The answer to the climate crisis may, literally be under everybody’s feet.That’s why the Alberta government is commissioning a feasibility study to explore the development, and implementation of an almost limitless supply of baseload electricity with next generation geothermal technology.At a media event in Calgary on Tuesday, Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz said geothermal has the potential to be come a trillion-dollar industry and Alberta is poised to be at the forefront due to its long history of oil and gas drilling.“Alberta has been a global energy leader for more than a century, renowned for our skilled workforce, innovation and one of the largest oil and gas reserves on the planet,” she said..The first step in the process is to build the proposed ‘Alberta Drilling Accelerator’ — a testing hub along the lines of the Dover Underground Test Facility built in 1987 by the Alberta government to develop what would then become horizontal drilling and steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) — two technologies that would revolutionize the oil sands industry and unlock hundreds of millions of barrels of reserves.And in fact, Calgary-based Eavor — who will perform the study — has a patented scalable closed loop geothermal system based on variations to the basic SAGD premise of linking multiple wells into a single system.On its website, the company claim’s the ‘Eavor-Loop’ system is the world’s first truly scalable form of base load energy using geothermal heat in the world.Calgary economist and best-selling author Of A 1,000 Barrels a Second called it one of the most revolutionary advances in energy drilling in decades.“We've done it for over a century and we need to stay the best at drilling a hole in the ground. This announcement is really important and I'm delighted to be in fact honoured to be standing here and making the introduction to this announcement so we continue to stay as leaders in the business,” he said..John Redfern, Eavor’s president and CEO, said geothermal isn’t meant to replace other intermittent power sources like wind and solar, but enhance it as reliable backup. Geothermal demand isn’t growing in spite of those sources, but because of it he added.“The need and part of the case for geothermal has only come up because of the rise of wind and solar. Over time, you need something that's less intermittent and something that's more reliable. That's where we come in,” he said. “So I would say not it's not an either or— it's we're being drawn into the market because of the success of wind and solar.”.“The exact same skills that built our oil and gas sector can unlock geothermal’s massive potential around the world,”Rebecca Schulz .That said, geothermal still has a long way to go to becoming the next commercially viable trillion-dollar industry. The first commercial projects could start showing up on regulatory radars around 2025 and be in service around 2030.Longer-term, experts said it would likely hit prime time around 2050 as a mature technology.“The exact same skills that built our oil and gas sector can unlock geothermal’s massive potential around the world,” Schultz added. “Plus the economic and environmental benefits are huge leveraging the world class drilling expertise that we already have. That's huge. That's why globally everywhere around the world people are looking to develop and innovate in this space.”
