Using Hot Dry Rocks and Sunlight to Generate Energy?
By Karl Grossman

A congressman and an assemblyman who represent Long Island — Tim Bishop and Fred Thiele, Jr. — held a bipartisan news conference at a gas station in Mastic recently to press for action on energy. “We need practical solutions to our nation’s urgent need for affordable energy,” said Democrat Bishop of Southampton.
“The only way to solve a problem of this magnitude is by working across party lines at all levels of government to find common-sense solutions,” said Republican Thiele of Sag Harbor.

They spoke of bills in Washington and Albany including measures responding to the price of gas, boosting energy efficiency, expanding the use of renewable fuels and improving public transportation. Both were highly critical of “Big Oil” for, as they put it in a statement, its “current publicity blitz…touting [a] commitment to alternative energy, even though Exxon-Mobil — the most profitable American company — spent a mere $10 million of its $40 billion in profits on renewable energy alternatives in 2007.”
In fact, a windfall in renewable energy is here — if only government and industry would encourage it. But tragically for all of us the opposite has been true.

As the Worldwatch Institute and Center for American Progress in a report titled American Energy: The Renewable Path to Energy Security has stated: the U.S. government pours subsidies into oil, gas, coal and nuclear power and has failed to aggressively shift energy policy to encourage rapid development of renewable energy sources.

An example of an energy bonanza missed is called hot dry rock (HDR) geothermal energy. It’s a technology originated by the U.S. at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It turns out that below half the earth, one to six miles down, it’s extremely hot. When naturally flowing water hits those hot rocks and has a place to come up, there are geysers as in California or Iceland. But, the Los Alamos scientists found, water can be sent down an injection pipe to hit the hot dry rock below and rise up in a second production well. That super-heated water can turn a turbine and generate electricity or furnish heat.

They built a model HDR facility at Fenton Hill near the lab. I was there, and the system works great. Others in media were equally enthusiastic. As Fortune headlined an article in 1992: “Using Hot Rocks to Generate Energy. The biggest — and cleanest — power source on earth.”
I did a television program on HDR in which David Duchane, a respected, careful scientist at Los Alamos and its HDR program manager, said: “Hot dry rock has an almost unlimited potential to supply all the energy needs of the United States and indeed all the world.” Utilities across the nation and world could set up HDR?facilities and distribute electricity.

So what happened? A request for proposal — an RFP — was written up by Los Alamos inviting companies to take over the Fenton Hill facility and “produce and market energy” from it. It was to be an initial step in getting HDR technology spread through the U.S. But on its way to Washington, the RFP was cancelled by the Department of Energy (DOE). Why? Sources at the lab have told me that because HDR was seen as too much of a threat to other kinds of power, the RFP was cancelled. DOE then ordered the Fenton Hill facility decommissioned. To see the TV program I did on HDR go to Networking® magazine’s website:?www.networkingmagazineusa.com. Some work now continues with HDR in the U.S. But much, much more is going on with the U.S.-developed technology in other nations include several in Europe, in Japan and Australia.
A Long Island long-time big booster of HDR is environmental attorney Russell Stein of Montauk, the former East Hampton Town attorney. “Hot dry rock is so good that sometimes it almost seems too good to be true — but it is true,” he says. “A well-run hot dry rock energy recovery system has virtually no environmental harm of any type. And therefore, it’s almost a free lunch.”

“In analyzing how much heat is trapped in the first six miles below our feet, the numbers turn out to be stupendous,” Stein notes. “If only 10 percent of it is tapped, we could run the country for tens of thousands of years at today’s consumption levels.”

But of what’s not happened for HDR in the U.S., Stein notes that it’s been 35 years since the Los Alamos scientists developed “a relatively simple system to use existing drilling technology and closed loop water injection to extract endless clean energy from the earth to light and heat the U.S. without burning any more fossil fuel, emitting any more greenhouse gases or further harming the environment.”

Renewables Are Ready was the title of a book written by two Union of Concerned Scientists staffers in 1995. They’re more than ready now.

But U.S. energy policy has been steered for decades, as Stein points out, by oil, nuclear and coal interests. And, indeed, many government leaders are either manipulated or unaware of the renewable energy windfall at hand (or both).

This is not necessarily a partisan issue. The transfer of the model HDR facility at Fenton Hill from the government to industry was cancelled by a Department of Energy under President Bill Clinton. They’re more than ready now.
During the oil crisis of the ‘70s, President Jimmy Carter set up what’s now the National Renewable Energy (NREL). The 1,000-employee NREL in Golden, Colorado is a beacon for a sustainable, independent energy future.
From HDR to solar and other renewable energy technologies, Gordian Raacke, director of Renewable Energy Long Island, says: “Using renewable energy sources has always made sense and with gas over $4 a gallon it makes more sense than ever. The technologies are ready. What we need is the political will and change in personal lifestyle.”

Raacke walks the talk. At his house in East Hampton are solar photovoltaic panels that provide all the electricity needed. His monthly electric bill averages $6. See the full story in Networking® magazine, August 2007 beginning on page 22 or visit our website at www.networkingmagazineusa.com and click Archives.

The cost of a similar 3-kilowatt system you can put on your house is $24,000, but with a Long Island Power Authority rebate and federal and state tax credits, that’s cut to $7,000. So for $7,000, you could have a solar photovoltaic system that will reduce your electric bill to basically nothing. Add a solar hot water heater, it’s even cheaper — and considering current fuel oil prices, all but a necessity.
Consider the use of solar power to break down water and generate hydrogen — widely seen as the best fuel for locomotion and more. With the “right kind of systems,” Dr. John Turner, NREL senior scientist, was explaining to me, “you can use sunlight to split water.” He flipped a switch and hydrogen was generated in a process called photoelectrolysis. “What we have here now is sunlight to hydrogen — basically an inexhaustible fuel,” he said. “Hydrogen can be used in automobiles in fuel cells, to power our homes, to power our cars, to power our society.”

“It’s the forever fuel,” said Dr. Turner.

He spoke of “the vision of a non-polluting energy society that uses our two most abundant natural resources — sunlight and water — to give us an energy supply that is inexhaustible and non-polluting.”

That was one of the amazing energy technologies at NREL. Another is “thin film photovoltaic” — a technology developed by NREL with industry. Flexible membranes are impregnated with high-efficiency solar collectors and can be applied over buildings. The structures that constitute the skylines of Manhattan or Chicago, or buildings here on Long Island, could serve as electricity generators. This is now being widely used in Europe.

There are the new wind turbines designed at NREL and other breakthroughs. Take a tour of NREL if you’re out in Colorado; you’ll be amazed. Last month, NREL unveiled a Toyota Prius it modified to run at 100 miles per gallon. A month before it presented a blueprint for the U.S. to get 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030. “First of all it is doable, second of all it’s desirable,” said Dan Arvizu, NREL’s director. But NREL is a small part of DOE.
Recently there was the Sag Harbor Energy Fair that included area cutting-edge energy entities. Long Island solar pioneer Gary Minnick, president of Go Solar!, was there with his mobile “solar education center” and optimism: “We’re seeing change,” he said.

Inside the Sag Harbor Whaling & Historical Museum was its summer exhibit, “Oil: Whales, Wells…What’s Next?”, featuring the words of Thomas Edison: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” It’s not too late. But needed is widescale implementation of the abundant clean, safe, sustainable energy technologies.

 
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