The Wastebroker Blog

Alta Rock Energy Mines The Earth for Renewable Hot Water Energy

Most people visiting Yellowstone National Park make a point of seeing the Old Faithful Geyser shoot it's boiling water 150 feet into the air every hour or so.  It's amazing, powerful and, maybe most importantly, predictable.  So predictable, in fact, that some think its source -- water superheated by hot magma deep in the earth -- might just be able to be harnessed (or harvested, as the case may be) as a renewable and infinitely available source of clean energy.  On a small scale, this is already a reality.  More and more homes and buildings now rely on geothermal energy, delivered through a well drilled into the earth, as their primary heat source.  And that may only be the beginning.

Alta Rock Energy, www.altarockenergy.com a Seattle, Washington based alternative energy company, is racing to develop the first power-plant-sized, renewable electric generating system using water, or more accurately steam, super-heated in the earth, to power turbines and create electricity.  Alta Rock's technology piggybacks on, and is similar to, the hydraulic fracturing technology (hydraulic shearing in this case) that's proven to be so successful extracting oil and natural gas that was, until recently, not economically feasible to extract.  They call their process Engineered Geothermal Systems, or EGS.  In a nutshell, the EGS technology pumps millions of gallons of water into the earth under high pressure, shearing the rock and creating fissures into which the water can flow.  They follow that up with directional wells into which they inject water that heats up and recirculates on a loop through the power plant and back into the well on a continuous basis, resulting in a powerful, closed-loop power generation system. 

Emission-free and carbon-neutral, they say.

There's a cool video in the link that explains the process.  It's narrated by Ed Begley Jr., www.edbegley.com, the actor / environmentalist who (personal disclosure) I really like as an actor, but not so much otherwise.  I think they could have chosen a more powerful, less "President-Obama-wants-him" (a complete supposition on my part) narrator, for whatever that might be worth.  Maybe Morgan Freeman or Anderson Cooper.....

Unfortunately, Alta Rock's technology still needs a huge dollop of government funding to make it through the test phase.  And they've had several projects that have simply not worked.  The good news is that they're now attracting funding from the Google's of the world (www.google.com) and others.  Their newest project, a $43MM venture to drill and fracture a well in the side of a volcano in central Oregon is backed by the Department of Energy, www.energy.gov. Learn more about the project at http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2012/01/15/project_to_pour_water_into_volcano_to_make_power/

Will Alta Rock Energy's EGS technology change the game, replacing our much-maligned, but conveniently efficient, coal and natural gas-fueled power plants?  It seems no one knows at this point.  To me, it sounds like a great idea that, economically, might be a bit ahead of its time.  But, then again, that's what the guys with the oars probably said the first time they saw Fulton's (or the guy he's suspected of stealing the idea from) steam engine.  "It'll never work" is, perhaps, the most uninformed (and grammatically incorrect?) sentence in the English language.  This just might.  And, regardless, it's cool to think about.

Take a look at the picture below to get a sense of how EGS is supposed to work.  You can learn more by checking out the video at www.altarockenergy.com as well as several others on the topic of geothermal energy at www.youtube.com. 

 

   

Cars that Fly......the Terrafugia Way

Planes have wheels, but only for taking off and landing, right?  Not so fast.  For years many have pursued the concept of a car that flies, unsuccessfully.  Fantasy has heretofore, however, been a necessary part of the deal.  You had to imagine either the flying part or the driving part as one or the other always seemed impossible to meld together in unison.  Well, you need to imagine no more. 

Terrafugia (ter-ra-FOO-gee-ah) www.terrafugia.com , a MA-based “Dreamworks” type company started by a group of smart and clever MIT-educated aeronautical engineers (for the technically wowing stuff) and some MBAs (for the funding and scalability stuff) has developed what they call the Transition® Roadable Aircraft (TRA).  The TRA is, with wings retracted, a strange looking, but sporty, two-passenger vehicle powered by a 100 hp motor that runs on Super Unleaded Fuel.  And it fits in your garage!  Push a couple of buttons to expand the wings and you're ready to take off and fly to destinations up to 450 miles away.   It’s that easy – or at least it seems easy.

I’m afraid of flying in small planes because they seem to crash a lot.  The folks at Terrafugia are sensitive to that fear and it shows up in their marketing of the TRA.  As you might expect, they go to great lengths to promote the vehicle / plane's safety features (they don’t have enough history to promote its safety record), even enlisting the endorsement of a veteran test pilot to claim that it’s “by far” the easiest plane to land that he’s ever flown and, presumably, landed as well.  For me, that’s comforting, but it doesn’t quite get me over the hurdle of my recollection that nearly ever article about a small plane crash includes two things:  First, a comment about the great safety record of the plane that just crashed and, second, a comment about the pilot that suggests how careful and safe he was when it came to flying….until, of course, he crashed his plane and died.   But Terrafugia anticipated my fear (perhaps I’m not the only one similarly fearful) and added this ingenious bit of bonus: ‘and if all else fails, the TRA is equipped with an emergency parachute that, when deployed, will guide the TRA to a soft landing.’   Now that’s comforting!

Cars that park themselves, remote, automated heavy vehicle operation and now, cars that fly (or planes that drive).  What a world, and what’s next??  Well. For $250k and a pilot’s license, you can be the first one in your neighborhood with the TRA.  Beats the heck out of an electric car until, of course, one of those can fly as well.    

US Landfill & Petroleum Supply Shortage Is So Yesterday's Hysteria

It’s been almost universally predicted that the United States will, within my lifetime, run out of two things.  First, room to put the ever-expanding tons and tons of garbage produced by our nonstop desire for what we want, when we want it – the kind of compulsive consumerism with which we are often said to be addicted.  Second, our supply of the fossil fuels that power our automobiles, boats, airplanes and homes, particularly oil and natural gas.  The arguments, as I recall, have never been based on “whether or not” this will happen but, rather, only when.  For decades we’ve been alarming ourselves about these “inevitables,” doomsday-thinking ourselves into scenarios requiring us to ship our garbage on rocket ships into outer space, or the necessity to take over the Middle East to satisfy our desperate yet insatiable need for oil. 

Turns out, though, that much of the hysteria around these two inevitables has been just that.  Fortunately, there are those among us who choose to focus on finding solutions, rather than simply feeding the hysteria.  And those solutions are working.  Today, in many marketplaces across the country, the US has more landfill disposal capacity than trash to fill it.  The development of recycling technologies and re-use markets, and the collaboration between packagers, retailers and recyclers have made much of our already existing landfill space, once coveted like the gold at the end of a rainbow, now a challenge to fill.  For proof, you need look no further than what’s happening at Waste Management www.wm.com, the largest garbage company in the world.  For most of its history, WM’s strategy has focused, laser like, on building landfills and filling them with as much garbage as possible.  Their landfills converted low-value farmland to huge-dollar garbage repositories, often with gross margins that likely rivaled Microsoft’s www.microsoft.com (at least in the good old days).   Today, you won’t find WM’s CEO, David Steiner http://investors.wm.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=119743&p=irol-govBio&ID=205216  describing his company in terms normally associated with “garbage.”  Instead, he will tell you that Waste Management plays a  critical role in the product supply chain; that the company’s mission, and future success, is predicated on its ability to create value out of every ton of “garbage” they handle.  And he actually means it.

And, in a hysteria turnaround of generational proportions, in 2011, the United States, for the first time in 62 years will be a net exporter (you read that right) of petroleum products http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203441704577068670488306242.html.  Largely due to the development of hydraulic fracturing technology, http://www.energyfromshale.org/shale-extraction-process?gclid=CNfgm4Tz6KwCFQyFQAodz3TlKw  oil and natural gas production in the US is soaring.  “Proven” fossil fuel reserves have exploded and new discoveries, not only in the US but around the globe as well, are announced with increasing frequency.  These discoveries have, in an amazingly short period of time, made the long-standing, gloomy predictions and accompanying hysteria about the inevitable and shocking speed with which the US would run out of petroleum look, today, almost silly and uninformed. 

What’s caused us to accomplish these amazing and, until very recently, seemingly impossible supply turn-arounds?  Human Innovation.  Hysteria often stems from a misguided worry about what the future will bring.  It worries about the complexity of solving a future problem and presumes, based apparently on the notion that present-day thinking won’t continue to evolve, that a solution is impossible.  What it fails to consider, though, is that the present day thinking about solving a problem evolves as the urgency and incentive to solve the problem increases.  While hysteria seeks an immediate solution, innovation weighs the need for a solution against both the realities and the possibilities.  When the realities and the possibilities converge, that is when the time, resource, economic and innovation axis’ cross, as they have today in the US with landfill and petroleum supply, it’s amazing how the solutions that seemed so difficult to conceive not so long ago, seem so, well, timely today.

So what’s next?  What are we hysterical about at the moment?  Global Warming (aka Climate Change), Increasing CO2 in the Atmosphere, Our Supply of Clean Water, Feeding 7 Billion and quickly on our way to 10 Billion People, Coal-Fired Power Plants.  The axis’ crossing for these problems will likely happen in my lifetime and Human Innovation will, I believe, come to the rescue over and over again!