Alberta has 'long way to go' for geothermal energy
Study says tech not yet 'cost-effective'
Dan Healing
Calgary Herald
Thursday, July 31, 2008
A new study concludes geothermal energy has more potential than previously believed to provide a clean source of electricity and steam for Alberta residents and industries, including the oilsands.
But bringing such a project on stream would take years of study and millions of dollars to drill test wells that are twice as deep as the deepest typical gas wells, according to author Michal Moore of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy at the University of Calgary.
"People keep asking me if I know whether the technology works. We can say, at the front end, it works," he said in an interview, citing geothermal power generation demonstration projects in Australia and France.
"If the next question is, 'Is it cost-effective?' Not yet. We've got a long way to go."
Moore, an ISEEE senior fellow, co-authored the Alberta Energy Research Institute-funded report with Jacek Majorowicz, a consulting geologist in Edmonton.
Moore said he wants the federal government to commission a Canadian national survey to give companies a better idea of where they might best locate geothermal projects.
In the study, researchers mapped geothermal temperature zones in Alberta, using mainly existing well log data collected during the drilling of oil and gas wells.
The results are summed up in maps that have large empty areas where little drilling has been done. Furthermore, few of those wells were deep enough to provide complete information, so temperatures have had to be inferred, said Moore.
One exception is a famous well near Fort McMurray that provided solid information at depth, he added.
"That's one reason as you look at the map, it gets a little more refined (around Fort McMurray) because there's that one series of data we couldn't duplicate anywhere else," he said.
The well, drilled by former Calgary Stampeders owner Larry Ryckman in 1994 in an attempt to prove that oil seeps up from inside the Earth's crust, was abandoned short of its goal at about 1.6 kilometres when the venture ran out of money.
Shell Canada Ltd. spokeswoman Simone Marler said the company is very interested in using geothermal energy at its oilsands projects to reduce natural gas use and carbon emissions.
"Geothermal is a technology that we are looking at but this is a long-range possibility with commercial application probably a decade away," she said.
Eddy Isaacs, AERI's executive director, said the study has "set the stage for field studies to establish the technical and economic feasibility of geothermal energy."
Moore said rock formations have to be hotter than 150 C to heat injected water to the point that it's useful for power generation.
The study found that some regions of northwestern Alberta exceed that temperature at three to four kilometres -- but in southern Alberta, you have to drill down seven kilometres or more.
Moore worked on a similar U.S. project a few years ago while teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It found that establishing a working complex, with a six-kilometre-deep injection well and a second collecting well, would cost around $7.8 million US. The output would be about 60 megawatts, enough to power 60,000 homes.
