New Episode of Resources Radio: "Hot Rocks: Drilling into Geothermal Energy, with Tim Latimer"

WASHINGTON, DC—Resources for the Future (RFF) today released a new installment of Resources Radio: “Hot Rocks: Drilling into Geothermal Energy, with Tim Latimer.”

In this episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Tim Latimer, the cofounder and chief executive officer of Fervo Energy, a geothermal energy developer. Latimer makes clear how geothermal energy—while comprising only a tiny portion of America’s total current energy use—could be an essential part of future decarbonization efforts. But despite the ubiquity of hot rocks across the Earth and the relative success of geothermal energy in places as disparate as California and Kenya, Latimer also cautions that technological innovations will be necessary to reduce both the environmental impacts and the costs.

Listen here.

Notable quotes from the podcast:

• The basics of geothermal energy: “Everywhere on Earth, if you go deep enough, you end up finding really hot rocks … You drill down wells into it, and you end up having injection wells that pump cold water down [and] production wells that return hot water and steam to the surface … When we talk about deep geothermal energy, what we're talking about is accessing these hot pockets in the Earth and doing so in a way that we can capture that energy from a fluid up through production wells and make something useful out of it on the surface.” (5:37)
• New technologies are enabling the expansion of geothermal: “What's interesting, if you think about geothermal in the last five to 10 years in the United States, is that we have certainly experienced growth in our sector … It's been growing in large part because of new technology developments that have allowed us to access lower-temperature resources through what's called binary cycle power plants, which are a newer development technologically in the space of geothermal, but account for most of the growth in the last 10 to 20 years of geothermal power in the United States.” (8:44)
• Costs remain a barrier to wider deployment: “What you find with geothermal is that these really high-quality resources may be able to hit [a low enough price]. But the rest of the supply may require a $60 price or a $70 price or an $80 price to deliver it, because maybe it's farther away from transmission, or maybe it's deeper … So, can someone find a spot in the western United States where you can deliver geothermal power at that price? Definitely. But can we find dozens of gigawatts at that price? Not with today's technology; not until we come down the learning curve a little bit and push down costs.” (20:40)