Green Car Congress: US Department of Interior Opens 190M Acres of Federal Lands for Geothermal Development

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US Department of Interior Opens 190M Acres of Federal Lands for Geothermal Development

3 January 2009

The US Department of the Interior (DOI) recently made more than 190 million acres of federal lands available for leasing and potential development of geothermal energy resources.

The approved development scenario, which was analyzed in the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, anticipates a potential 5,500 megawatts of new electric generation capacity from resources in the 12 western States (including Alaska) by 2015. It also estimates an additional 6,600 megawatts by 2025 for a total of 12,100 megawatts.

A 2007 study by MIT concluded that Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) technology could supply a substantial portion of US electricity well into the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact. (Earlier post.)

Overall, the MIT panel concluded that EGS can likely deliver cumulative capacity of more than 100,000 MWe within 50 years with a modest, multiyear federal investment for RD&D. The panel estimated the total EGS resource base to be more than 13 million exajoules (EJ), with an estimated extractable portion to exceed 200,000 EJ—about 2,000 times the annual consumption of primary energy in the United States in 2005.

The DOI Record of Decision amends 114 Bureau of Land Management resource management plans and allocates about 111 million acres of Bureau-managed public lands as open for leasing. An additional 79 million acres of National Forest System lands are also legally open for leasing. Site-specific analysis of future leasing nominations, permit applications, and operations plans can refer back to the impact analysis and best management practices included in the Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments, thus reducing the processing time of future geothermal development. These actions will reduce the time to produce energy from federal geothermal resources.

Lands withdrawn from or administratively closed to geothermal leasing will remain so. For example, lands within a unit of the National Park System, such as Yellowstone National Park, will continue to be unavailable for leasing. The Record of Decision /Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments also excludes Wilderness areas and wilderness study areas from analysis. It will allow discretionary closure of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern where the Bureau of Land Management determines that this is appropriate.

The Forest Service will use information in the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement to facilitate leasing analysis to determine whether or not geothermal leasing is appropriate and to evaluate its land use plans and amend them as needed through a separate environmental review process and facilitate future decisions on leasing National Forest System lands for geothermal development.

Federal lands in the Western United States contain the largest supply of known resources of geothermal energy in the country, according to the DOI. Geothermal leasing revenues and royalties are shared with the states and counties where the leases are located, with 50% going to the State and 25% to the county.

January 3, 2009 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1)

Comments

MIT keeps saying 2% of the heat 3 - 10 K below the US is more than 2,500 times our annual energy use.
And the extractable portion is more than 2,000 times the annual primary US energy use in 2005.
The amount that is THERE, is not the issue.
We need numbers for the economically extractable portion.
We need to extract 1 times our annual energy use - or even 1/4 of it.
It directly affects oil imports and the economy.
This estimate is more important and should be more easily accomplished than predicting near future costs of BEV batteries, or H2 distribution systems or fuel cells.
Are the pollution and CO2 effects acceptable?
Let's go.

Posted by: ToppaTom | January 04, 2009 at 09:05 AM

Before anyone rushes off on a GAIAN new religion "Geothermal crusade",(unfortunately Carol Browner will), wouldn't it be wise to actually look at the pollution side effects of the very few geothermal plants in existence?

Yes "Tapping the Energy of the Planet Earth" sounds fine on a surface look, but most of the very few geothermal plants in existence, suffer lots of poor environmental side effects varying from release of toxic gas emissions, H2S, CO and "sulfurous fumes", i.e SOx.

The working fluid, water, becomes heavily contaminated with varying acids and bases, present from unpredictable underground chemicals. This destroys or shortens the life of plant components driving up maintenance costs. Cleaning up the working fluid can be expensive. And preventing emissions of and the cleanup the noxious gases is also difficult. Predicting the life of a specific thermal pocket is very difficult, unless you want to drill into the side of an active Volcano. Sitting a plant on the slopes of Mt. Saint Helen is probably not prudent (or insurable).

Of the "twelve western states" surveyed, how much is parkland from Yellowstone Park that for other esthetic reasons should never be tapped? How much is from the slopes of the Volcanoes, Mount Saint Helens, Mt Baker or Mt Ranier et al?

Unfortunately those side effects are real. They can be cleaned up for certain, just as we now clean up teh sideeffects of coal and petroleum, other examples of "Tapping the Energy of the Planet Earth".

The reason that geothermal is not that common, is not for some mysterious Conspiratorial reason. It simply is that the costs are excessive, and the thermal efficiencies are low. But better than other low efficiency, high cost, holy sacraments of the GAIAN religion, i.e Wind and even worse and terrible Solar.

The reason little geothermal has been built, is that the benefits are not large enough. And will continue to be so. But that leaves lots of boondoggling room for Carol Browner and her ilk, to boodle and prosper.

Posted by: Stan Peterson | January 04, 2009 at 10:04 AM