Regarding Hydro boss Mr Clark’s odd and unsubstantiated assertions that geothermal is just “too expensive”?
Says who? Where? In what scientific context?
Enhanced geothermal systems: An underground tech surfaces as a serious clean energy contender.
Anyone else remember Laila Yuile routinely demolishing Hydro’s assurances about Site-C’s flawless reasoning?
Surely Mr Clark would jump at the option of proving his case with facts. For sure, your best-qualified readers would love to help assure him that his advisors were fully up to date.
That said, Mr Clark’s “multiple deferral accounts today are reasonable” is awkward. Like saying, “No problems here, folks!” None at all, assuming everyone forgets that multiple deferrals tanked powerhouse ENRON. And everyone misremembers which company was hired to manage their wonderful system.
Consider a different view…
In this paper we first leverage recent field data to produce the first empirically grounded near-term cost projections for enhanced geothermal in the US. We then use these geographically granular cost data as inputs to an electricity system planning model to assess where and under what conditions enhanced geothermal power could see near-term commercial deployment. We finally utilize an experience curves framework—which assumes that enhanced geothermal costs will fall with increasing deployment—to explore how the cost and adoption of enhanced geothermal could evolve over time following any initial deployments.
We find that by initially exploiting limited high-quality geothermal resources in the western US, EGS can achieve early commercialization and experience-based cost reductions that enable it to supply up to a fifth of total US electricity generation by 2050 and substantially reduce the cost of decarbonization nationwide. Higher-than-expected initial EGS costs could inhibit early growth and constrain the technology’s long-run potential, though supportive policies counteract these effects.
1/ Other than friendly consultants consulting each other, has BC Hydro actually consulted on this sort of positive report? If not, why not?
2/ First Nations in BC have recognized that ceasing dependency on Oil, Gas, or BC Hydro justifies the risk to shift to independently-owned geothermal. As contributor Mr. McCutcheon points out, BC should not only develop geothermal but also own it.
3/ Given BC’s declared support for Reconciliation, shouldn’t BC support First Nations geothermal?
4/ Can we have a response from Hydro that is analytical rather than simply a resort to deflecting the question? That would be respectful indeed.
Please advise.
Categories: BC Hydro, Uncategorized
in-sights.ca 
The fact that BCHydro has done a tepid effort at best to look at geothermal after being scolded into it by the BCUC after rejection of the Site C dam in the early ’80s and ’90s means they simply aren’t interested for some reason. The resource is known to be there, exactly where needed(close to load) and considering developments in directional drilling and bit technologies allowing for multiple thousand metres of horizontal holes to be drilled and connected way below surface, the time to pursue this was prior to destroying the Peace valley with a yet to be proven stable dam. Great questions above and these should be answered jointly by the Minister and Mr. Clark. Good work as always Norm.
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There is an important condition behind BC Hydro that people tend to overlook. The BC Hydro’s corporate legal and business design was to operate as a natural monopoly. This reality is like discovering a gold mine for private investors. After Campbell failed attempting to privatize, it only took less than a year for him to solicit privately owned, secret, generation contracts, they are same as having part ownership of a monopoly. The old saying may apply here, “if it walks like a monopoly , sounds like a monopoly, then it must be a monopoly.”
Secrecy plays a central role in all monopolies. That is what stands behind “derivative investments” and why Wikipedia has a list of over one hundred “Trading Losses” , each in excess of US$100 million minimum. Those are only the one we know about. Erik
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In BC there’s an epic power struggle. In part it requires trivializing geothermal power with Kindergarten objections.
“But is it… safe?”
Thirty five countries think so. Among them Iceland, since 1907. Starting in the 1960s there’s California. More states are signing up.
“But it’s so expensive as a start up!” What isn’t expensive as a start up?
Has fossil fuel power declined in price over time? Hydro power? Anyone seen a substantial Hydro price drop in BC?
Fossil fuel drilling becomes is expensive because getting fuel out of the ground just ain’t cheap. In the future it won’t get cheaper. Everybody in the supply chain has get their cut before oil or gas is sold to power plants.
Geothermal? What’s the supply chain? The earth.
Heat pumps? They drill down from 100 to 400 feet.
Complex energy stations? Drilling maximum is 30,000 feet.
So what? That’s it. Once the drilling is complete payback begins.
On a geopolitical or geological whim earth’s internal heat is not going to relocate to new turf . Costs remain stable.
If someone said, OK here’s the deal. Long term what you pay declines. Does this work for you?
Who figured this out? Four First nations drilling for independent power.
1 / South Meager Geothermal Project [Pemberton]
https://meagercreek.ca/project/
2 / Kitselas Geothermal [Terrace]
https://www.kitselasgeo.ca/project_updates.html
3 / Valemount Geothermal Project
https://www.miningandenergy.ca/read/meet-the-forestry-town-striving-to-become-canadas-first-geothermal-village
4 / Tu Deh-Kah Geothermal Project [Fort Nelson]
https://barkley.ca/project/tu-deh-kah-geothermal/
Is a price drop expected with Site C power? Who thinks this is plausible?
Hydro power requires consistent levels of stored rainfall. BC expects more droughts. Buy more power from Washington State or Alberta? Seen any evidence that BC is super tough when it negotiates?
A final question from a very concerned source….
“Excuse my simple mind, but what do we know about a mass release of energy from the earths core. How will that affect volcanic activity, geologic activity due to changes in the earths core, and the earth itself.”
“Done on a mass scale what would be the repercussions. Has anyone examined possible scenarios? It would be nice for a change if we foresee what problems something we do to the earth is studied before we rush to implement.”
Earth’s very core! Threatened by reckless drilling!
“Core-Mantle Boundary: The outer core begins around 2,889 km (1,795 miles) below Earth’s urface.”
“The deepest hole ever drilled by humans, the Kola Superdeep Borehole, is only about 12 km deep,”
Geothermal power plant drill depth is between 10,000 to 30,000 feet.
How is the earth’s core adversely affected when it is more than 1,700 miles below maximum drilling depth?
I can’t imagine.
Please advise!
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Yes Norm.
Doing things, like new investments is always done by people who are
“looking backwards”. In corporate circles it is referred to as “giving
the helm into safe hands”.
That is part of the reason we have a growing debt burden ( see the
recent releases by the Fraser Institute) and an economy divided into two
parts , GDP of “Goods” and a GDP of “Services”,. A Canada Finance
Department person wrote that the split in the 1960s was 60% for Goods
and 40% for services. In BC and Canada the split is now about 20%/80%
with per capita debt skyrocketing and regressive taxation consuming
about 45% of annual earnings (Fraser Institute).
Brooksley Born called this kind of economy , “Tape-worm” economics,
where the parasites feed on the host until they both die.
Nice to have you writing again. Regards ,Erik
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“Brooksley Born called this kind of economy, “Tape-worm” economics, where the parasites feed on the host until they both die.“
In 2012 I followed a link to an article in an obscure economics journal. The piece concerned Canada and how far off course Canada drifted from previously sane economic policy. On first read-through I wondered is this Satire?
In the years since – for reasons no one has clarified – author Ellen Brown’s ideas have been verified and vilified. Verified by successful policy adaptations in Japan, Mexico, several US States and China.
Although I doubt the Fraser Institute will sing praises for her Debt Trap lectures, her writing reveals several oddities. Before the end of WW2 not only had Canada broken with orthodoxy in banking policy, the feds invented the first Circular Economy. The country prospered as never before…
Her complaints about what Canada surrendered are here.
Why Canada outperformed other survivors of The Great Depression and WW2 is no longer surprising. That Canada and other nations later caved on what worked, in order to appease the big powers, this she argues led us to our and their pleasantly unacknowledged and permanent financial ruin.
In 1972 at Lausanne Switzerland several nations agreed that it was no longer allowed to let a Central Bank print money. That honour must reside exclusively within the private banking system. When needed government must borrow vast sums (at cumulative interest) from the private sector. As her graph shows public debt skyrocketed until it became obvious that
1/ the Lausanne signatories could never repay all of their debt
2/ new government policies were literally held hostage by existing debt levels
3/ to adjust to Debt, government was obliged to claw back essential services
4/ large projects affordable before 1972 became impossible forever more.
5/ first priority? Pay a small portion of a debt too large ever to be repaid.
Does that look like “tape-worm” economics?
If interested?
What’s tricky about all this became clear in a World Bank report. While in most high-powered techno states the sight of homeless people increases, rents and house prices spiral beyond affordable levels, and the cost of being alive drifts past reach for millions…
There’s this.
https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099062124195027068/p177217104579b0a01b8041e3a0f88bcd0c
“Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below US$1.90 per day has fallen by close to 800 million, accounting for close to three-quarters of global poverty reduction since 1980. At China’s current poverty standards, the number of poor people in China fell by 770 million. By any measure, the speed and scale of China’s poverty reduction is historically unprecedented.“
They did it. We can’t.
Explain Why.
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Now then, about that big boom in LNG. With BC spending $200 million to electrify an LNG operation at Kitimat.
Shouldn’t neighbouring Washington State be telling residents not to go electric? Just stay with oil and gas?
If so explain this..
https://thetyee.ca/WhatWorks/2024/07/25/Washington-Puget-Sound-Energy-Electrification-Pivot/
“Washington state’s biggest provider of natural gas is telling customers to get off gas. At least, that’s the implicit message in a pilot project launched by Bellevue-based Puget Sound Energy, which seeks to electrify 10,000 Washington households. Next year the utility hopes to electrify even more.”
“Participating customers get a free, in-person “electrification assessment” detailing how they can ditch furnaces and other gas appliances, connections to local contractors and a $50 gift card. Some also get access to rebates from the utility to top-up government incentives. And, for lower-income customers, Puget Sound Energy will cover the full cost of their home energy makeover — everything from a heat pump and upgraded electrical service to beefed-up insulation.”
“Puget Sound Energy has the equivalent of 3,340 full-time employees. Only a few of them work directly to manage and administer the utility’s Targeted Electrification project, along with up to a dozen “electrification coaches” hired by the private-sector contractor conducting home assessments. But it took involvement of more than two dozen utility employees in eight departments — including Landers’ system planning group, the customer energy management team and finance specialists — to craft the program and get it approved by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission.”
“The real jobs impact will be in electrical and heating firms that do the home upgrades. Heat pump installations and other home energy upgrades would create over 12,000 jobs in Washington by 2030 if electrification takes off, according to an April 2024 workforce analysis by the Clean Energy Transition Institute, a Seattle think tank.”
Remind me. Why can’t BC take the same route?
The author?
Peter Fairley is an award-winning journalist based in Victoria and San Francisco, whose writing has appeared in Scientific American, New Scientist, Hakai Magazine, the New York Times, the Atlantic, Nature and elsewhere.
Can’t find his email. So what does he have against BC and BC Hydro going big on LNG?
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