Steven Chu, gamma rays, and the triumph of science

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Obama Administration may not be home to the best, but it certainly includes some of the brightest. Take, for example, Energy Secretary (and Nobel laureate) Steven Chu, who is actually rather brilliant. the WaPo, via Ezra Klein:

Obama has also called in some of the many scientists on the federal payroll, led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Chu at one point pushed the unusual idea of using gamma rays to peer into the blowout preventer to determine if its valves were closed, a technique he experimented with in graduate school while studying radioactive decay.

The suggestion at first elicited snickering and "Incredible Hulk" jokes. Then they tried it, and it worked. "They weren't hot on his ideas," a senior White House official said of BP's initial reaction to Chu's suggestions. "Now they are."

Whatever else we may say about Obama, one thing that distinguishes him clearly from his predecessor is his respect for science (and therefore for the search for truth). Where Bush and his administration undermined it (for example, with respect to climate change), turning instead to theocratic Christian moralism, Obama, who (admirably) lacks Bush's self-righteous sense of absolute certitude, seems more than willing (perhaps often to a fault) to reach out to those who have a sense of what's actually going on and who can, with their expertise, propose meaningful solutions to the challenges of the real world, such as the disaster in the Gulf.

Lest we forget, we've come a long way from the Dark Ages of Dubya.

Quote of the Day: Steven Chu on energy and the American public

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The energy secretary said this the other day:

The American public... just like your teenage kids, aren't acting in a way that they should act. The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.

The media and the political class deserve much of the blame, of course, but Chu is quite right that Americans generally act like self-absorbed adolescents when it comes to energy consumption.

They've been taught to behave that way -- consume, consume, consume is the dominant American mantra, cultivated over decades, if not from the very beginning. You know the story, I'm sure.

I have little confidence that the people will change their ways quickly enough, or that the media will address responsible energy consumption in a serious way -- some in the media do, but the media amount to so much noise, with conservative spin often drowning out rational discourse.

It is refreshing, then, that Chu -- and the Obama Administration generally -- is working to address this gaping hole in public awareness of what the issues really are and of how urgent the need is for change with respect to both energy consumption and energy policy more broadly.

The importance of geothermal power

Guest post by John Malone

John Malone, a VP/Senior Analyst with John S. Herold, an energy investment research firm in Connecticut, is a Truman National Security Project fellow.

Ed. note: This is the second piece we've cross-posted from Operation FREE. The first, on veterans and Big Oil, is here. -- MJWS

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In the world of renewables, most of the attention is on the wind and the sun. Geothermal power just hasn't gotten the same respect. That could be changing, as both the Obama Administration and Silicon Valley are considering the heat under the ground as a potentially huge source of clean, domestic U.S. energy, but recent setbacks are calling into question how much geothermal can contribute. Given the potential benefits, we should be doubling our efforts to make geothermal a viable power source for the U.S.

Some background: All thermal power plants use the same basic process. A heat source (burning coal or gas, uranium, concentrated solar energy) is used to turn water into steam, and the energy released turns a turbine that produces electricity. What sets geothermal apart is that the steam comes directly from the ground. Water percolates down through cracks in the ground and is heated to the boiling point by hot rocks underground (in some cases coming back up as a geyser -- think Old Faithful), and the resulting steam is drawn up via a well to a turbine.

This makes for, in principle, the ideal alternative energy source. Geothermal power releases virtually no CO2 or pollutants. Crucially, geothermal provides baseload power -- wind and solar power are better suited as peaking technologies, as they are dependent on energy sources that wax and wane over the course of a day. Geothermal power is on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (geothermal power plants can have utilization rates up to 98%). And from a national security angle, the promise of geothermal is obvious: There is no more domestic source of energy than the actual ground underneath us.

There's one problem, though. There are only a few places in the U.S. where you can find shallow groundwater hot enough to get steam directly from the ground. Engineers and geologists are therefore looking at a new way to tap underground heat. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) make use of the fact that, if you drill deep enough, any bedrock in the world gets hot enough to boil water. Basically, EGS involves drilling a well into deep, hot, dry rock; drilling a second well nearby to the same depth; fracturing the rock between those two wells enough to allow water to pass between them; and then pumping water down the first well and allowing it to percolate through the hot fractured area to the second well, where it will come back to the surface as superheated steam. The potential for EGS in the U.S. is enormous. A 2006 MIT report concluded it could provide 100,000 MW of power by 2050.

EGS is not without its drawbacks. Cost is the main hurdle. Oil and gas companies now measure well depths in miles, but these are wells drilled through relatively soft rock, not the hard granites that are best suited for EGS. If not managed properly, rocks could lose their heat -- eventually, pumping water through a hot rock system could bring the heat gradient down to the point that new wells need to be drilled. There has also been some concern about earthquakes. In 2006, an EGS pilot project in Switzerland set off a 3.4 magnitude quake.

That said, these hurdles are all surmountable, and given the huge benefits it could bring, there is already a surge in investment -- both public and private -- in EGS. Google laid down an $11 million investment for early-stage research. Perhaps most encouraging is the interest shown in EGS by our Nobel Laureate Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu. Obama's stimulus plan set aside $400 million for pure geothermal R&D. And it's looking like EGS wouldn't need too much more of an investment. A recent NYU study found that as little as $3 billion in R&D development could make EGS cost-competitive with fossil fuel plants.

The widespread application of EGS is still a ways off. But geothermal, whether traditional or EGS, should be used alongside technologies like wind and solar to diversify our renewable base. There is no silver bullet in renewable energy. It's better to think in terms of silver buckshot, where a collection of solutions add up to a big impact. We should do our best to make sure that one of those solutions is the one right under our feet.