- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
Geothermal energy remains the poor cousin in our current stable of renewable resources, in spite of offering enormous benefits. That’s Jefferson Tester’s inescapable conclusion, after participating in a Department of Energy investigation into the technical and economic viability of tapping into this potentially vast energy pool. He describes the findings of the DOE report to a live and online MIT Museum audience.
The 18-member research team accepted as givens the fact that U.S. will demand ever more power, having just passed the one million megawatt milestone. But there are threats to the supply system, with increasing prices for natural gas and difficulties expanding coal production, not to mention issues around electric transmission lines and energy storage. Renewables like solar and wind won’t make much of a dent in the next 20 years, researchers believe, and nuclear power continues to meet public resistance.
Meanwhile, for the last 30 years, geothermal systems have been successfully demonstrating their capacity to generate electricity. Some areas of the world are blessed with steam or hot water located fairly close to the surface (think of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser). In Iceland and locations in the U.S. west, says Tester, “instead of mining minerals from the ground, we’re mining heat.” Right now, the U.S. produces 3000 megawatts of geothermal electricity. But “not all the earth is so blessed” with hot springs, says Tester, so the trick is “to replicate what nature has done.”
In several critical demonstrations around the globe, researchers are working on such enhanced/engineered geothermal systems (EEGS). They drill down to depths of 5 kilometers and beyond, deep enough to reach hot rock. Then they circulate water into these underground heat reservoirs, where it warms up enough to generate electric power. The work shows great promise, Tester believes.
Tester’s report assumed that if geothermal were “going to be anything more than a minor curiosity,” it would have to supply energy at the level of nuclear or hydropower in the U.S. today – 100 thousand megawatts. EEGS could become such an energy player by 2050, if in the next 15 years, government and industry kicked in for a handful of field demonstrations -- first in some shallow, high grade sites in the West, which would quickly and economically start producing energy, and then eventually in some sites requiring more expensive mining at depths greater than six kilometers -- such as in the eastern U.S. The total investment of $600-800 million would be less than the cost of a single clean coal plant, notes Tester. Currently, unlike other renewable energy projects, “geothermal has no money in the budget.” Comments Tester, “If I look to the future of my children, and my grandchildren, I’d want to make sure we’re looking at all the options.”
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- About the Speaker
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About the Speaker
Jefferson W. Tester PhD '71
H. P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering, Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, Department of Chemical Engineering
Jefferson W. Tester received a Ph.D. from MIT in 1971 and did post-doctoral research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Tester served as director of MIT's Energy Laboratory for 12 years and was director of MIT's School of Chemical Engineering Practice Program for 10 years.
His research focuses on energy and environmental issues. Specifc topics include kinetics and phase equilibria in hydrothermal and supercritical water, molecular thermodynamics in water-hydrocarbon-salt systems, chemical synthesis in supercritical solvents, advanced rock drilling methods, and fuel upgrading and biomass conversion.
He has co-authored more than 180 scientific papers and 9 books including major textbooks on graduate-level thermodynamics and sustainable energy and has received five awards for outstanding teaching.
Tester is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Chemical Society, the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and the Geothermal Resources Council. He has served as an advisor to the United States Department of Energy, Defense Science Board, and the National Research Council. He is the chair of the National Advisory Council of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and chair of the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust. Tester also serves on scientific advisory boards for the American Council on Renewable Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Supercritical Fluids. - About the Host
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About the Host
MIT Museum
Cutting-edge technologies, amazing holograms, and the beauty of Harold Edgerton's strobe photography entertain, educate, and enlighten at the MIT Museum. Robotics, underwater exploration, kinetic sculptures, and the variety of interactive programs and historic collections attract visitors and researchers from around the world. This unique museum recently opened the Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery featuring some of the latest work of selected research groups at MIT.
Video Player
Geothermal - An Undervalued Primary U.S. Energy Source
- Jefferson W. Tester PhD '71
- February 7, 2007
- Running Time: 1:15:14
