Western Canada has extensive geothermal electric plant capacity that could, if exploited, power a great deal of the country. It is in the long run the cheapest source of electricity on the planet with the smallest environmental impact. It runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week pumping clean electricity in the grid with no pollution.
These sustainable green power plants can be found in 24 countries in the world and none in Canada, even though we sit on a massive untapped capacity. In addition to this micro plants can be placed on the many exhausted oil wells in BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. These orphan wells are leaking dangerous amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Not only could we produce a constant flow of electricity from them but we could stop the methane leaks and the cost would be recovered through the sale of electricity. It would also bring a more reliable source of energy that hydro to more remote areas of the province, and much needed economic prosperity.
I would suggest the story here is the fossil fuel industry has spread so much misleading information about geothermal power plants, it has prevented this technology from being understood by the public and our politicians. Too often I have heard both Liberal and NDP MLAs buy this faceless propaganda. This is not the case in other countries. Kenya for example sees their geothermal power plants as their future, and it has already had a large positive impact on their quality of life. The US has 64 geothermal power plants, in one of these plants in Northern California the Geyser facility it produces 20% of California's power.
British Columbia has fallen, I suspect, for fossil fuel propaganda and has failed to change BC Hydro’s mandate from building environmentally damaging, methane leaking and increasingly unstable dams toward clean safe geothermal power plants. They have also not rewritten the restrictive Liberal Governments legislation that has stopped the building of geothermal power plants and impeded the use of geothermal heating systems in our greenhouses. Instead, we are building gas pipelines and unstable dams, throwing our future away and any economic advantages that this sustainable free energy would give us. To make matters worse our Natural Gas resources, which at source leaks massive amounts of methane, contribute more to global warming than if we were burning coal. Yes, our Natural Gas is dirtier than coal because we don't adequately control the methane leaks, so it is not a transitional fuel. To make matters worse this gas is also used in the Tar Sands of Alberta to produce bitumen.
Contrary to has been said by some politicians geothermal power plants do not pollute, nor do they do any damage if they are subjected to natural disasters or terrorist destruction (all that happens is water is released into the environment), the plants are more decentralized therefore more sustainable, they use existing technologies (steam generators and well-drilling expertise), they can be expanded unlike dams, and they have been constant use in for over 100 years around the world.
I am tired of hearing politicians and the press say it is risky to build these plants, they overlook the fact that all oil wells have heat records so we know where the heat is located, so no risk. They also are fond of suggesting you have to have a good hot water source, which is also not true as modern plants (built in the ’60s) are now using closed-loop binary systems that use a liquid in the recirculating pipes that flash at a lower temperature of 57-degree centigrade. This means you do not need a hot zone nor water. These plants can be built anywhere in the world, including Northern and Eastern Canada.
In addition to this mineral extraction plants are attached to several geothermal electric plants throughout the world and they are extracting lithium and other minerals from the brine. This means no open-pit mines destroying the ecosystem or expensive mine shafts, or dangerous abandoned or poorly maintained tailing ponds.
In Iceland the free byproduct of their geothermal electrical plants is hot water, the water is freshwater from their streams heating during the electrical production process. This is pumped into their capital to provide their domestic hot water supply, heating for their buildings, their hot showers, systems to melt snow off their winter sidewalks, heat for their swimming pools, and even growing bananas in their greenhouses. You find similar uses in many US cities and other countries around the world.
“Humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industry know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem. We are not dealing with a failure in technology, a failure in industry, a failure of human ability. We are dealing with a failure of social and political will." Nacala & Socolow 2004
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