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Tyler Hamilton

The Geological Survey of Canada put out a research paper in 2010 that concluded the country has enough geothermal heat to power itself many times over.

The big question is how much of that heat can be economically tapped?

As a general rule, the hotter and shallower the resource the more economical it is to exploit based on current technologies. The higher the temperature the easier it is to extract the volume of heat required to spin a turbine and generate electricity.

But there aren’t many places in Canada, beyond northern B.C., Alberta and the Yukon, that have that right combination of temperature and depth. Everywhere else, you’ll have to drill deep – as much as 10 kilometres down – to find enough heat. That’s a deal-breaker with respect to cost and risk.

It’s also a nut Ian Marnoch of Port Severn, Ont., is trying to crack. For the past seven years the Ontario inventor has been developing a new kind of “heat engine” that he says can generate electricity more economically from lower-grade heat. And that heat could come from anywhere: the ground, the sun, or an industrial waste process.

Not that the technology doesn’t already exist to do it. There are other heat-engine technologies out there, most notably those based on the Organic Rankine thermodynamic cycle. These systems transfer heat to a working fluid with a low boiling point, such as ammonia.

As the fluid heats up, expands and vaporizes it drives a turbine that generates electricity. The vapour is then cooled, condensing it back into a fluid which is recycled back through the process.

Marnoch’s heat engine works under a different principle. There is no vaporization of fluids. Instead, the Marnoch system relies on dry pre-pressurized air that expands and contracts as it is heated and cooled, causing pistons to turn that generate electricity.

This in itself may not be new, but it’s the way Marnoch has configured his machine that may give it an edge over other technologies. He says his thermal power engine can process heat much faster and at bigger volumes than Organic Rankine machines.

“It can process about three times as much heat by value as an Organic Rankine machine of the same size,” says Marnoch, adding that his heat engine can be designed to be much smaller and, therefore, less expensive.

That it operates more efficiently also means it can tap into lower temperatures that aren’t viable with other technologies. One area where Marnoch hopes to demonstrate the superiority of his design is in northern communities that currently rely on diesel generators for electricity production.

All he needs is the right temperature differential – that is, the gap between the heat source, such as the water in a deep mine shaft or temperature at the bottom of an old oil or natural gas well, and the heat sink, which would be the cool northern air.

If that gap is 20 degrees C or higher there’s potential to generate electricity. The system becomes more economical the wider the gap.

Marnoch has been working to perfect his patented heat engine with a team of PhD students and professors at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, which has supported development of the machine for the past five years with funding from the federal and Ontario governments. The Ontario Power Authority and Ontario Centres of Excellence were also early funders.

The latest prototype of the machine is at the university’s new Clean Energy Research Laboratory, but Marnoch is eager to get the machine out in the field and tested in a real-world situation.

St. Marys Cement is one possible candidate. The company is exploring using the Marnoch engine to generate electricity from the waste heat of its Bowmanville cement plant.

“It is in very early discussions but we are very enthusiastic about the potential and what this can mean for industries with large volumes of low-grade waste heat,” says Martin Vroegh, environmental manager at St Marys.

Marnoch is hoping that the smaller size of his machine, relative to an Organic Rankine set-up, will make his technology more attractive to operators of industrial facilities, which often lack the real estate to host such equipment.

“It could open the door for us,” he says. “We just need to get out there and prove it works.”

If only it were that easy. Like any inventor or entrepreneur trying to bring a new clean technology to market, particularly one that directly challenges well-entrenched products, Marnoch knows he has many more hurdles to overcome and many years of trying.

It comes with the territory. But persistence is the soul of innovation, and Marnoch has plenty of it.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies. Contact him at tyler@cleanbreak.ca

Mad Like Tesla: Underdog Inventors and Their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy was launched this month and has been well-received. The reviews so far have been positive, and awareness of the book is slowly building. But not fast enough. I want to take this moment to ask my readers, many of whom have already purchased the book (thank you!), to help spread the word. Share this link or the Mad Like Tesla website (www.madliketesla.com) on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Refer to it when commenting on the various blogs you might follow. And for my media friends out there — whether in the mainstream press or the blogosphere — please consider a review, or alternatively, I’m happy to chat about the many odd and inspiring stories in this book. Please see press release here.

Thank you all for your ongoing interest and support. BTW: Many have asked, so I’m happy to report that the e-book version of Mad Like Tesla is now available at Amazon.com.

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September 16, 2011

Tyler Hamilton

This week I spoke at the Canadian Geothermal Association conference in Toronto about an issue of great concern for those in the industry: public disinterest.

It doesn’t seem to matter that geothermal energy is clean and abundantly available in Canada, or that projects can be cheaper to develop, safer to operate and more reliable than a nuclear plant.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is determined to open up Canada’s north to economic development, and this is exactly where the country’s geothermal resources are hottest and least expensive to develop.

The federal government is also making it more difficult to build coal plants through regulations that, once they kick in around 2015, will hit coal-dependent Alberta, the hardest. Alberta, rich in geothermal potential, could do a lot to clean up its electricity mix and offset emissions from the oil sands by embracing this well-established technology.

None of that seems to matter.

For some reason, the heat beneath our feet that can be used to generate emission-free power 24 hours a day doesn’t get any love, even though the world’s top energy experts who attended the Equinox Summit in Waterloo this past June declared geothermal one of the most important energy options for replacing coal-fired generation.

So what gives? Why does Canada remain the only nation on the Pacific Ring of Fire to not have a commercial geothermal power plant up and running? Why does Canada have no formal program to pursue this opportunity? Why aren’t we pushing this more?

Lack of awareness, both within the media and among our political leaders, may be part of the problem. There may also be a bit of confusion about the technology. Many people, for instance, consider geothermal energy strictly as a heating and cooling technology for homes and buildings.

One of the biggest issues is a lack of reliable data about the temperature, location and geology of the potential geothermal resource. A recent and well-overdue report from the Geological Survey of Canada made this point clear.

“We estimate that there are sufficient data to characterize, to some degree, geothermal potential of only 40 per cent of Canada’s landmass,” according to the comprehensive, 322-page document, which was quietly released in July.

“Most of Canada has no geothermal information, and in many regions where information exists, the data are insufficient to characterize geothermal resources.”

Without quality data – the kind of data the government has historically supplied the oil and gas and mining sectors—no developer is going to take on the risks and high costs associated with early resource exploration. And accessing affordable capital to pursue such endeavours? Forget about it.

This has to change if any industry is to get off the ground in Canada. It’s why these researchers are calling for the creation of a national geothermal database that could be accessed by developers to help reduce exploration risk.

They also want funding that would support more field, laboratory and computer modeling work, which could fill the data void. This might include development of a network of research wells.

I would go a step further and make it mandatory for the oil and gas sectors to collect and share detailed temperature data for the wells they drill.

The opportunity, particularly in British Columbia, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, but potentially across all of Canada, can’t be overstated. “Canada’s in-place geothermal power exceeds one million times Canada’s current electrical consumption,” according to the report.

It does acknowledge that only a small fraction of this resource is close enough to transmission lines and population centres to be economically tapped, at least in the near term.

That said, new technologies that allow for deeper drilling, less expensive techniques for fracturing rock, and higher-efficiency heat exchange and generation gear could significantly open up the market, the same way horizontal drilling and “fracking” technologies have led to a boom in shale gas production.

With these new technologies and approaches, “calculations suggest as few as 100 projects could meet Canada’s energy needs,” they write, also pointing out that the cost of delivering geothermal power to market “is projected to decline and be competitive with coal-fired production within the next 15 years.”

Remember, this isn’t an exaggerated report coming from an environmental group. These are the recommendations of seasoned government scientists working within Natural Resources Canada.

And these scientists appreciate that getting to where we need to go – or as Wayne Gretzky would put it, “going to where the puck is going to be”—will require more than just research.

We need pilot projects. We need a regulatory framework that will create certainty for the market. We need government to share some of the early exploration risk, as it has with other industries.

But this won’t happen unless the public – and the media – become more interested. Until then, our political leaders will remain cold on this hot clean energy resource.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies.

Hamilton, energy and technology writer for the Toronto Star, examines some of the latest, most far-out green energy innovations and the people behind them. How far-out? Take, for example, a retired engineer’s idea to produce electricity via an artificial tornado, or a plan for a space-based power station that would harvest the sun’s energy, using microwaves to beam it down to earth. Other gizmos and processes seem more amenable to commercial success and social acceptance: Hamilton tells of a secretive company called EEStor that claims to have made a breakthrough in energy storage, and of a team building a low-cost nuclear fusion reactor. He strikes a fine balance between hope and hard realism when considering barriers to energy transition. As the “tornado guy” says, upon considering financial and regulatory obstacles: “Holy crap, that’s a lot to get through.” VERDICT: Mad Like Tesla is easy to get through, even for readers with only a basic knowledge of energy issues. Hamilton makes complex technologies comprehensible, and he clearly enjoys the remarkable human stories behind the science. Many of the risk takers and visionaries portrayed are Canadian (rocker Neil Young makes a cameo appearance!), but this book’s strong appeal should transcend all borders.

Can’t complain with that. The book is scheduled for public release on Sept. 1 and is already available for pre-order on a number of sites, including Amazon.com/Amazon.ca and Indigo.ca. The book won’t break the bank, either. We decided to do paperback release on first run to make the book more accessible to a larger audience. You can likely pick it up for $13 or so. I built a Web site I’m not entirely happy with, so plan to have a newly designed site finished by the end of August. Stay tuned!

That’s why in my Clean Break column this week I argue clean technology, and specifically the efforts of SDTC, need to be part of the country’s election dialogue. We need to build on the progress SDTC has achieved to date, not abandon the momentum at a time when major world economies — Germany, China, India, Brazil, the United States – are racing to establish a dominant position in the emerging global green economy.

The leaders of the political parties looking to run the next government need to be asked: How are they prepared to support clean technology innovation and green economic development in Canada?

This deal makes a lot of sense, as Magma CEO Ross Beaty explains well in the company’s press release. “It has the potential to lower the cost of capital to develop each company’s existing growth assets, to enable those assets to be developed more quickly, and to better attract new opportunities for future development,” said Beaty. “Geothermal will remain a core focus of the new company, but hydro, wind and solar assets will be solid business platforms for future growth. In the renewable energy business, bigger is better and this combination will achieve that while enhancing returns to each company’s shareholders.”

There’s no doubt big is better in any energy development business, and if bulking up does give the new company access to cheaper capital this could open up plenty of opportunities. Even in a market like Ontario, with guaranteed feed-in-tariff rates for 20 years, banks are still reluctant to work with small companies without charging them an arm and a leg. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, but it’s the sad reality. Alterra is wise to bulk up, and in doing so is on the way to creating one of the largest pure-play renewable energy developers in Canada.

It’s interesting, I didn’t include this in my column, but when I asked Alison Thompson, chair of the Canadian Geothermal Association and vice-president of Magma Energy, why the major oil and gas companies are avoiding geothermal power, she answered in two words: “Skills shortage.” Because there is no government policy supporting geothermal in Canada, no roadmap, no awareness within the bureaucracy of its potential, and no price on carbon that would force companies to look at alternatives, there’s also no desire to take skilled workers from the oil patch — such as reservoir engineers — and throw them onto a geothermal project. Thompson, who used to work at both Nexen and Suncor and co-led a two-year oil industry research effort called GeoPowering in the Oil Sands, said the oil companies know geothermal is a proven technology. They just need the right nudge. “At a certain point somebody needs to rise above the excuses and just do it.”

Which brings me back to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s ridiculous comment about how passage of the Climate Change Accountability Act would have hurt the economy and killed jobs. Geothermal power is a prime example of where skills in Alberta are transportable to a different sector that can help the province achieve emission reductions. There is so much potential for collaboration between the oil patch and geothermal developers yet so little interest in going down that path. It’s simply mindboggling.

How much of Canada could be powered by geothermal power? All of it. Many times over.

There is, of course, a catch or two. Cost is one. Location is another, because not all the best sites are near population centres. Still, as two new studies from Canada’s top geothermal researchers show, there’s a heck of a lot of geothermal resource to work with if we tried. And as I point out in my Clean Break column this morning, geothermal could be just as significant a contributor to Canada’s power needs in 20 year2 or 30 years as hydroelectric power is today. Again, that’s if we tried.

Stephen Grasby, a geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, and co-author Jacek Majorowicz, an Alberta-based geothermal consultant, have come out with two studies looking at enhanced geothermal system (EGS) potential in Canada. One study will appear online this month in the Journal of Geophysics and Engineering (I was expecting it out by now). It looks at the overall potential of EGS in Canada. Another just published study, this one in the journal Natural Resources Research, looks specifically at high-potential regions where EGS development would offer the biggest bang for the buck. “Results show areas with significant EGS potential in northern Alberta, northeastern British Columbia, and southern Northwest Territories related to high heat flow and thermal blanketing of thick sedimentary cover,” they wrote. “Estimated installation costs in 2008 dollars are under $2 million per megawatt.”

That’s about $6 billion for 3,000 megawatts — more than competitive with nuclear, not just with respect to capital costs, but also operational and maintenance costs. Also, none of the high costs associated with storing spent fuel indefinitely or with decommissioning old plants. This figure, of course, is for developing the most promising EGS projects. Cost will rise depending on location, rock conditions, availability of an outside water source, and depth of required drilling. Still, the studies make clear the opportunities are immense.  The Geophysics and Engineering study, for example, said projects could be developed right across the country, including parts of Ontario, if you drill deep enough. Over time, as drilling costs fall and expertise of EGS climbs, this could happen one day.

“At 10 kilometres we can expect EGS temperatures in the 150 to 200 degrees C range across most of Canada, except some areas of the Canadian shield,” wrote Grasby and Majorowicz. “Given the widespread distribution of geothermal energy, and the high energy content, the potential geothermal resource in Canada is significant,” they concluded.

Sure, there’s risk to heading in this direction, just as there was risk of investing in the early days of the oil sands or nuclear industry. I would argue there’s much more risk drilling for oil offshore in the deepest ocean waters. For example, an accident could happen and you could end up with the equivalent of an oil volcano erupting kilometres below the surface. (Okay, now I’m being facetious).

The fact remains: geothermal power is baseload, it’s clean, it’s plentiful, and it can be done using proven drilling and rock fracturing techniques in Alberta’s oil patch. The Canadian Geothermal Association is targeting development of 5,000 megawatts of geothermal power by 2015 using conventional techniques. Imagine, if we started doing that development now in parallel with EGS research and development, what we could accomplish by 2030? It could be possible to wean Alberta entirely off coal, for one, and it would put us in a good position as we move to electrify the transportation sector.

These two Canadian studies come three years after the release of a groundbreaking U.S. study led by experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their research suggested EGS in the United States could realistically supply about 100,000 megawatts of power generation capacity by 2050, assuming the proper policies and R&D investments were committed. The MIT study didn’t cover Canada, but several experts who participated in that study said their conclusions could also apply to the Great White North. Still, it’s nice to have our own data — and this is exactly what Grasby and Majorowicz have given us.

Canada, clearly, needs a national geothermal development strategy — and it needs one now.

Time to beat the drum.

Of interesting is that the Remington Group, a leading commercial developer in Ontario, owns 50 per cent of Groundheat and has used the company to install geoexchange systems for the condominiums and other large buildings it develops. Remington alone is planning a number of geoexchange projects totalling about $15 million over the next two years. “The geoexchange market has only a few large scale competitors and Clean Energy’s strategy is alignment and collaboration with key service providers in the industry,” according to Alter NRG. ”The market potential is so large, that collaboration will improve quality, lower the cost structure and provide our customers the maximum financial value which will potentially increase adoption of geoexchange technology.”

This might sound like boring stuff, and, well, it is. But it’s significant to see the geoexchange industry grow from a bunch of ma and pa operations to being larger, smarter and more aggressive in the way they tackle the market. Now, it doesn’t help that major federal incentives are no longer available through the EcoEnergy retrofit program, but Alter NRG is going after commercial-scale projects so is mostly not affected.