The Not So Impossible Dream

• Greenhouse emissions continue to rise.
• Global temperatures soar.
• Ocean waters soak up heat and intensify hurricanes.
• Changing climate rejects all attempts to bring it under control.

By Dave Trecker

Everyone says abundant clean energy is the answer, and the International Energy Agency routinely reports on the many approaches being taken and their various stages of development. Lots of ideas, but so far only limited progress.

To dream the impossible dream (“Man of la Mancha”)

Here’s an impossible dream to consider. Suppose you could tap into super-hot rock (400-500 degrees Celsius) anywhere on the planet. Suppose you could then generate endless amounts of energy by injecting water to create clean steam right where you need it –next to population centers or military installations or abandoned power stations. No long-range electrical transmission lines would be needed.

This is my quest

An audacious start up, Quaise Energy, is trying to do just that. Based on licensed technology from MIT, Quaise is developing deep-well drilling to reach depths never before routinely achieved (10-20 kilometers) to deliver energy right where it’s needed. And it just might work. The technology has been scaled up 100-fold and pilot testing is just around the corner.

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far

The centerpiece of this technology is a high density low-wave length beam, an electron generator called a Gyrotron that literally melts and vaporizes subsurface rock. One benefit is that it avoids the need to add casings. Instead, by vitrifying deep rock, it creates its own casing. Testing, now underway at an abandoned drilling site in Texas, is determining the energy required to drill ever deeper and ever wider holes.

To reach hot rock is a lengthy process requiring an estimated 2-4 weeks with attendant costs. Yet, it is projected to stack up well against other clean-energy sources, with power densities far superior to those of solar, wind and hydroelectric.

Favorable test results in Texas could lead to a pilot operation as early as 2026.

And the world will be better for this

The IEA says achieving net zero in greenhouse gas generation by 2050 will require replacing fossil fuels with a host of clean-energy sources. The best of these may well be “hot rock geothermal,” drawing on Quaise Energy’s millimeter wave technology. Vast reaches of the world would benefit economically because of the pinpoint generation of low-cost power.

What makes this doubly exciting is that a Naples resident is helping to make it happen.

Ali Azad

His name is Ali Azad. He’s a Quaise Energy board member, the most recent stop in an illustrious career that has spanned decades in the energy services field and has included high-level executive positions in numerous international companies. When he talks about energy, people listen.

Azad says the key question for “hotrock geothermal” is how deep you can go as a function of input power that comes from the grid.

What is the loss of power density? What makes the technology so promising, he says, is that even if the target 10-20 km depths cannot be achieved, something less may still reach hot rock in many places of the world. It doesn’t have to be a home run to be economically attractive and provide environmental benefits.

Azad is particularly excited about so-called “brownfield” applications. An example is generating clean steam next to a decommissioned coal plant, using the existing coal fired turbines to generate power at what would be essentially discounted rates.

The real hope, of course, is that the full potential can be achieved – routinely cost-effective drilling to 20-kilometer depths.

The unreachable star

That said Azad, would ensure “an endless supply of 100% clean, sustainable energy forever.”

Dr. Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Naples.