Papua New Guinea, Climate Change Commitment Through Geothermal

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is now the first county to register its climate change agreement in accordance with the Paris Agreement. Their proposal is 100% renewable energy by 2030, through the use of hydro and geothermal potential. Currently, on the Island of Lihir, they have drilled 27 geothermal wells up to 1800m, and tapped into reserves as hot as 250°C. The initial electric plant was funded by Lihir Gold Limited in June of 2002 and displaced the existing diesel generation plant. In 2003, the plant added more power production to the existing facility.

It is this success with geothermal electrical production that has sparked the interest of PNG in this free resources, which will help to transition many communities off of the existing diesel generators. I suspect that the brine the plant is using to drive the geothermal plane is likely laden with gold minerals, and they could extract this gold through a process similar to that used at the Salton Sea in California. In this way, we may find ourselves without the need to use open pit mines to access gold.