By Anna Littlefield and Eric Stautberg
To achieve a rapid and effective energy transition, society will need to widely deploy both existing and emerging technologies and tools. Mitigating the emissions of greenhouse gases while maintaining the world's growing demands for energy will require these to deployed at great pace and scale. Natural synergies exist between two such technologies: carbon capture utilization and sequestration (CCUS) projects and geothermal power generation from hot sedimentary aquifers. The overlapping technical and operational components of these projects underline an opportunity for cost savings and accelerated deployment. Both technologies also share many of the skills, investments, and project cycles from existing oil and gas operations making them ripe for transitions.
In CCUS projects, CO2 is initially captured either directly from the air (Direct Air Capture, DAC) or from an emitting point source, such as a power plant. This CO2 is then compressed and transported via pipelines to a site where it can safely be injected into a subsurface reservoir for permanent storage. Sedimentary basins across the world possess reservoirs viable for injection, representing immense volumetric storage capacity for CO2. The most recent report from the IPCC makes it clear that CCUS is a critical tool, not only for industrial processes for which emissions are hard-to-abate, but also for reaching mitigation goals with expediency.
Geothermal, in contrast, is a power generating process that avoids creating emissions by utilizing the natural heat flow from the earth to generate electricity. While historically this technology has been concentrated in areas with high volcanic heat flow, there is a push to deploy geothermal in sedimentary basins across the United States that were not previously considered viable for geothermal development. Advances in drilling technologies and well completion techniques from the oil and gas sector are now being applied to exploration and development of low temperature (100-150 °C) geothermal resources in these sedimentary basins. Geothermal projects can be established by drilling new wells or re-purposing existing oil and gas wells and can either use brine or a working fluid such as CO2.
May 5, 2024
