As the debate over Pennsylvania’s energy future heats up, our history of oil and gas extraction presents a surprising opportunity to harvest clean energy from deep underground.
The solution to reaching Pennsylvania’s clean energy goals may be closer than we think. A new report published by Penn State University, “The Future of Geothermal in Pennsylvania,” concludes that the Commonwealth is particularly well positioned to be a leader in developing this abundant, carbon-free energy source.
Perhaps unexpectedly, what gives Pennsylvania an edge in this clean energy future is its robust and long-established oil and gas industry. Decades of drilling have provided researchers with ample data on subsurface temperatures, revealing that there’s more than 1,000 times more energy available underground than Pennsylvanians use annually.
It’s not just Pennsylvania that has untapped geothermal potential, according to Trent McFadyen, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Project InnerSpace, a nonprofit with the mission of removing barriers to growing geothermal energy.
“Geothermal contributes less than 1% of the world’s energy mix, but it has more potential than most other sources of energy that exist in the world,” McFadyen said.
For Pennsylvania, the potential is profound. According to the report, geothermal could, with the adoption of new and emerging technologies, provide enough energy to meet 100% of the state’s electricity, heating, and low-to-medium-temperature industrial process needs within as little as ten years. And funding available through RISE PA, Pennsylvania’s recently launched industrial decarbonization program, could dramatically accelerate that process.
“The potential is just very broad across really wide swaths of Pennsylvania’s geography and its end uses for energy,” said Dr. Seth Blumsack, director of the Center for Energy Law and Policy at Penn State.
That potential extends to oil and gas companies. The technology and skills required to tap into geothermal aren’t so different from existing methods for fossil fuels.
“There’s a really promising prospect in that we have people with existing skill sets from the energy sector that we could employ to really build out geothermal energy,” Blumsack said. “And we also have tremendous infrastructure to train the next generation of geothermal energy scientists and engineers.”
“Cumulatively, geothermal is the most easily transferrable [skill] from an oil and gas worker into a renewable energy worker,” added McFayden.
Already, some oil and gas companies, such as CNX Resources and Atlas Copco Secoroc LLC, are exploring geothermal development.
While the potential is there, barriers remain. To that end, the report includes 23 policy recommendations aimed at accelerating the adoption of geothermal, such as providing smoothing out the permitting process and educating stakeholders.
As PEC Senior Vice President of Legal and Government Affairs John Walliser concluded in a recent op-ed, “If we act now, we can have an all-of-the-above energy policy –and all-of-the-below, too – that helps the state meet its energy, employment, economic, and environmental goals.”
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