Yeah I mean expandable, especially at a national scale. Existing hydro will make the overall job much easier for areas like the PNW though
The success of just a few pilot projects happening now - Fervo's Cape Station, the nuclear demos by TerraPower and XEnergy, and NETPower's Project Permian - will determine whether clean firm power is actually part of our toolbox in the 2030s and beyond. If not, the problem becomes much harder.
We talk abstractly about 'clean firm power' as a resource class in our toolbox, but there is a frighteningly small pool of techs with the potential to actually deliver it at scale before 2050: next-gen geothermal, advanced nuclear, and (with methane leakage mitigation) Allam-cycle gas
Here are the top 10 clean energy projects that we're keeping an eye on, including: ☀️ Intersect Power's solar farm, Easley 🔋 Cambridge Energy Storage Project 💨 SunZia Wind Read more from @emilypont.bsky.social and @zeitlin.bsky.social below.
Why the grid of the future might hinge on these 10 projects.
The SEC issued rules on climate risk reporting this week, including disclosure of GHG emissions from companies' purchased electricity www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1...@wilsonar.bsky.socialwww.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2... 🔌💡
Flexible geothermal power approach combines clean energy with a built-in ‘battery’ engineering.princeton.edu/news/2024/02...@wilsonar.bsky.socialzenodo.org/records/1051... 🔌💡
New ZERO Lab + Fervo Energy paper here in Nature Energy explores the potential for enhanced geothermal energy systems & their inherent flexibility to shift power production to valuable periods to help decarbonize the American West. Read paper free here: rdcu.be/dv1sy 🔌💡
This project has involved field tests of flexible operating strategies (under an ARPA-E grant that our group is partnered on), though I believe it will operate steady-state commercially for the time being
I'll also be participating in two side event panels while I'm there: one hosted by TransitionZero on open-source and transparent energy systems modeling (t.co/VSjeQmuWiawww.seforall.org/events/sdg7-...).
So, anyone on EnergySky going to COP this year? I got a fairly last-minute week 1 pass and I'm looking to fill my schedule.
Geothermal's partially nuclear, but a chunk is also the release of gravitational potential energy from when the planet first coalesced. I think only tidal is 100% non-nuclear (unless any of that rotational momentum originally came from supernovae...)