It’s unfortunate that AltaRock is having such a tough time with its enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) project in northern California. The company has suspended drilling on its first well, citing “geological anomolies,” and it plans to regroup and figure out next steps. Nobody said EGS projects would be easy, and all of this is a learning experience for AltaRock.

Meanwhile, I’m encouraged to see interest in tapping geothermal energy as a byproduct of oil and gas production in the Canadian west. A British Columbia-based company called Free Energy International has signed a deal with an undisclosed oil and gas exploration and production company in Alberta, in an area known as Swan Hills. Free Energy will build two 1-megawatt geothermal plants that take hot water — a co-product of oil and natural gas during the pumping process —  and extract the heat from it to generate electricity. The $7 million project will tap wells that are around 9,000 feet deep, and temperatures of the fluids can easily reach 170 degrees F in high volumes. After the heat is extracted from the water using heat exchangers, it is used to run an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power plant. The water is later pumped back into the ground. Free Energy will build, own and operate this binary cycle plant and the oil company has agreed to buy all the electricity produced for the same rate it was paying to a previous supplier.

I’m hoping this new approach will catch on in Canada’s oil patch, the same way it’s being tried out in Texas. Indeed, a new Calgary-based company has recently been formed called Borealis Geopower, which was recently awarded $2.6 million from the Alberta Energy Research Institute to develop a similar project in the province. “Hot water resource is readily available through the existence of numerous deep, end-of-life oil and gas wells in the Canadian Foothills and the use of hot water resource for electricity production has the potential to increase energy efficiency and offer carbon offsets for the oil and gas companies,” Borealis states on its Web site.

These are the kinds of geothermal projects that could really take off, particularly if companies such as Borealis and Free Energy can prove them to be economical for oil companies trying desperately to reduce their carbon footprints as cap-and-trade approaches. If they can demonstrate this works, it will also capture the attention of the Alberta and Canadian governments. Having 100MW-plus geothermal plants built in Canada would be nice, too, but this kind of distributed geothermal energy generation makes oodles of sense and should be pursued with vigour.

The folks at Space Canada must be loving this. Just six days before the start of its three-day conference in Toronto, where scientists and engineers will get together to discuss space-based solar power, the Japanese government has disclosed that it’s prepared to spend the equivalent of $21 billion (U.S.) to build a 1,000 megawatt solar PV plant in space that would orbit the earth and beam back power 24-hours a day. Mitsubishi Electric and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries have both joined a research group that’s taking on the ambitious project. The group estimates that four square kilometres of solar panels would be needed to do the job. Planned operation: Sometime before 2040.

It might seem like a lot of money, but consider that it would amount to about $70,000 for each home supplied with 3 kilowatts — that’s about double what you could get with a rooftop solar system. But because you’d get the power 24-7, theoretically, it would actually work out to be cheaper on a kilowatt-hour basis. Now, this conveniently ignores the fact that there will be huge energy losses that come with beaming solar energy back to earth and then transmitting it through a grid over presumably long distances. There’s also the fact that, as with most megaprojects, you can bet that $21 billion is lowballing the true cost. Plus, I still can’t get around the cost and fossil fuels that will be required to get these solar panels into space. Wouldn’t it just defeat the purpose of building this clean-energy plant? The Japanese government admits that for this monster project to take off it will have to figure out a way to dramatically reduce the cost of getting panels into space, but that still doesn’t address the CO2 that would be emitted getting them there.

But hey, this is the land that gave us Godzilla. Ye must have faith. One thing for sure: this will be the buzz in Toronto next week. See my earlier Clean Break column on the upcoming conference.