rejected by, among others, no less than China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia (it seems that the BRICS+ do not agree).
- Western financial support to Ukraine is in danger of weakening. In the USA they already recognize that they are running out of money (news here). Germany and the UK are on similar paths. The time for peace negotiations may be approaching, even if they are temporary.
*****
I now return to what I abandoned two entries ago: the issue of raw materials for the change of energy model.
There is hope: geothermal energy.
Geothermal energy is one of the renewable energies with the greatest potential, but relatively little is said about it. I believe that this is going to change a lot, and very soon, because of the work of the company Quaise Energy, whose project can completely revolutionize the world energy landscape (I talk about it below, because of the need to tell things in order).
To start at the beginning, the first thing to say is what this energy consists of: geothermal energy is obtained by harnessing the earth’s internal heat.
As is well known, the earth is usually defined as being divided into layers (core, mantle, and crust). The core is something like an immense fireball, consisting of iron and nickel (that material that we would need so much on the surface) at about 5,700 degrees temperature and very high pressure.
From the core to the surface of the earth, the temperature decreases to the temperature we experience. However, the decrease in temperature is not exactly gradual, nor is it the same in all areas (obviously, in volcanic areas there is a higher temperature at shallow depths).
There are no exact measurements (or I have not found them), but it is known that the energy stored in the earth’s core is far greater than all the energy consumed by mankind. There is a good summary here, where its first paragraph is very clear:
- “The heat in the top ten kilometers of the Earth’s crust contains 50,000 times more energy than is found in all the world’s oil and gas combined. Despite this abundance, only 10,700 megawatts of geothermal electricity generating capacity has been harnessed across the planet.”
Thinking about this, a curious concept appears. It is that we have one source of energy “above”, which is the sun, and another “below”, which is the earth’s core. It is like the heaven and hell of religions. By the way, religions, even before they knew about science (or did they know anything?), defined hell as a place of fire, which is what the earth’s core consists of. Of course, religions also define hell as something bad. Perhaps that prejudice is one of the reasons why we have done more research on how to harness the energy of the sun (heaven) than that of the core (hell). But we should abandon that prejudice because, although far away, the earth’s core is much closer to us than the sun (another religious analogy: hell is more accessible to us than heaven). I think this is a great paradox.
The problem is that the earth’s core, although much closer than the sun, is about 5,000 km deep. Since the radius of the earth is about 6,500 km (rounding up), that tells us that the “fireball” that is the core has a radius of about 1,500 km, which gives us an idea of the amount of energy that is there.
Because of the depth of the core, and given our current prospecting technology, it is impossible for us to think of “reaching the core” and harnessing its energy directly. Now, let’s remember that we don’t need to reach the sun to harness its energy either.
For the record, the deepest borehole ever achieved is the Kola Seperdeep Borehole, in the Arctic Circle, and it reached only 12.2 km (data here).
However, based on the gradual decrease in temperature from the core to the surface, there are many places accessible to us where temperatures are between 20 and 300 degrees. And, with those temperatures we know how to generate energy yields.
There are different technologies to take advantage of geothermal energy. To simplify, with low temperatures it is usually used for DHW (domestic hot water), for air conditioning, or for the hot water tap. And, with high temperatures (over 120 degrees) it can be used to produce electricity. There is a summary of the different technologies here. It is also well explained here, where the following summary graph is included:
As explained above, except in very specific places (volcanic areas), and with current technology, at accessible depths we will only be able to use low-temperature geothermal energy for air conditioning. That is not little, but it does not solve the world’s energy supply.
On the other hand, I do not want to fail to mention here the problem generated by existing regulations, and bureaucracy, to optimize these uses. I mean that, as I said above, solving the air conditioning of buildings with geothermal energy is something very accessible technically. In fact, it is being applied a lot in new buildings. However, in the old ones, which are the ones with worse insulation and higher consumption, they usually do not let it be applied because it would have to be done from the sidewalks (because the buildings are already built). And those sidewalks are not owned by the owner of the building, so it is not usually authorized to make the “hole” there to access the geotechnical heat. Given this, someone will say that it seems logical argument to deny the license, but I remind you that the other energies by which the building is heated (electricity or gas) reach it by the sidewalks, even if they come from another owner of the infrastructure, … then the argument is not so sustainable.
The big change in energy.
If a technology could be developed to drill deep wells at reasonable costs, electrical energy could be generated from the heat of the earth almost anywhere – as much as we would like!
The fact is that there is a company that has developed the technology to drill down to 20 km depth, where temperatures of 500 degrees are found almost everywhere.
The company is called Quaise Energy (https://www.quaise.energy/). It was founded by engineers from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), which, given the immense prestige of the center, lends credibility to the project.
The technology they use is that of conventional drilling up to a certain depth, and, from that point, they apply a new technology on which those engineers were working for a completely different purpose (nuclear fusion). It is at the moment when these engineers realized that this technology could “vaporize” the rocks that they decided to change their initial objective and apply it to facilitate the production of geothermal energy. Thus, once again, research that begins in one way ends up on a very different, but even more useful, path (news here).
The technology is called a “gyrotron”. What it does is to accelerate electrons with magnetic fields, generating something like a laser beam that “dissolves” deep rocks. This is not the place to go into the technical explanation, but you can see very interesting data on the company’s website, which I have already mentioned above.
The fact is that, with this technology, deep wells can be drilled to places where there are sufficient temperatures to be able to generate electricity based on geothermal heat.
With these systems, there is no waste. And it requires no materials other than those needed to build the well and the power plant on the surface, which is very cheap to operate because it does not require “fuel“. In addition, it occupies very little surface area compared to other renewable electricity production technologies. In other words, it is very sustainable.
Applied on a massive scale, it would even help to curb the damage of greenhouse gases. This would be so because “consuming part of the earth’s heat” would also reduce the heat emitted by the earth, thus also reducing the warming of the atmosphere (it remains to be seen by how much, but it would certainly be in the right direction).
What remains to be known is whether such drilling can be done at affordable costs. Also, if it can be done on a massive scale. And, if this is not yet the case, we can always insist on research to optimize these costs.
The company’s first proposal is to drill the boreholes where the conventional thermal power plants are located. Thus, it would not be necessary to build the “energy factory”, only to “change the fuel”, abandoning coal. And these power plants would stop polluting, and it would not be necessary to negotiate with the country supplying the coal, which would eliminate many geopolitical problems.
The company expects to make its first real demonstration in 2024 (news here). I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they make it. It would be a great relief for humanity.
Gepolitics and geothermal energy.
As for raw materials, for what is the “energy factory” (the power plant), very rare and scarce materials are not needed. Moreover, as I have already said, existing thermal power plants, designed for fossil fuels, can be used, which means almost no investment in that plant.
Less common raw materials are needed for borehole “pipes” and very hot water tanks. This is because they need to be made of special steels, resistant to high temperatures and corrosion. This means having molybdenum and titanium (data here).
The answer Google gives me when I ask about world molybdenum reserves is:
- “Molybdenum reserves continue to be concentrated in four countries: China (35%), USA (21%), Chile (12%) and Peru (3%).”
Therefore, looking at the issue from the point of view of availability according to country blocks, which is what I have been doing in these entries, there does not seem to be a problem with molybdenum.
As for titanium, asking the same question, the answer is:
- “Reserves are located in Norway (23.6 percent of the world total), Canada (19.4 percent), South Africa (12.1 percent), China (11.0 percent), Australia (8.7 percent), India (7.2 percent), the United States (6.9 percent) and other countries (11.1 percent).”
This means that there are few problems for the Western bloc, and more doubts for the BRICS+ bloc, although not as many.
Therefore, the “raw materials” issue does not seem to be a problem for geothermal energy. Nor in terms of its distribution among the blocks of countries. However, it would be necessary to know if the “desired” gyrotron needs any special raw material for its production that has not been reported.
On the other hand, since geothermal energy can be obtained anywhere in the world (as long as sufficient depths are reached), it is not a geopolitical problem to need the country where the energy source is located.
There are also no geopolitical problems related to the transportation of energy, since it would be normal to produce it in the place closest to its use.
It is necessary to take into account the aspects of energy storage from the moment it is produced to the moment it is used. This is because it will be very difficult to produce it just when it is needed. For that, many alternatives can be considered, such as storing the peaks of electrical energy produced by transforming it into green hydrogen, which can be used at any time thereafter.
*****
Readings that have interested me.
In the process of writing this entry I have come across many issues of other subjects. I would like to share the following:
- In this article they see the Ukrainian war in a different light. They say Putin is making the heist of the century. They say this because of the lithium reserves in the Donbass. At the very least, it is a point of view to consider.
- Vitalik Buterin (the creator of Ethereum) has written a highly recommended article on the state of artificial intelligence. It can be seen here. One of the alternatives he sees is that AI will take over the world and we humans will be little more than its pets. If so, we had better show affection and appreciation to the AI, otherwise it may decide that we are of no use to it. Vitalik also sees another alternative that may sound better, albeit scary. It is for us humans to merge with the AI.
- It seems that, in the space war, China is gaining the upper hand (news here).
- Paul Mason (the relevant British far-left journalist) has published a new article here). The thing is that Mason has been in a process for some time that can almost be called a “conversion”, trying to convince the left that it has to strongly support Ukraine. In this article he says that he has learned that Russia is spying on him as subversive, and thanks the British Conservative government for having detected the spying. Funny what happens to ideologies when you are the wronged party.
This is as far as I have gone for today. In the next entry I will try to draw conclusions for the problem of access to materials for the change of energy model.
As always, I welcome comments on my email: pgonzalez@ie3.org