The sun beneath our feet
October 26, 2020 3:45 AM Subscribe
Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout - "An engineering problem that, when solved, solves energy." (via)
also btw, looking backward from the ministry for the future...
After many years of failure to launch, new companies and technologies have brought geothermal out of its doldrums, to the point that it may finally be ready to scale up and become a major player in clean energy. In fact, if its more enthusiastic backers are correct, geothermal may hold the key to making 100 percent clean electricity available to everyone in the world. And as a bonus, it’s an opportunity for the struggling oil and gas industry to put its capital and skills to work on something that won’t degrade the planet.Why geothermal energy should be Biden's easy answer to the fracking question - "Get all those oil and gas workers building the zero-carbon future."[1,2,3,4]
also btw, looking backward from the ministry for the future...
- Imagining the End of Capitalism With Kim Stanley Robinson - "Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of more than twenty books, including New York 2140, Red Moon, and the Mars trilogy. He talked to Jacobin about his latest work, his vision of socialism, and why we must fight to imagine the end of capitalism rather than the end of the world."[5]
- Record-low snow accumulation on biggest Alpine glacier: study - "Although 2020 has not been a year of extremes, the glaciers in the Swiss Alps are still in steady decline, losing a full two percent of their volume this year alone, according to an annual study on the state of the glaciers published by the Swiss Academies of Science."
- The Arctic hasn't been this warm for 3 million years - "The last time CO2 concentrations reached today's level was 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch. Hear from geoscientists who see evolving conditions in the Arctic as an indicator of how climate change could transform the planet."
- Chilling - "Nothing even comes close to 2020 in our records for sea ice along the Siberian Arctic."
- Jellies Transfer a Significant Amount of Carbon to the Deep Ocean - "Jellyfish and sea salps aren't getting the credit they deserve for their role in ocean carbon cycling, according to a new study."
The second option is akin to oil and gas fracking, and it's bound to raise some environmentalist hackles because of all the water contamination and seismic instability that have come with that process. However, as Roberts points out, there are key differences that make geothermal substantially less risky. For instance, the point is to get enough water down that it can be sucked back up, not shake loose fossil fuels by blasting the rock layers apart. That means safer fluid (typically water or brine, as opposed to the toxic chemicals used in gas fracking) injected at lower pressure, and a steady process of injection and removal once the operation is going.
This quote from The Week article has an error in it though. Most of the issues with toxicity from hydrofracing do not come from the chemicals used to do it (it's been demonstrated that if you wanted to, you could do it with food-grade ingredients ordered from a catering supplier, a stunt that one of the completions companies did a few years ago. The real problem is that you're liberating complex organic chemicals and heavy metals that you find co-located with the oil or gas deposits. I guess this will be less of an issue with geothermal but there will certainly be deposits of things that are unproblematic where they are 4km down that may be an issue if you bring them to the surface.
posted by atrazine at 5:01 AM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]
This quote from The Week article has an error in it though. Most of the issues with toxicity from hydrofracing do not come from the chemicals used to do it (it's been demonstrated that if you wanted to, you could do it with food-grade ingredients ordered from a catering supplier, a stunt that one of the completions companies did a few years ago. The real problem is that you're liberating complex organic chemicals and heavy metals that you find co-located with the oil or gas deposits. I guess this will be less of an issue with geothermal but there will certainly be deposits of things that are unproblematic where they are 4km down that may be an issue if you bring them to the surface.
posted by atrazine at 5:01 AM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]
Buried int the very optimistic article:
The engineering challenges remain daunting, especially as the targets get deeper and drier. There are PR challenges as well. Injecting fluids into the ground in order to fracture rock is known as “fracking” in the oil and gas business, and ... it’s got a bit of a reputation. In fact, there are whole US states and countries where it is banned.
So better than fusion, as in 'always 15' years away, rather than 'always 20' years away.
posted by sammyo at 5:07 AM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]
The engineering challenges remain daunting, especially as the targets get deeper and drier. There are PR challenges as well. Injecting fluids into the ground in order to fracture rock is known as “fracking” in the oil and gas business, and ... it’s got a bit of a reputation. In fact, there are whole US states and countries where it is banned.
So better than fusion, as in 'always 15' years away, rather than 'always 20' years away.
posted by sammyo at 5:07 AM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]
Why is it a good idea to help cool the Earth core for the long term of humanity?
VS reworking the economic system of needing constant growth to power the economic system?
The rework is gonna happen - trying to keep things the same as it was is only going to lead to dissapointment.
posted by rough ashlar at 5:13 AM on October 26, 2020 [8 favorites]
VS reworking the economic system of needing constant growth to power the economic system?
The rework is gonna happen - trying to keep things the same as it was is only going to lead to dissapointment.
posted by rough ashlar at 5:13 AM on October 26, 2020 [8 favorites]
I was pretty dubious about this header, based on experience where I live, but looking up the current LCOE profile for geothermal in the US I was quite surprised by how low it is. Have a look at Lazard's recent update and while geothermal is more expensive than utility wind and solar its cheaper than nuclear, and on a par with coal. It seems to have been seeing some cost reduction over the last two years.
sammyo: The US alone has 3.6GW of operational geothermal power, so not really in the same category as fusion.
posted by biffa at 5:14 AM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]
sammyo: The US alone has 3.6GW of operational geothermal power, so not really in the same category as fusion.
posted by biffa at 5:14 AM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]
I've only read the first article so far and it was really interesting. The idea of selling geothermal power as a way to take advantage of oil and gas drilling expertise seems like a good one.
posted by medusa at 5:41 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by medusa at 5:41 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
This was tried at my workplace (of about 200) a decade ago. There were many niggling practical issues. I don't know all the details, but I do know that spiraling costs eventually killed it. Given that this was to be a showcase and that my management was highly motivated to make geothermal work, think public demonstration project, I'm skeptical that it can be made widely viable, if it can't be made to work in that most supportive of environments.
posted by bonehead at 6:09 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by bonehead at 6:09 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
if its more enthusiastic backers are correct
Are they ever, about anything?
posted by adamdschneider at 6:14 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
Are they ever, about anything?
posted by adamdschneider at 6:14 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
Powering a workplace of 200 is a different scale than powering a city of 20,000 or 200,000. Economies of scale matter drastically.
That, and fossil fuels have been allowed to price themselves without having to account for externalities like pollution or future remediation. Being on-scale with coal, without the pollution is a big deal.
posted by explosion at 6:14 AM on October 26, 2020 [9 favorites]
That, and fossil fuels have been allowed to price themselves without having to account for externalities like pollution or future remediation. Being on-scale with coal, without the pollution is a big deal.
posted by explosion at 6:14 AM on October 26, 2020 [9 favorites]
I can't wait to see the PR campaign the right-wing fossil-fuel-diehards will mount against geothermal if it ever starts to look like a viable renewable energy source for the US. Will they go with the crypto-religious angle of "You know what else we might find buried down that deep? SATAN." Or the same kind of pseudo-scientific concern trolling you sometimes see for wind or tidal energy, "We're going to drain all the energy out of the earth, and then it'll be like that documentary starring Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank I once saw." Or will they skip straight to paying off the CATO Institute to cherry-pick some data proving that geothermal plants cause earthquakes?
posted by Mayor West at 6:25 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Mayor West at 6:25 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
Since neither article provides a price-per-kilowatt-hour figure, I can’t really take this very seriously.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:42 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:42 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
Bringing the chill of the cosmos to a warming planet
And in climate change, he saw evidence of what happens when radiative cooling is disrupted. Earth also sends heat into space — that’s how it balances incoming energy from the sun. But the greenhouse gases created by human activities block infrared radiation, trapping it in the atmosphere. The planet is more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than in the preindustrial era, a shift that has worsened wildfires, intensified hurricanes and altered ecosystems across the world. United Nations scientists say humanity must reduce emissions by 7 percent a year to avoid still more catastrophic effects.
Yet radiative cooling has rarely been discussed as a potential tool for climate action, Raman said. Most researchers saw the phenomenon as an interesting physical fact with few practical applications. The reason: It is only measurable at night, when objects are emitting heat but not receiving any in return. Come morning, energy from the sun cancels out any cooling effect.
“Every paper made some kind of statement to the effect of, ‘Well, it’s usefulness is kind of limited because … you most need cooling during the day,' ” Raman said. “Then I thought, well, why can’t we make this work during the day?”
The trick was to develop a material so perfectly reflective it absorbed almost no energy, even when exposed to full sunlight. On top of that, Raman wanted to maximize the amount of radiation the film sent into space.
So he found a loophole in the greenhouse effect.
posted by Brian B. at 6:43 AM on October 26, 2020 [8 favorites]
And in climate change, he saw evidence of what happens when radiative cooling is disrupted. Earth also sends heat into space — that’s how it balances incoming energy from the sun. But the greenhouse gases created by human activities block infrared radiation, trapping it in the atmosphere. The planet is more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than in the preindustrial era, a shift that has worsened wildfires, intensified hurricanes and altered ecosystems across the world. United Nations scientists say humanity must reduce emissions by 7 percent a year to avoid still more catastrophic effects.
Yet radiative cooling has rarely been discussed as a potential tool for climate action, Raman said. Most researchers saw the phenomenon as an interesting physical fact with few practical applications. The reason: It is only measurable at night, when objects are emitting heat but not receiving any in return. Come morning, energy from the sun cancels out any cooling effect.
“Every paper made some kind of statement to the effect of, ‘Well, it’s usefulness is kind of limited because … you most need cooling during the day,' ” Raman said. “Then I thought, well, why can’t we make this work during the day?”
The trick was to develop a material so perfectly reflective it absorbed almost no energy, even when exposed to full sunlight. On top of that, Raman wanted to maximize the amount of radiation the film sent into space.
So he found a loophole in the greenhouse effect.
posted by Brian B. at 6:43 AM on October 26, 2020 [8 favorites]
The problem with expecting geothermal to ride to the rescue is that solar and wind are already cheap and efficient enough that they can largely do the job. The state of South Australia managed to run entirely on solar, and then wind, for a brief period earlier this month, and so much electricity is being generated that the Australian energy regulator is looking into ways to turn off home solar panels until more storage capacity and biofuel generation is available. If geothermal is going to be a thing, it's going to have to be quick.
reworking the economic system of needing constant growth to power the economic system?
quick point of clarification here: the economic system is built on constant growth, but overwhelmingly that growth comes from so-called "tertiary" industries, the service and knowledge work industries. To break it down, the growth is coming from things like people inventing Pokemon. There is a question about whether that's long-term sustainable, but that's a different question to how do we make an economy work without consuming natural resources, which is still a difficult question but one that's bounded and can be achieved step-by-step.
posted by Merus at 6:56 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
reworking the economic system of needing constant growth to power the economic system?
quick point of clarification here: the economic system is built on constant growth, but overwhelmingly that growth comes from so-called "tertiary" industries, the service and knowledge work industries. To break it down, the growth is coming from things like people inventing Pokemon. There is a question about whether that's long-term sustainable, but that's a different question to how do we make an economy work without consuming natural resources, which is still a difficult question but one that's bounded and can be achieved step-by-step.
posted by Merus at 6:56 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
Why is it a good idea to help cool the Earth core for the long term of humanity?
That's not on the menu, even for the very blue-sky end of the things talked about in TA. Which talks about drilling "thousands of feet," not "thousands of miles."
Though in scrupulous fairness, I do note that such boreholes as are talked about in TA will presumably eventually become too cool to use, and that TA does not take note of that. Let alone wonder how long "eventually" is, and how the value of the energy extracted compares with the various construction costs.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:15 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
That's not on the menu, even for the very blue-sky end of the things talked about in TA. Which talks about drilling "thousands of feet," not "thousands of miles."
Though in scrupulous fairness, I do note that such boreholes as are talked about in TA will presumably eventually become too cool to use, and that TA does not take note of that. Let alone wonder how long "eventually" is, and how the value of the energy extracted compares with the various construction costs.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:15 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
Why is it a good idea to help cool the Earth core for the long term of humanity?
It won't.
posted by dmd at 7:23 AM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]
It won't.
posted by dmd at 7:23 AM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]
The problem with expecting geothermal to ride to the rescue is that solar and wind are already cheap and efficient enough that they can largely do the job.
This is not quite correct if we want to get to zero emissions. At the moment, we are successfully undergoing a shallow decarbonisation of electric power generation and a slow but increasing decarbonisation of ground transport. For the time being, the cheapest way to make the marginal emissions reduction is to keep investing in solar and wind. LCOE provides a good proxy for the lifetime cost but fails to capture integration costs.
Integration cost is a devilishly tricky thing because it depends on modelling the entire energy system. I'm working on a review of integration costs at the moment and the best way of doing measuring it is to use a model that optimises both capital planning in the long term and then the flexible dispatch in the short term of that system, force the model to increase or decrease a particular generation technology by a give amount, and then measure the difference in the cost of an optimised system.
Not only does this give a curve rather than a single point, it also depends on the other technologies on the system, and it depends on forward cost assumptions of all the other generation, transmission, storage, and demand side response technologies in the optimisation. So for instance, if you put in very low cost assumptions for battery storage, the integration cost of a marginal unit of solar or wind is lower. If you assume that you can build gas with CCS and operate it flexibly at low cost, then likewise. This does mean that unlike LCOE, it is subject to debate and people who have financial interests in different technologies will have different perspectives on what the inputs should be.
At ultra-deep levels of grid decarbonisation, which I would think of as less that 50 gCo2/kWh, the cost of the system shoots up very rapidly as you move from 50 to 40 to 30 and down. That's because above that level you can keep using cheap gas peakers - since you are only running them to balance out a system which is largely wind and solar, their emissions impact is rather low. Above this level, a combination of batteries for frequency regulation and some diurnal shifting, demand side response, and solar+wind + gas for prolonged cloudy/dark and windless periods works quite well.
Batteries and DSR are fast responders, great if you can cycle them frequently and therefore well suite to smoothing out the diurnal variation in solar production and load. Where they do not work is in dealing with very large seasonal differences in load (which you will have if you electrify heating) and dealing with the 1:20 cold/overcast/windless period over a large geographical area. That requires some kind of dispatchable generation or storage that can run for weeks. All kinds of things have been suggested for this role: hydrogen in salt cavern storage, nuclear, gas combustion with CCS, compressed air, biomass. They all have limitations. The only one that has been built at scale, nuclear, is economically the worst suited to non-max power operation (it is not true that you can't load follow with nuclear - the French do it all the time - but the high capex / low fuelex cost structure of nuclear makes it ill suited economically).
That means that any new source of dispatchable renewable power has the potential to have an impact on the power system of the future that is disproportionate to the total % of the energy mix it is producing. Even 5%-10% of total energy coming from sources like that unlocks a whole region of very low carbon energy systems at a cost that is not much higher than the pre-emissions charging cost of a coal and gas system.
Though in scrupulous fairness, I do note that such boreholes as are talked about in TA will presumably eventually become too cool to use, and that TA does not take note of that. Let alone wonder how long "eventually" is, and how the value of the energy extracted compares with the various construction costs.
This is a considerable design consideration in geothermal systems and a lot of the technologies in the article are designed to deal with it. The issue is the thermal conductivity of the formation. If you take away more heat than can conduct towards you, you will eventually exhaust the heat. The reason fracturing is useful is that water is an excellent conductor and by running it through many little cracks and pathways between the cold and the hot leg, you increase the transfer surface area. You also increase the transfer volume which in turn increases the surface area between that transfer volume (the 3d space where the heat is being extracted) and the surrounding rock which allows a higher sustainable rate of heat extraction. The trick will be whether you can get capital costs down low enough that you can run these things with big variations in output. You might imagine that if the heat recharge rate is enough for 3000 hours of full-power operation a year, that you would produce power during the 3000 or-so hours of the year with the least output of other renewables. Whether that is only at night, at night on windless days, or some other operating scenario.
posted by atrazine at 7:25 AM on October 26, 2020 [20 favorites]
This is not quite correct if we want to get to zero emissions. At the moment, we are successfully undergoing a shallow decarbonisation of electric power generation and a slow but increasing decarbonisation of ground transport. For the time being, the cheapest way to make the marginal emissions reduction is to keep investing in solar and wind. LCOE provides a good proxy for the lifetime cost but fails to capture integration costs.
Integration cost is a devilishly tricky thing because it depends on modelling the entire energy system. I'm working on a review of integration costs at the moment and the best way of doing measuring it is to use a model that optimises both capital planning in the long term and then the flexible dispatch in the short term of that system, force the model to increase or decrease a particular generation technology by a give amount, and then measure the difference in the cost of an optimised system.
Not only does this give a curve rather than a single point, it also depends on the other technologies on the system, and it depends on forward cost assumptions of all the other generation, transmission, storage, and demand side response technologies in the optimisation. So for instance, if you put in very low cost assumptions for battery storage, the integration cost of a marginal unit of solar or wind is lower. If you assume that you can build gas with CCS and operate it flexibly at low cost, then likewise. This does mean that unlike LCOE, it is subject to debate and people who have financial interests in different technologies will have different perspectives on what the inputs should be.
At ultra-deep levels of grid decarbonisation, which I would think of as less that 50 gCo2/kWh, the cost of the system shoots up very rapidly as you move from 50 to 40 to 30 and down. That's because above that level you can keep using cheap gas peakers - since you are only running them to balance out a system which is largely wind and solar, their emissions impact is rather low. Above this level, a combination of batteries for frequency regulation and some diurnal shifting, demand side response, and solar+wind + gas for prolonged cloudy/dark and windless periods works quite well.
Batteries and DSR are fast responders, great if you can cycle them frequently and therefore well suite to smoothing out the diurnal variation in solar production and load. Where they do not work is in dealing with very large seasonal differences in load (which you will have if you electrify heating) and dealing with the 1:20 cold/overcast/windless period over a large geographical area. That requires some kind of dispatchable generation or storage that can run for weeks. All kinds of things have been suggested for this role: hydrogen in salt cavern storage, nuclear, gas combustion with CCS, compressed air, biomass. They all have limitations. The only one that has been built at scale, nuclear, is economically the worst suited to non-max power operation (it is not true that you can't load follow with nuclear - the French do it all the time - but the high capex / low fuelex cost structure of nuclear makes it ill suited economically).
That means that any new source of dispatchable renewable power has the potential to have an impact on the power system of the future that is disproportionate to the total % of the energy mix it is producing. Even 5%-10% of total energy coming from sources like that unlocks a whole region of very low carbon energy systems at a cost that is not much higher than the pre-emissions charging cost of a coal and gas system.
Though in scrupulous fairness, I do note that such boreholes as are talked about in TA will presumably eventually become too cool to use, and that TA does not take note of that. Let alone wonder how long "eventually" is, and how the value of the energy extracted compares with the various construction costs.
This is a considerable design consideration in geothermal systems and a lot of the technologies in the article are designed to deal with it. The issue is the thermal conductivity of the formation. If you take away more heat than can conduct towards you, you will eventually exhaust the heat. The reason fracturing is useful is that water is an excellent conductor and by running it through many little cracks and pathways between the cold and the hot leg, you increase the transfer surface area. You also increase the transfer volume which in turn increases the surface area between that transfer volume (the 3d space where the heat is being extracted) and the surrounding rock which allows a higher sustainable rate of heat extraction. The trick will be whether you can get capital costs down low enough that you can run these things with big variations in output. You might imagine that if the heat recharge rate is enough for 3000 hours of full-power operation a year, that you would produce power during the 3000 or-so hours of the year with the least output of other renewables. Whether that is only at night, at night on windless days, or some other operating scenario.
posted by atrazine at 7:25 AM on October 26, 2020 [20 favorites]
Large-scale geothermal is all well and good. What I would really like to see, though, is for home geothermal heatpump systems to come down in cost to something much more reasonable than they currently are.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:27 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 7:27 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
You might imagine that if the heat recharge rate is enough for 3000 hours of full-power operation a year, that you would produce power during the 3000 or-so hours of the year with the least output of other renewables.
Could you send hot water down during the summer?
posted by bdc34 at 7:32 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
Could you send hot water down during the summer?
posted by bdc34 at 7:32 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
What I would really like to see, though, is for home geothermal heatpump systems to come down in cost to something much more reasonable than they currently are.
As I understand it, the air source HPs are a better solution than ground source for retrofits, and its retrofits where we need the progress. The costs for putting HPs in new builds is way less than for retrofits now.
posted by biffa at 7:46 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
As I understand it, the air source HPs are a better solution than ground source for retrofits, and its retrofits where we need the progress. The costs for putting HPs in new builds is way less than for retrofits now.
posted by biffa at 7:46 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
This article confuses me about the "cooling down the core" risk; or more generally, extracting too much heat. It says:
I have no intuitions about this scale.
More generally: what a great Vox article! I miss this kind of science reporting; detailed, not dumbed down, but understandable. And of an important subject. RIP Scientific American.
posted by Nelson at 8:07 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
The heat is continuously replenished by the decay of naturally occurring radioactive elements, at a flow rate of roughly 30 terawatts, almost double all human energy consumption. ...I'm trying to reconcile these two statements. Do we continuously need half the energy the core produces? Or just 0.1% of the heat content for 2M years? Maybe the two are not incompatible; the core is producing 30TW, but there's a huge amount more heat already stored in the Earth (like a battery) and we only need to draw a tiny fraction of that.
The ARPA-E project AltaRock Energy estimates that “just 0.1% of the heat content of Earth could supply humanity’s total energy needs for 2 million years.”
I have no intuitions about this scale.
More generally: what a great Vox article! I miss this kind of science reporting; detailed, not dumbed down, but understandable. And of an important subject. RIP Scientific American.
posted by Nelson at 8:07 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
→
Aww shit. How long will it take for people to get the message across that a 98% solved technical issue is a 0% positive outcome? There are three legs to a lasting solution — technical, social and environmental — and if any one of them is missing, it won't stand.
Beware of new hype in energy. It takes decades to deploy anything. Is this more than a ploy to keep fracking companies in work for the short term? There's also the blurring of the terms: to me, the form of geothermal that's already installed in millions of homes is as ground-source heat pumps. It's not this deep-drill hot-rock cracking thing. And finally, there's the perennial "millions of m³ of lukewarm water" problem: while that might represent a huge energy flow, anything without a decent ΔT has no useful energy you can extract.
At least in the days of paper press releases, you could burn 'em for warmth …
posted by scruss at 8:08 AM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]
An engineering problem that, when solved …
Aww shit. How long will it take for people to get the message across that a 98% solved technical issue is a 0% positive outcome? There are three legs to a lasting solution — technical, social and environmental — and if any one of them is missing, it won't stand.
Beware of new hype in energy. It takes decades to deploy anything. Is this more than a ploy to keep fracking companies in work for the short term? There's also the blurring of the terms: to me, the form of geothermal that's already installed in millions of homes is as ground-source heat pumps. It's not this deep-drill hot-rock cracking thing. And finally, there's the perennial "millions of m³ of lukewarm water" problem: while that might represent a huge energy flow, anything without a decent ΔT has no useful energy you can extract.
At least in the days of paper press releases, you could burn 'em for warmth …
posted by scruss at 8:08 AM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]
Is this more than a ploy to keep fracking companies in work for the short term?
"Get that dog away from the curtain!"
posted by bonehead at 8:15 AM on October 26, 2020
"Get that dog away from the curtain!"
posted by bonehead at 8:15 AM on October 26, 2020
I miss this kind of science reporting; detailed, not dumbed down, but understandable. And of an important subject. RIP Scientific American.
?? Do you refer to the magazine here? Still seems to be going stronger than most periodicals in 2020.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:54 AM on October 26, 2020
?? Do you refer to the magazine here? Still seems to be going stronger than most periodicals in 2020.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:54 AM on October 26, 2020
I’d just like to see geothermal being more common with new housing. A friend of mine made a bunch of money with his company and built what he calls his eco McMansion. He went with geothermal for heating and cooling which is no little thing here in Minnesota. He pays almost nothing for either now. I believe they went deep instead of wide with his system.
posted by misterpatrick at 8:57 AM on October 26, 2020
posted by misterpatrick at 8:57 AM on October 26, 2020
Could you send hot water down during the summer?
Some shallower systems which usually end up classified as ground-source heat pumps do that, yes. You dump waste heat into the ground during the summer (use it as a cold sink for your A/C system) and then as a heat source in the winter. There are some demo-scale systems for this, sometimes called sensible heat loops or "anergy" systems. The basic idea is that you circulate fluid at near the ideal interior temperature and that the Coefficient of Performance for a heat pump is better the closer the loop temperature and the desired temperature is. So if your circulating loop is at 10C which is roughly the average shallow-ish ground temperature, you use that loop for heat in the summer and cooling in the summer. The only problem is maintaining balance.
posted by atrazine at 9:08 AM on October 26, 2020
Some shallower systems which usually end up classified as ground-source heat pumps do that, yes. You dump waste heat into the ground during the summer (use it as a cold sink for your A/C system) and then as a heat source in the winter. There are some demo-scale systems for this, sometimes called sensible heat loops or "anergy" systems. The basic idea is that you circulate fluid at near the ideal interior temperature and that the Coefficient of Performance for a heat pump is better the closer the loop temperature and the desired temperature is. So if your circulating loop is at 10C which is roughly the average shallow-ish ground temperature, you use that loop for heat in the summer and cooling in the summer. The only problem is maintaining balance.
posted by atrazine at 9:08 AM on October 26, 2020
>Do we continuously need half the energy the core produces? Or just 0.1% of the heat content for 2M years?
If the earth's core runs at 30 TW, that's 30 TWh (terawatt-hours) per hour, for a total annual generation of 262,980 TWh/yr. In 2013, end users consumed ~113,009 TWh of energy (25,000 TWh of electricity generation as part of that). Thus at current watt-for-watt replacement, we would need to harvest half of the energy generated by radioactive decay in the core.
The 0.1% figure must from a different figure--the total heat energy stored in the earth's core. At a broad level, the earth loses energy as blackbody radiation (and maybe there's magnetic stuff involved here as well?) and gains energy from sunlight and the core radioactive decay. However, there's a tremendous amount of energy stored as heat just in the molten core, right? So we could calculate how much energy we could extract from superhot molten iron by bringing it to room temp (e.g. in a turbine generator). I think the ARPA-E project is saying that all of that energy is 1000x the total expected energy usage over the next 2M years.
Are they lying? Well, people will say many things to get more grant funding.
[ETA: This is all back-of-the-envelope, I am not a geophysicist, I am not your geophysicist]
posted by Maecenas at 9:37 AM on October 26, 2020
If the earth's core runs at 30 TW, that's 30 TWh (terawatt-hours) per hour, for a total annual generation of 262,980 TWh/yr. In 2013, end users consumed ~113,009 TWh of energy (25,000 TWh of electricity generation as part of that). Thus at current watt-for-watt replacement, we would need to harvest half of the energy generated by radioactive decay in the core.
The 0.1% figure must from a different figure--the total heat energy stored in the earth's core. At a broad level, the earth loses energy as blackbody radiation (and maybe there's magnetic stuff involved here as well?) and gains energy from sunlight and the core radioactive decay. However, there's a tremendous amount of energy stored as heat just in the molten core, right? So we could calculate how much energy we could extract from superhot molten iron by bringing it to room temp (e.g. in a turbine generator). I think the ARPA-E project is saying that all of that energy is 1000x the total expected energy usage over the next 2M years.
Are they lying? Well, people will say many things to get more grant funding.
[ETA: This is all back-of-the-envelope, I am not a geophysicist, I am not your geophysicist]
posted by Maecenas at 9:37 AM on October 26, 2020
Large-scale geothermal is all well and good. What I would really like to see, though, is for home geothermal heatpump systems to come down in cost to something much more reasonable than they currently are.
I got a geothermal heat pump system last year from Dandelion Energy and it's been great. I retrofitted a 1950s house so it cost a bit more (I had fuel oil baseboard heating and no AC, so I had to get vets put in throughout my house), but now I have AC, heat, and hot water with a low energy cost. Luckily, NY subsidizes it, and the federal rebate was 30% when I got it.
It would be really cool if neighborhoods put in giant heat-loops deep under the streets so that we could have municipal heating and air, just as we used to do with municipal steam or still do with gas and water. I want a pipe-filled future!
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:38 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
I got a geothermal heat pump system last year from Dandelion Energy and it's been great. I retrofitted a 1950s house so it cost a bit more (I had fuel oil baseboard heating and no AC, so I had to get vets put in throughout my house), but now I have AC, heat, and hot water with a low energy cost. Luckily, NY subsidizes it, and the federal rebate was 30% when I got it.
It would be really cool if neighborhoods put in giant heat-loops deep under the streets so that we could have municipal heating and air, just as we used to do with municipal steam or still do with gas and water. I want a pipe-filled future!
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:38 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
Although I truly believe in wind, solar, and hydroelectric, having a working geothermal system will help get around the baseload problem (hydroelectric doesn't have this problem, but it's use is very geographically bound). Normally, nuclear is seen as an alternative to coal/natural gas for having base load capacity for the grid, but if geothermal can fill that void, we can get away from fossil fuels and nuclear. We don't have to stop creating solar and wind plants, but geothermal might round them out to create a completely green, permanent, on-demand power grid.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:43 AM on October 26, 2020
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:43 AM on October 26, 2020
RIP Scientific American.
?? Do you refer to the magazine here?
Yes, I'm referring to what I see as a significant loss of quality in the 90s. It got dumbed down and sexed up.
posted by Nelson at 10:10 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
?? Do you refer to the magazine here?
Yes, I'm referring to what I see as a significant loss of quality in the 90s. It got dumbed down and sexed up.
posted by Nelson at 10:10 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
Interesting article on tech I'd paid no attention to since I did a middle school report. I'd emailed a link to a couple people.
David Roberts is one of the best energy / climate reporters around, if not the absolute best. He takes understanding the topic seriously and doesn't think a reporter is just supposed to be "neutral" when different sides are trying to give you PR. But . . . having read him a good bit, he relies on the start ups self-describing their plans than usual. I assume it's the tax you pay when you start writing about something you don't know. You don't have the sources or baseline knowledge yet.
It is at least clear it's not just taking unused drilling equipment and charging ahead. Lots of work to do.
The problem with expecting geothermal to ride to the rescue is that solar and wind are already cheap and efficient enough that they can largely do the job
This is always the question on any new tech solution--medical, computational, etc. Will it get better faster than the other options?
The ability to meet base load 24 hours a day makes geothermal tempting attractive but considering the urgency of decarbonizing it's tough to imagine it playing a big role. We can't research something for a decade or two and then deploy it.
Still after reading this I'd like to see it get some government money to see how quickly we can improve it and how competitive it becomes. Maybe 100 billion over 10 years or something--a fraction of what should go to solar and wind but enough to look into it.
posted by mark k at 10:24 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
David Roberts is one of the best energy / climate reporters around, if not the absolute best. He takes understanding the topic seriously and doesn't think a reporter is just supposed to be "neutral" when different sides are trying to give you PR. But . . . having read him a good bit, he relies on the start ups self-describing their plans than usual. I assume it's the tax you pay when you start writing about something you don't know. You don't have the sources or baseline knowledge yet.
It is at least clear it's not just taking unused drilling equipment and charging ahead. Lots of work to do.
The problem with expecting geothermal to ride to the rescue is that solar and wind are already cheap and efficient enough that they can largely do the job
This is always the question on any new tech solution--medical, computational, etc. Will it get better faster than the other options?
The ability to meet base load 24 hours a day makes geothermal tempting attractive but considering the urgency of decarbonizing it's tough to imagine it playing a big role. We can't research something for a decade or two and then deploy it.
Still after reading this I'd like to see it get some government money to see how quickly we can improve it and how competitive it becomes. Maybe 100 billion over 10 years or something--a fraction of what should go to solar and wind but enough to look into it.
posted by mark k at 10:24 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'm trying to reconcile these two statements
Following on Maecanas, the first is energy production rate (the Earth produces more than enough each year to power civilization) and the second is energy content (there's a lot of heat energy stored up in the Earth from billions of years of production.)
Both are mostly useless statements from a practical level, since they don't focus on the part of that energy we could plausibly use. I suppose they tell you where the bottlenck won't be.
posted by mark k at 10:33 AM on October 26, 2020
Following on Maecanas, the first is energy production rate (the Earth produces more than enough each year to power civilization) and the second is energy content (there's a lot of heat energy stored up in the Earth from billions of years of production.)
Both are mostly useless statements from a practical level, since they don't focus on the part of that energy we could plausibly use. I suppose they tell you where the bottlenck won't be.
posted by mark k at 10:33 AM on October 26, 2020
I have been playing Cities Skylines for six months and can confirm that geothermal energy is the way forward.
posted by iamkimiam at 10:37 AM on October 26, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by iamkimiam at 10:37 AM on October 26, 2020 [8 favorites]
This article really underestimates the technical challenges and over estimates the benefits.
First, geothermal heat is incredibly diffuse. Solar energy at the surface is about 1000 watts per square meter. Geothermal energy is about 65 milliwatts per square meter, less than one-ten-thousandth. So its very difficult to acquire any usable heat flow.
Second, rock is a very poor conductor of heat. If you just drill a hole down to a depth of 200 degrees and fill it with water, the rock will be quickly cooled and it may take a year or more for it to heat back up again.
So since rock is such a poor conductor you need to create miles and miles of fractures to increase the surface area. There are very few areas where this occurs naturally, like Geysers in California or Iceland.
So then you are left with creating artificial fractures using fracking technology. But fracking today typically is done at around 2 km depth. To get to rock that is at least 200 degrees, which the article says is the minimum practical temperature, you have to go 5 to 10 km deep. Cost of drilling increases exponentially with depth. And nobody knows if it is even possible to frack rock at those depths and temperatures. And after a few years, even those fracked wells will cool down and so you have to drill another. It's unclear whether you could even recoup the extraordinary costs of such a venture.
So I don't think geothermal is the answer to power needs. Sure we should exploit those few geologic areas like Iceland that have favorable conditions. But just drilling holes in the ground and getting free energy for electricity is a pipe dream.
posted by JackFlash at 10:40 AM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]
First, geothermal heat is incredibly diffuse. Solar energy at the surface is about 1000 watts per square meter. Geothermal energy is about 65 milliwatts per square meter, less than one-ten-thousandth. So its very difficult to acquire any usable heat flow.
Second, rock is a very poor conductor of heat. If you just drill a hole down to a depth of 200 degrees and fill it with water, the rock will be quickly cooled and it may take a year or more for it to heat back up again.
So since rock is such a poor conductor you need to create miles and miles of fractures to increase the surface area. There are very few areas where this occurs naturally, like Geysers in California or Iceland.
So then you are left with creating artificial fractures using fracking technology. But fracking today typically is done at around 2 km depth. To get to rock that is at least 200 degrees, which the article says is the minimum practical temperature, you have to go 5 to 10 km deep. Cost of drilling increases exponentially with depth. And nobody knows if it is even possible to frack rock at those depths and temperatures. And after a few years, even those fracked wells will cool down and so you have to drill another. It's unclear whether you could even recoup the extraordinary costs of such a venture.
So I don't think geothermal is the answer to power needs. Sure we should exploit those few geologic areas like Iceland that have favorable conditions. But just drilling holes in the ground and getting free energy for electricity is a pipe dream.
posted by JackFlash at 10:40 AM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]
Heat-based power actually works based on temperature differentials. You’d need cooling towers and cool water to run them. During the early 2000s heat wave in France they had to shut down some nuclear plants because the water was too warm and there wasn’t enough of it.
It’s not worse than coal, gas or nuclear in this respect, but the use of precious fresh water is not environmentally benign nor is dumping heated water into streams. Solar and wind are better.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:23 PM on October 26, 2020
It’s not worse than coal, gas or nuclear in this respect, but the use of precious fresh water is not environmentally benign nor is dumping heated water into streams. Solar and wind are better.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:23 PM on October 26, 2020
the use of precious fresh water is not environmentally benign nor is dumping heated water into streams
Unless I'm misunderstanding the technology, it's a closed loop. They're not taking in water from the environment nor dumping water off into the environment. They're bringing up hot water, using its heat energy as it cools to ambient temperature, and then returning that same water back to the ground to replace water drawn up.
posted by explosion at 1:50 PM on October 26, 2020
Unless I'm misunderstanding the technology, it's a closed loop. They're not taking in water from the environment nor dumping water off into the environment. They're bringing up hot water, using its heat energy as it cools to ambient temperature, and then returning that same water back to the ground to replace water drawn up.
posted by explosion at 1:50 PM on October 26, 2020
They probably use a primary loop, heat exchanger and a secondary loop for the turbine but either way, while the turbine does much of the cooling, there needs to be a condenser downstream of the turbine.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:08 PM on October 26, 2020
posted by sjswitzer at 2:08 PM on October 26, 2020
This article really underestimates the technical challenges and over estimates the benefits.
You need to read the first linked article, from Vox. The overview in the second link, from The Week, is extremely superficial.
posted by ambrosen at 4:01 PM on October 26, 2020
You need to read the first linked article, from Vox. The overview in the second link, from The Week, is extremely superficial.
posted by ambrosen at 4:01 PM on October 26, 2020
“The power sector withdraws more water than any other sector in the United States, mostly due to cooling requirements. Geothermal is no exception, and can require between 1,700 and 4,000 gallons of water per megawatt-hour of electricity produced.”
posted by sjswitzer at 4:58 PM on October 26, 2020
posted by sjswitzer at 4:58 PM on October 26, 2020
But I am amused by a certain fastidiousness in the article I just linked: “Small amounts of water may also be needed for washing and bathroom facilities for the power plant.”
posted by sjswitzer at 5:04 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by sjswitzer at 5:04 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
The Union of Concerned Scientists have concerns about geothermal energy.
posted by sjswitzer at 5:13 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by sjswitzer at 5:13 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
To be fair they also have concerns in that sense about solar, wind, hydroelectric and natural gas.
The article on geothermal isn't especially negative--it's an assessment, not an attempt to scare people off, so you get comments like this after most of the potential negatives:
Unfortunately I couldn't find one on energy storage, which you'd need for an apples to apples comparison with solar. And as the Roberts piece notes, some new geothermal design double as storage, in that they can draw energy all day and only convert it to electricity when necessary.
I mean, currently this is a capital intensive, economically inferior, ecologically good-not-perfect offering. It's a niche option. The technologies covered in the Vox article are all relatively new and have the potential to get better economically and environmentally. Do they replace solar? No. Do they move it from a small niche to a valuable niche? Gotta do the development work to see.
TBF I do tend to be pretty radical on the "don't rule anything out if it helps us decarbonize or mitigate impacts."
posted by mark k at 6:22 PM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]
The article on geothermal isn't especially negative--it's an assessment, not an attempt to scare people off, so you get comments like this after most of the potential negatives:
There have been no reported cases of water contamination from geothermal sites in the United States [2].If you go through all their articles no question the rank ordering in environmental preference is wind, solar, then current geothermal. All are an order of magnitude better than the best fossil fuel options.
[ . . . ]
However, most geothermal plants can use either geothermal fluid or freshwater for cooling; the use of geothermal fluids rather than freshwater clearly reduces the plants overall water impact
[ . . . ]
not all water removed from the reservoir is re-injected because some is lost as steam. In order to maintain a constant volume of water in the reservoir, outside water must be used. The amount of water needed depends on the size of the plant and the technology used; however, because reservoir water is “dirty," it is often not necessary to use clean water for this purpose
[ . . . ]
In closed-loop systems [ . . .] air emissions are minimal
Unfortunately I couldn't find one on energy storage, which you'd need for an apples to apples comparison with solar. And as the Roberts piece notes, some new geothermal design double as storage, in that they can draw energy all day and only convert it to electricity when necessary.
I mean, currently this is a capital intensive, economically inferior, ecologically good-not-perfect offering. It's a niche option. The technologies covered in the Vox article are all relatively new and have the potential to get better economically and environmentally. Do they replace solar? No. Do they move it from a small niche to a valuable niche? Gotta do the development work to see.
TBF I do tend to be pretty radical on the "don't rule anything out if it helps us decarbonize or mitigate impacts."
posted by mark k at 6:22 PM on October 26, 2020 [4 favorites]
Large-scale geothermal is all well and good. What I would really like to see, though, is for home geothermal heatpump systems to come down in cost to something much more reasonable than they currently are.
That just isn't going to happen. Geothermal heating is complex with significant work and materials going into it and is going to stay expensive for a single family homes. Insulation and air sealing plus an air source heat pump (or even just resistive heating) is bound to pencil out better because it's so much less complex. Even net-metering solar and resistive heat is probably a better bet most places; you can install a lot of solar for the cost of a geothermal system. Geothermal does tend to have more significant maintenance costs as well.
Maybe for larger scale multifamily, institutional or commercial contexts, it might make sense, but the complexity and cost is such that geothermal isn't really an option for single family unless you have massive heating loads (in which case, reduce your heating loads!)
posted by ssg at 8:59 PM on October 26, 2020
That just isn't going to happen. Geothermal heating is complex with significant work and materials going into it and is going to stay expensive for a single family homes. Insulation and air sealing plus an air source heat pump (or even just resistive heating) is bound to pencil out better because it's so much less complex. Even net-metering solar and resistive heat is probably a better bet most places; you can install a lot of solar for the cost of a geothermal system. Geothermal does tend to have more significant maintenance costs as well.
Maybe for larger scale multifamily, institutional or commercial contexts, it might make sense, but the complexity and cost is such that geothermal isn't really an option for single family unless you have massive heating loads (in which case, reduce your heating loads!)
posted by ssg at 8:59 PM on October 26, 2020
As JackFlash mentions, there are few places where nature makes geothermal energy easily accessible. California uses a lot of its hotspot to generate a lot of power in geothermal plants--almost 11,000 GWh last year, but Wyoming has even more accessible geothermal hotspots. They have a legislature and governor that are spending a lot of effort to save their dying coal industry while they do almost nothing with their massive geothermal resources. The problem is that they don't need that much power locally, but they don't have the grid connections they need to be able to ship all this potential power to the rest of the country.
Let's invest in building up our national grid first, so we can take advantage of some of the easy solutions that are readily available.
posted by eye of newt at 10:35 PM on October 26, 2020
Let's invest in building up our national grid first, so we can take advantage of some of the easy solutions that are readily available.
posted by eye of newt at 10:35 PM on October 26, 2020
But just drilling holes in the ground and getting free energy for electricity is a pipe dream.
Hat tip to ya.
posted by zardoz at 10:36 PM on October 26, 2020
Hat tip to ya.
posted by zardoz at 10:36 PM on October 26, 2020
Let's invest in building up our national grid first, so we can take advantage of some of the easy solutions that are readily available.
[4!] A national US power grid would make electricity cheaper and cleaner - "The top 5 reasons to stitch together America's balkanized grids." :P
posted by kliuless at 11:11 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
[4!] A national US power grid would make electricity cheaper and cleaner - "The top 5 reasons to stitch together America's balkanized grids." :P
posted by kliuless at 11:11 PM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
Bit of a tangent but I did not know there was a new Kim Stanley Robinson book! Kinda made my night.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 5:34 PM on October 27, 2020
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 5:34 PM on October 27, 2020
Just to say that these posts are hugely appreciated, kliuless.
And to add to the power grid thing, a robust continent-wide power grid that's continually being upgraded is not a huge scientific research project. China's UHVDC links are gigantic megaprojects, but the development of HVDC interconnects quietly getting built undersea between countries in Europe feels much more like business as usual for grid operators.
That said, I can imagine the moonshot potential of decent transoceanic connectors, especially if e.g. the North Atlantic one goes through Iceland, and there's a connector from Western Australia to Java (instead of the synthesised ammonia export they're talking about using to export energy).
posted by ambrosen at 6:15 PM on October 27, 2020
And to add to the power grid thing, a robust continent-wide power grid that's continually being upgraded is not a huge scientific research project. China's UHVDC links are gigantic megaprojects, but the development of HVDC interconnects quietly getting built undersea between countries in Europe feels much more like business as usual for grid operators.
That said, I can imagine the moonshot potential of decent transoceanic connectors, especially if e.g. the North Atlantic one goes through Iceland, and there's a connector from Western Australia to Java (instead of the synthesised ammonia export they're talking about using to export energy).
posted by ambrosen at 6:15 PM on October 27, 2020
If the primary loops is kilometers deep, and reach at least 200'C - would there be any downsides to directly dumping blackwater (minimally processed sewage) into it to replenish lost fluid?
Autoclave sterilization happens at 121'C. The flow rate through the network at 200'C probably isn't that fast so most everything would get broken down into very basic molecules. It'd (probably?) turn into, basically, nutrient broth.
When you pump the geothermal fluid back up again, .... ah, the flow rate is slow enough that the sterilized nutrient broth coming back up would be recolonized by microorganisms.
But those would mainly be fast growing opportunistic bacteria that are unlikely to be pathogenic. You'd get rid of human pathogenic viruses though. Wonder if there's an industrial use as feedstock of the microbial slurry coming back up? Would depend a lot on the characteristics of the major constituent species by biomass. Which would certainly vary between geographic locations.
At the scales involved, "biofilm" (probably) isn't going to clog anything up. The genetic composition of the biofilm at different depths would be fascinating.
posted by porpoise at 8:01 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
Autoclave sterilization happens at 121'C. The flow rate through the network at 200'C probably isn't that fast so most everything would get broken down into very basic molecules. It'd (probably?) turn into, basically, nutrient broth.
When you pump the geothermal fluid back up again, .... ah, the flow rate is slow enough that the sterilized nutrient broth coming back up would be recolonized by microorganisms.
But those would mainly be fast growing opportunistic bacteria that are unlikely to be pathogenic. You'd get rid of human pathogenic viruses though. Wonder if there's an industrial use as feedstock of the microbial slurry coming back up? Would depend a lot on the characteristics of the major constituent species by biomass. Which would certainly vary between geographic locations.
At the scales involved, "biofilm" (probably) isn't going to clog anything up. The genetic composition of the biofilm at different depths would be fascinating.
posted by porpoise at 8:01 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
What an incredibly gross yet awesome concept and comment, porpoise!
Certainly gives a new meaning to “black gold” and “Texas tea”: “We're RIIIICH!!! ...AAAAAUGH, NO, WE'RE NOT, AAAAAAH!!!!!”
posted by XMLicious at 9:39 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
Certainly gives a new meaning to “black gold” and “Texas tea”: “We're RIIIICH!!! ...AAAAAUGH, NO, WE'RE NOT, AAAAAAH!!!!!”
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posted by XMLicious at 9:39 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
Hydrothermal slime protein.
posted by porpoise at 10:18 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by porpoise at 10:18 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
Bit of a tangent but I did not know there was a new Kim Stanley Robinson book! Kinda made my night.
Of Course They Would: On Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future"
The 50 Greatest Apocalypse Novels :P
posted by kliuless at 4:04 AM on October 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
Of Course They Would: On Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future"
The Ministry for the Future is Kim Stanley Robinson’s grimmest book since 2015’s Aurora, and likely the grimmest book he has written to date — but it is also one of his most ambitious, as he seeks to tell the story of how, given what science and history both tell us to be true, the rest of our lives could be anything but an endless nightmare. It is not an easy read, with none of the strategies of spatial or temporal distancing that make Mars or the Moon or the New York of 2140 feel like spaces of optimistic historical possibility; it’s a book that calls on us instead to imagine living through a revolution ourselves, as we are, in the here and now. Robinson, our culture’s last great utopian, hasn’t lost heart exactly — but he’s definitely getting deep down into the muck of things this time.also btw, "Apropos of . . . Nothing"
The Ministry of the title is a subsidiary body of the United Nations, tasked “to advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens, whose rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are as valid as our own” and further “charged with defending all living creatures present and future who cannot speak for themselves, by promoting their legal standing and physical protection.” They are, in short, bureaucrats, a job description Robinson neither lionizes nor denigrates; they are the smart but boring people tasked with crafting the smart but boring rules that will govern day-to-day life on our post-normal planet as it struggles to decarbonize. As the novel begins, they are failures, just as our own bureaucrats are failures; the changes that are being made are too piecemeal, too timid, too slow, and too toothless to actually address the real scale of the climate crisis, much less with sufficient speed and efficacy to keep our futures from being miserable. The novel’s first chapter lays out the real scope of this failure in truly visceral horrifying detail, depicting a brutal heat wave in India that kills 20,000,000 people in a single week. It is the worst week in human history — or rather, as the popular Simpsons meme relentlessly and hopelessly reminds us, the worst week in human history so far.
From here the novel begins a version of the John Dos Passos–inspired polyperspectival writing that Robinson has used for his novels since 2012’s 2312, combining traditional narrative with other prose forms like the encyclopedia article, the think piece, the news report, meeting minutes, the Socratic college seminar, the prose poem, the riddle game, and more.[1]
The 50 Greatest Apocalypse Novels :P
posted by kliuless at 4:04 AM on October 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
I hear cold fusion is twenty years away
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:21 PM on October 28, 2020
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:21 PM on October 28, 2020
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I hadn't considered the political aspect but of course if you can make this work, you probably have the political side of dealing with climate change in the US cracked. All those people working on the oil fields in swing states makes it treacherous for American presidential candidates to push too hard against the oil and gas lobbies. To that extent this may be worth doing even if in a totally apolitical model the LCOE is marginal.
posted by atrazine at 4:54 AM on October 26, 2020