Geothermal Energy: Earth's Gift to Mankind

getting a byeline for. It was probably how to survive shipwreck due to geo thermal energy or something like that. Right, Maybe did you do a bunch of like survival ones. Yeah, that was a survival guy for a while. You were wearing that like bush hat. Uh, the Safari hat, yeah, where one flap goes up. Huh, Like the jungle guy from g I Joe, what was his name? I don't know. I didn't watch those man, that's crazy crazy, I was too sophisticated. Uh, Chuck, So do you know the Earth

is about four point eight billion years old? It's old, super old. That's like so old. It's a lot younger some people do. Science is pretty um much in consensus on the idea. That's about four point eight billion years old alright. For about the first billion of those years,

it was in a crazy state, just loco basically. So the whole thing is supposedly formed as an accretion disk, right, and the terrestrial planets in our Solar system, which include Earth, Mercury, Venus, and mars um happened to attract the heavier elements elemental particles, which created a rocky core eventually, and then more and more stuff was um attracted to this rotating gravity pulsing core,

and the Earth was formed eventually. Right while as it was formed or forming, at some point, another celestial body which just took off afterward, slammed into Earth. And remember we talked about the Moon. This is how the Moon was formed, just basically spit out a bunch of the Earth, and then the Moon formed its own little lucretion disk, and then there was the Moon. Um. But when this

body hit the Earth, they think that it melted. The impact melted the first several thousand kilometers of the Earth's surface. The depth just melted it. It hit it that hard. Isn't that cool? Yeah, so I really I raised this all. I mentioned all this for two points. One that heat that was originally part of the Earth really formation, yes, and then secondly, the heat from the impact that eventually

calved the Moon it's still there too. Wow. Isn't that crazy to think that after four point eight billion years the Earth is still cooling down. Yeah, that's pretty remarkable. That's not all. So those those account for combined about half of the heat found in the Earth's court. The other half is mostly from radioactive decay of isotopes in

the core. From these incredibly high temperatures and heat um, the particles actually decay and as the decay, a particles sloughed off, and when there's an imbalance in the mass, that extra mass is released as heat energy. So that's about half of the heat in the core, but it's substantial. It is uh hundred miles, that's sixty clicks down. You're gonna have temperatures of about seventies sid degrees fahrenheit. That's

that's hot. That's the core, baby, And at that core, and we should say for our friends everywhere else on Earth, that's about degrees celsius. That's right. Uh. And at that core um. We're talking about rock melting temperatures creating magma, which is that melted rock. So you've got the magma down there. It's less dense, so it tends to rise. And we talked about a lot in the volcano episode. We talked about it some in the Geyser's episode. When

the lava flows, that is the magma. But when it just stays down there, it heats up water underground water, and that escapes, sometimes as geyser's uh, sometimes as hot springs even. Yeah, it can just be like an underground reservoir of really really really hot water, yeah, or it just stays there. And that's what's called a geo thermal reservoir, is when you have this really hot water heated by magma,

just hanging out down there waiting to be used. And so just in the first fifty kilometers no, I'm sorry, just in the first ten kilometers below the Earth's surface, right, yes, not that deep, there is an estimated fifty thousand times more energy in the form of heat then there is in all of the oil and natural gas reserves in the world. Fifty thousand times more energy. Right, because of all this heat and everywhere you go on Earth, you're going to find in some way, shape or form, this

heat that's in the Earth's surface, beneath the surface. Yes, so I said, um, that's just waiting to be used. It's not waiting to be used because it is being used in the form of geothermal energy. And that is not new. Uh. It goes back to the Roman times. Ancient Romans used hot springs. Yeah, the city of Bath in England, it's a Roman towns right built around hot springs right here in North America ten thousand years ago. Are American Paleo Indian friends. They used hot springs, they

bathed in them, they cooked in them. Yeah, they imagine that at the same time, I don't know. They could be like Cramer. Remember we prepared that radish flower as he bathed. Yeah, nice, but stew. Yeah. They used to lower FDR into the warm springs at warm Springs, Georgia. That's right. Uh. And the first real geo thermal heating system was developed in Boise, Idaho here in the United States. But before that, it was developed in Italy and that was actually after it. So the one I thought the

first one was in Pizza and Lord Ela. No, So the first and we'll talk about the distinctions in a minute. But the first the first plant was in Italy. Yeah,

so that was a geo thermal energy production plant. And Boise, Idaho, they used what's called direct geo thermal energy, which is basically where you just pipe this really hot water and use it to heat greenhouses in the winter or there's a lot of um cities that get snow on the ground that have basically radiant heat sidewalks where the heat from the geothermal springs nearby is pump an east sidewalks

or streets to keep the ice from forming. Yeah, Klamath Falls, Oregon, they have such a system because they knew we have a kg r A nearby, which is a known geothermal resource area. They have water from about two hundred to two twenty degrees just sitting underneath the ground, and they, like you said, melt the sidewalks, They melt their bridges, they melted up, melt their faces out there, and anything

they can with that junk. So, like I said, fifty thousand times the amount of energy in the form of heat just waiting to be used in the first ten kilometers below the Earth's surface everywhere on Earth. Yeah, that's pretty attractive, man, for a few reasons. One, everybody knows that fossil fields are dirty, they're problematic, they require transportation. And if you think about electrical production in the world, Um, the world uses seventeen points seven million megawatts of electricity,

or it did in two thousand twelve. That's a ton of electricity. Most of it was produced by gas, oil or coal. And the whole point of all of those things is you burn them and you create heat. Then you use that heat to heat up water, use that water to make steam, and use that steam to turn a turbine. Yeah, we talked about this in one of our other ones. How amazing electricity. Yeah, that just every everything we've ever come up with still comes down to

trying to get that steam to turn that turbine. That's exactly right. That's why that's why we use all of these fossil fuels. Is too heat water, not even just fossil fuels. Man. Nuclear power uses radioactive and they dip it in water, It heats the water up, turns it in vapor, spins a turbine. I mean, like with geo thermal energy. One of the things that makes it so

attractive as you're cutting out a lot of processes. You're you're not only are you cutting out the need to burn fossil fuels, you're cutting out entire steps which, over the course of the plant's lifetime, can reduce the cost of this geothermal energy production. Yeah. And it is caught on in a big way. I believe they are. I think twenty countries now that are using geothermal energy. The United States is leading the way there. Yeah. Surprisingly, I

didn't realize that. Yeah, but um, if you want to really see it in action, go to Iceland into the city of Ricky Vick, where basically the entire city is heated with those uh geothermal wells. Yeah. And the country of Iceland as a whole, a quarter of its energy is produced geothermally amazing. Same with El Salvador. Do you know that? Oh well, I thought you're gonna say I did not. You got me there. Um. The thing is, though, was world, why about seven thousand megawatts of geothermal energy

are produced? And don't forget we use seventeen point seven million. It's still it is. But we'll talk about the different kinds of geothermal energy right after this. All right, kinds of geothermal energy I like this of you know that earth science jazz is me man. Yeah, well, whatever I did for this many years ago, I remember being very turned on by it. I don't know if it was updating or writing. I just remember thinking, man, this is cool. And if you are a critic of geothermal energy, hold

your horses. We understand that there's problems with it. We're just talking about geothermal energy and it's it's pros right now. Boy, people get upset about alternative fuel sources. I've never under gotten that. You know, there's a lot of money at Steak, a lot of geopolitical posturing and power and stuff at steak. The world's based on fossil fuels. I know, but I don't know. It just doesn't make sense. It seems like it would make more sense even for economies to like, hey,

let's pursue it all. Well that's the that's the you know, that seems to be the prevalent mindset these days, an energy policy that includes everything. Yeah, although I think a lot of that though, is is just kind of paying lip service to the alternative stuff, and it gives you, um a blank check to pursue fossil fuels more because you seem like you're an open minded person. Yeah, it's just weird. I just I don't know. You hear something about like solar power and you think I think, well

that's neat, and I'll post something about that. What does solar power make? You think? Well, that's neat and I'll post something about it on the stuff you should know Facebook wall And people are just stupid. That's so, why would anyone do that? Is up with like Facebook and stuff like that? The worst in people. Give a man of mask and he will show his true face wise words. Did you just make that up? No, that's an old thing. I think anything that says give a man uh automatically

reveals his age. You know, been around the block a few times. Give a man of fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for at least two or three days if the fish are biting. Did you make that one up? Oh, that's a good one. Chuck the T shirt. I never catch fish, so it should say teach a man to teach. Chuck the fish, and he'll starve because he is a very good at catch. Can't get a bite, Nope, he'll go to Arthur treachers instead. Man that's still around. I think they there was one

in l A that I remember. It seems like Captain D's really took over the market. I don't even see Long John Silvers anymore. There's still Long John's, but I mean like it's more Captain D's than anything, well as it should be. Are you a Captain D's over Long Jon's fan? Uh? I grew up on Long Done Silver's. They got me with the free pirate hats. Yeah. Um, I think I like the Captain D's better. I just I just like Fried Fishy. Is Arthur Treachers like an also ran just like those? Or is it like a

little fancier now? I think it was just another chain, but it has seen its better days in the past. If I'm not mistaken, I might be wrong. Someone tell me about Arthur Treachers. Yeah, if you work at Arthur Treachers, let us know if it's still around, all right. Direct geo thermal energy that is, uh, that is where you have one of those known geothermal resource areas, um, not too far under the earth surface. That's like if you're located near a place where there are these hot pools. Yeah,

and you're not doing anything fancy with it. You're just basically piping that hot water into say a house and using it as hot water at that house, which is what that Boise District did um back in two And you want to know something amaze, but that geo thermal um direct use plant is still heating fo homes and Boise today. Uh. And it is not just to give

you hot water. Um. You can also use a heat exchanger and incorporate into your HVAC system and all of a sudden you are using that heated water to heat your home as well and to cool your home. Right. So that's that's a geo thermal heat pump, I believe, right, Uh what to heat and cool? Yeah, so I think I think those are both. Like a geothermal heat pump is an example of direct geo thermal energy. Direct geo thermal energy is not necessarily just like using the hot

water to heat and cool your house. You could also be yeah exactly, or you can just use the hot water directly to like wash your dishes or something like that. But with like when you're using a heat exchange or something. This is actually extremely clever and it's it's been around for a very long time and as the green movements kind of caught on. Stupid movement. It's this older technology

that's starting to get re uh discovered, I guess. But basically, if you use the geothermal heat pump, the whole idea is that you bury in the ground beneath your house some pipes, a closed pipe system, and there's like an h v A C system in your house that uh circulates air or say something like water or anti freeze through these pipes, and it takes the heat from your house and exchanges it through this heat exchanger in the summer, sends it through the underground where it's cooler than it

is in your house in the summer, so that that water, anti freeze or whatever is cooled, which brings it back and then cools the air in your h v A C system, which then blows out through your duct work. Yeah, just a few feet under your feet underground, it's fifty to sixty degrees year round. Yeah, below the frost line,

which is usually about ten ft below ground. Uh. And yeah, if you you can, since it's a steady temperature um depending on the season, especially if you have wild seasonal fluctuations where it gets really cold and really hot depending on yeah, Um, then you can really take advantage of this. So the whole idea is if it's say like fifty degrees in the summertime, when it's ninety degrees, if you're cooling that liquid that's in turn cooling your air, that's easy.

But fifty degrees in the winner that seems you know, not that much warmer, but just that little bit of warmth that extra is, say twenty degrees on a particularly cold day, that heats up that air, which means that your h v a C system has less has less energy to expend in further heating up the air to say seventy five degrees exactly. So you're still using like a lot of the same technology like a compressor and all of that that you would use with a traditional

h v A C system in your home. But this the the the steady temperature of the ground is like you said, assisting that, so you're having you're using less energy and and thus your energy costs are less as well. Plus it's reliable, it's not you know that it's going to be between fifty and sixty degrees all year round, all year round. The third way that you can use this is with the power plant, like we talked about, and that is when they, like we said, they generate,

they pipe it up through the wells and they generate electricity. Uh. There are dry steam plants where they just pipe it directly uh into the generator empower it. That's I guess the easiest and most cost efficient. Yeah, that's that's just yeah. I think the one in uh Italy um and where Lardarello I think is Lardarello, Italy in four it's still in in online today. Basically, we have the steam, right, and let's use it, and let's just put a turbine on top of it, and so it cuts out all

those middlemen. It's just you're using the steam, naturally produced steam underground to spind the turbine to produce electricity. Right. And obviously you have to have um a great amount of uh luck I guess to be located near such a place. Right. And that's so that's considered a dry

steam plant. Yes. Then you have the flash steam, and that's water between three hundred and seven hundred degrees fahrenheit which is super hot that they draw up through a well, uh and then use that steam to spind the turbine. That's right. And then there's binary cycle plants. So UM, let's say you're not located over a super hot reservoir, UM, but you still have pretty hot water something that would

be considered like a hot springs. Typically this is between a hundred and fifty and three hundred degree water UM, which is as low as or as high as a hundred and forty eight degrees celsius. Right, And what you do is you take this water and you use it to heat another liquid that has a lower boiling point. Pretty clever. Then when that liquid with the lower boiling point begins to boil, it creates the steam that powers the turbine. So again that's like an assist I would

say probably. And then lastly, there's another one that's newer UM that's called enhanced geo Thermal energy, and basically a uses fracking techniques to UM create a geothermal hot spot. So they go in and they dig wells, they dig a deposit well, and they dig another well and exit

well right. Um. And then in between those two they go in and just break up a bunch of this really hot rock where there's no water necessarily but it's super hot, right, and then they pump water into this um hot rock bed, let it heat up, and then they let the hot water come back up the other well, and then they use that to create steam, usually like a binary cycle plant. And again that spins the turbine.

It's all about spinning that turbine. All about been in the turbine, man, all right, So let's take a break here and we will finish up with I guess the lowdown on how it compares to other forms of energy out there. All right, So here we are. Is it good? Is it bad? Well, like everything, it's both land on the good side, though I think it's typically good. The thing is, the bad stuff is so um rarely mentioned.

You know. Everybody thinks like geo thermal it's as green as it gets, and there are like a really there's a lot of about geo thermal energy that is very green. For the most part, it emits very very little carbon dioxide compared to a fossil fuel power plant. Yes, I have some numbers on that. In fact, by the way, if you've ever driven by a geo thermal plant, you see the smoke coming out, that's not smoke, that's water vapor.

So don't get all up on your hackles water vapor just water vapor, which and I looked this up, I couldn't find anything. Water vapors are greenhouse gas as well, like a pretty bad one. But I didn't see anything where that that was like a problem with geo thermal energy. Oh yeah, alright, So here's some numbers. They did a case study of a coal plant. They meaning scientist scientists science doer may or may not have been funded by

a front group. Uh, they said, Um, they studied a coal plant with uh scrubbers with good scrubbers and emissions control technology, so basically a newer coal plant, And they said that admitted twenty four times more CEO two and almost eleven thousand times more sulfur dioxide and about thirty eight hundred times more nitrous oxide per megawatt hour than

a geothermal steam plant. Pretty good, that's not bad at all. Um. However, one of the one of the concerns with geothermal is it does emit sulfur dioxide, which gives it a horrible eggy smell, yes, and contributes to acid rain. But s O two emissions from geothermal plants for about thirty times lower per megawott hour than coal plants, which are the largest s O two source, So that is one of the bad emissions. Other than that, not a whole lot

of really harmful emissions. No. UM. Most of the problems that come from geothermal energy production come from the fact that when you are harvesting hot water from these geothermal sources. UM.

Before they used to just pump it out. Yeah, that was an open loop system, and they much anymore, and they figured out that this is a huge waste of a resource, right, so they started making clothed loop systems where the water would be pumped out, it would be used to say heat some other um fluid with a lower boiling point or however you used it to to make that turbine spin, and then the water would be captured and then sent back down into the reservoir to

be reheated and used again. Super smart, It is very smart, and in that case there's even fewer emissions than with an open loop system. The problem is is that it also leads to introduction of things like salts, sometimes arsenic, other heavy metals into the groundwater supply UM once it comes through and makes the cycle, So there's a there's a threat to groundwater contamination. Using geothermal energy production. That's one problem with it. Another one is those hotbeds that

are used that basically use fracking techniques. Just like with fracking, they can cause things like earthquakes or like massive earth sinking. There's probably a geothermal plant in Off, Autralia where the area is sunk about five feet ever since it's been in production. Wow. Yeah, because you're going in and you're sucking out all the water, you're breaking up a bunch of rocks that form bedrock. You know, so when you start messing with that stuff, it can have seismic um repercussions.

That's a good band name. Thanks. Uh. Noise pollution is on the plus side because they say it typically produces less noise than the equivalent of leaves rustling from breeze. Is not ba plus the the typical geothermal power plant takes about a lot less real estate. Yeah, you can do a vertical system, uh if it suits the area, and that really doesn't use up much UM as far as like spreading it out what's called service area because it's going straight up and down. UM uses a lot

less water. Geothermal plant uses five gallons of freshwater per megawatt hour. Compared to three hundred and sixty one gallons by a natural gas facility. Isn't that ironic? It uses less water even though water is the basis of the whole thing. And apparently a binary air cool plants use zero fresh water. Oh, it's all. It's all just down

from the from the earth. Yes. And for the land use, I did have one more stat um over a thirty year span, which is the time period they usually use to consider like the big impact of a life cycle of a system. Uh. They said, a geo thermal facility uses four four square meters of land per gig about our while coal uses three thousand, six hundred and thirty two square meters per gigat hour. It's a big diff I also saw that they had like a net energy ratio of like four. For every like one input of

energy you get five, Yeah, which is really great. The thing is, the upfront costs are very expensive. So in a lot of places where it would be advantageous to start a geo thermal energy production plant, they just don't have the money to set up that kind of infrastructure. It's anywhere from like one million to four million dollars for a well to be drilled, and would say, like a hot rock binary system, you need two wells at least that's just for you know, one area, so that

the upfront cost can be prohibitive. And the same thing goes for if you're setting up like a geo thermal heat pump in your home too. Yeah, I think it's pretty reasonable. Well, with government subsidies, it's super reasonable. Now with the energy savings, they typically estimate the thing pays

for itself within like five years. Yeah. They for the two thousand nine Economic Stimulus Recovery Act, they remove the cap on heat pump system rebates, so now you can get h towards a qualified geo thermal heat pump system. So even the richie riches can make out. Uh So, if you're looking at an average a typical home of square feet, boy, that's a typical home. Geez, a heating load of sixty to us in a cooling load of sixtus.

It's gonna cost about twenty grand to install yet uh back, and that's about double the cost of conventional heating and cooling hvac um. But it reduces your bill by and at last eighteen to twenty three years, which is easily double what your standard h BAC will cost, So you're definitely gonna to make your money back UM if you want to invest in something like this. Uh. It's also better than wind and solar in many ways because you don't have to rely on the sunshine or the wind

to blow. It's seven. That's the other thing. It's dependable. It's also typically considered renewable, although they've figured out that UM. You have to take measures to sustain a production plant, Like you can't just pump all the water out. You

have to make a closed system. But even if you do use a closed system like UM, the area can cool off for well over time, like the one in Italy has seen a reduction and steam power over since the nineteen fifties because the geothermal reservoir beneath that has been cooling. So you basically have to like take it easy on it. You have to treat it like a

little gently, you know. Yeah, And apparently you can use UM if you're putting in a system not just for your home, but like a plant, it can other things can be going on there. It can be a golf course, it can be a horse trading facility. Sure, it can be uh, what else is landis where it can be a cemetery. Well maybe not a cemetery, yeah, because people don't get buried below the frost line. They just get buried.

My family does. So there's addressing that. A lot of people say, well, it just takes up too much land. What if you don't have a lot of land. Um, you can actually build a vertical system where the pipes just go straight down rather than flat beneath your house and you'll have the same effect. That's right. Uh. The last thing I have here is the world's largest facility called the Geysers. It's in San Francisco, right, Yeah, and about seventy miles north of San Francisco in the Maya

Kamas Mountains, a company called Kalpine. It is forty square miles long UM and it powers fourteen plants. And this thing has been around for a while. This is not right. Uh, seven five megawatts of electricity. It creates enough to power seven homes or a city like San Francisco. So it meets the power needs of Sonoma Lake in Medicino Counties and UH portions of Marina and Napa, and satisfies almost six of the average electricity demand in the North coast region.

That is the Golden great Bridge, Golden gate Bridge to Oregon. Yeah't that crazy? That's so perfect for San Francisco. Man, they're all over that stuff. That's great. You've got nothing else huh no, man, uh man. My dad was an hva C engineer. He'd be pretty proud of this one. Yeah, you're gonna point it out to him, probably who probably won't listen, but still, and he'd say, what's that show you do again? If you want to know more about geo thermal energy, you can take those words in the

search part how stuff works dot com? And I said search bars somewhere in there, And that means it's time for this movim. I'm gonna call this organ donation follow up from an expert, as he says, Hey, guys, I'm a donation specialist at an opi O, an organ procurement organization in the Northeast. I've been doing it for about eight years. Uh. And the biggest concern I had with your show was how tissue donation was incorrectly grouped together

with whole body donation. They're definitely not the same thing. Body donation for science research is completely different than tissue donation for transplant. A tissue donation should be and is grouped together with organ donation. UH. Bone, skin, cornea, heart valve, and vascular tissue are both life saving and life enhancing gifts meant for recipients. In fact, when you register to be a donor d m B or an online database, you're registering is an organ and tissue donor, not a

whole body donor. Secondly, there absolutely is federal oversight regulation and protocol for tissue Uh. The f d A A A t B American Association of Tissue Banks. I but that's a fun uh conference. Yeah conference. Uh. The e B a A, the I Bank Association of America or some of those governing bodies opos and tissue banks are

held to strict standards, including site visits and annual audits. UH. Lastly, I encourage you both to do some further research into tissue donation and be careful not to perpetuate into ex stereotypes and misconceptions. Uh. Those This is from Josh Brennan, and another guy wrote in and was like, I see where Josh is going, but he's got it backwards. He said, there's too much regulation on the organ side. Seven thousand people year die because of the overregulation, and they need

to make it all for money. Disagree, And he wasn't. He was like, he sourced a bunch of academic He's like, the medical and academic communities are the ones making the call for this. It's like, it's not like a bunch of you know, free market Zella's. Trump's not calling for it. No, he was like, doctors and scientists are saying this is

how it should go. Um. I guess that the reason I saw fit to lump those things in together is because I saw that one of the outcome from the whole body donation could be the harvesting of your parts for sale. And that's well that happens from times. That's what illegal or illegal or gray market. Yeah, that's what the guy, the first guy said, is the gray market is there because it's so heavily regulated. People are dying because they can't get this stuff, so they're willing to

go pay. He said, if you take out the if you give the demand, that illegal supply will have to be there. Yeah, I mean maybe maybe that's the case as well, but yeah, I don't know. I think that I think they're doing a great job with the Oregon Pro Human thing, aside from the seven thousand people that are trying every year waiting. Yeah, that funny. Yeah, Thank you very much for writing in Josh other Josh Joshia and do you remember the other dude's name? Um no, no,

anonymous masked author, that's right. Uh. Thanks for letting us know the deal. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff each you know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com, and as always, joined us at home on the web. Stuff you schnow dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com