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Business Insider visited drilling sites and spoke with engineers and industry experts to understand what it would take to go deeper than ever before, and whether reaching the Earth’s mantle is even possible.
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00:02Have you ever wondered how deep we could dig into the Earth?
00:07No one's ever gone deeper than 12 kilometers, which is about 7.5 miles.
00:11That's deeper than Mount Everest is tall.
00:14And that took the Soviets 20 years.
00:18Still, it's just a scratch on the surface.
00:20A mere 0.2% of the way to the Earth's core.
00:24It turns out that the deeper you go, the more the Earth pushes back.
00:28But new technology could make it possible to dig further.
00:33Whoa!
00:35It just started to fly apart.
00:40Just so you could see how this rock became literally glass.
00:46And this could be the ticket to unlimited clean energy.
00:51Just steps down to 6 kilometers that you could produce 1,400 gigawatts of new geothermal power.
00:57That's bigger than the current U.S. power grid.
00:59So can these drilling techniques make a 20 kilometer hole possible?
01:03And how far down can we actually go?
01:09Remember the space race between the U.S. and the USSR?
01:12At the very same time, another race was underway.
01:16Not toward the moon, but deep beneath our feet.
01:18And this time, the Americans didn't win.
01:22The ultimate goal was scientific.
01:25The U.S. started with Project Mohol in the 1960s.
01:28Which hopes one day to drill a hole through the crust of the Earth and to find out what's down
01:33there.
01:33The idea was simple.
01:35Drill through the ocean floor, where the Earth's crust is thinner and reach the mantle.
01:39In theory, it was the fastest way down.
01:42To find a suitable spot to dig, researchers actually dropped bombs into the ocean.
01:47Three, two, one, zero.
01:52Over the side, over the side.
01:54The charge is over the side.
01:59It doesn't get any more American than that.
02:02Then they used sonar readouts to measure the thickness of the Earth's crust.
02:06But after years of work and millions of dollars, it made it just 183 meters into the seabed.
02:14That's less than two football fields.
02:16The project was eventually cut short due to lack of funding.
02:19But the techniques they developed led to a boom in offshore oil drilling.
02:23Meanwhile, the Soviet Union began drilling on the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic Circle.
02:28Back then, researchers expected to hit 15 kilometers, about 9.3 miles.
02:33But after 20 years of drilling, they reached a depth of 12,262 meters.
02:39That's deeper than the deepest point of the ocean, the Mariana Trench, located in the Pacific Ocean.
02:45Since then, there have been oil wells that dug for longer stretches, like the Al-Shahin well in Qatar and
02:51one in Russia.
02:52But this type of exploratory drilling doesn't actually go straight down.
02:57These types of wells often veer sideways for long stretches looking for those reservoirs of hydrocarbons.
03:03So to this day, the Kola borehole remains the deepest vertical hole.
03:08Kola was sealed with a metal cap and abandoned.
03:11It looks like this.
03:13One of the reasons the drilling was forced to stop is because the team encountered higher temperatures than expected.
03:18And this is the biggest challenge when it comes to digging deep.
03:22Heat.
03:23Because the deeper you go, the hotter it gets.
03:26As we get below sort of 12, 15, 18,000 feet, we're getting into very hot formations, very high temperatures,
03:36where actual drilling tools are struggling to survive.
03:39So if we want to go deeper than Kola, we need tech that can withstand temperatures that rise about 25
03:45degrees Celsius per kilometer.
03:47Look at the geothermal gradient and you can see the heat increase isn't linear.
03:52Things get super hot long before you reach the mantle, a layer of Earth that no one has yet hit.
03:56As you go deeper still, temperatures can climb into the thousands of degrees.
04:01In fact, 99% of Earth's mass is hotter than 1000 degrees Celsius.
04:06But that heat is also exactly what makes geothermal energy possible.
04:11Because if we can tap into it, it becomes a near limitless source of clean power.
04:16Right now, geothermal meets less than 1% of global energy demand.
04:20But if the technology keeps getting better, geothermal could cover up to 15% of the world's new electricity demand
04:26by 2050.
04:26So how does it work? Inject water deep underground or dig into existing reservoirs.
04:33Then use heat from the Earth to turn it into steam.
04:36That steam spins turbines and generates electricity.
04:39Unlike solar and wind, geothermal could provide electricity 24 hours a day and all year round.
04:45This is exactly what happens in places like Iceland, where volcanic activity brings a lot of that underground heat closer
04:52to the surface.
04:52In Iceland, they actually made contact with magma at only two and a half kilometers below the surface.
04:58Iceland's large-scale shift to geothermal energy was driven by the 1973 oil crisis,
05:04when rising prices and geopolitical instability highlighted the risks of energy dependence.
05:10At the time, half of the homes relied on imported fossil fuel for heating, which was expensive for the country.
05:16So Iceland turned underground.
05:18Today, nearly 30% of the country's electricity comes from geothermal, and about 90% of homes there are heated
05:25this way.
05:26And Iceland is not alone.
05:28Take a look at this map.
05:29Geothermal shows up all along the Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates converge.
05:35But there's a catch.
05:37Most places where geothermal energy works only dig down about two to three kilometers,
05:42because that heat is close to the surface.
05:45Now, if we wanted to make geothermal work in more places, we're going to have to go much, much deeper.
05:51That's why we're in Houston, Texas today, and we're going to a company called Quaze,
05:55that's digging deeper using literal energy beams to vaporize rock.
06:01All right, so this is where the magic happens.
06:03This is where the magic happens.
06:06Quaze is a startup with a very ambitious goal.
06:09They want to be able to drill down to 20 kilometers underground.
06:14At that depth, the temperature can reach up to 500 degrees Celsius,
06:19which is enough to destroy any kind of conventional drilling equipment.
06:24That's why they're using something called millimeter wave.
06:27And the idea behind it is that it's using a special kind of technology that comes from fusion energy
06:34to literally shoot at the rock and vaporize it, melting it into glass.
06:41In the simplest layman's terms possible, what is millimeter wave drilling?
06:46Millimeter wave drilling is using microwave to do dielectric heating to get to very hot rock.
06:54Conventional drilling uses a mechanical bit to pulverize rock.
06:58But at extreme depths, it gets harder to power the system and it breaks a lot.
07:04Quaze uses electromagnetic energy to melt rock.
07:08And in theory, the millimeter waves maintain their power even over long distances.
07:13It took MIT over a decade to develop this technique in a lab.
07:18The device that creates the energy beam hot enough to do this is called a gyrotron,
07:23and it actually originates in nuclear fusion energy.
07:26It actually is the device that converts electrical power to microwave power.
07:31That's important for us because it's able to make upward of a megawatt of microwave power.
07:37You can see that the magnet's on because it's using electromagnetism.
07:41So apparently, I don't know what would happen.
07:43Would it suck our cameras right to it?
07:46It could disturb some of it, yeah.
07:48We don't bring our phones in there.
07:50We don't bring any kind of tools that are magnetic in there.
07:52Okay, so it could fly.
07:54It's like an MRI machine.
07:55Oh, it's like an MRI.
07:56So you know what?
07:57And actually, if you hear, I'm going to put the microphone closer to there.
08:01If you hear, it actually sounds exactly like an MRI if you've ever gotten an MRI.
08:05So listen to this.
08:11That's actually the sound of the cooling system.
08:14The gyrotron's superconducting magnet needs to stay near negative 270 degrees Celsius to function properly.
08:22Quaze channels the beam through a hollow pipe that looks like it has screw threads inside.
08:27So what you see here is the waveguide.
08:30And so the millimeter wave is actually going inside there, all the way to the bottom.
08:35So basically, Henry, this kind of pipe is what's going to be going all the way down any hole you
08:41dig, right?
08:42That's right.
08:42So we start with a conventional drill rig to drill as deep as they can.
08:46And then we come without technology.
08:48So the Quaze approach is less like drilling and more like burning a hole through the earth.
08:54In theory, this solves one of the biggest problems.
08:56If nothing touches the rock, nothing overheats.
08:59The way we address it is that we are not putting equipment down hole that could be subjected to the
09:05temperature that could damage or that could fail the drilling process in that regard.
09:09And so we're not obviously eliminating the heat.
09:11Obviously, we want to get to the heat.
09:13But we're able to continue drilling in spite of the heat in that regard, right?
09:17Here's why they want rock that hot.
09:20At those temperatures and pressures, water enters a fourth state called supercritical.
09:25It's not quite gas and it's not quite liquid.
09:28And it carries far more energy than steam.
09:32Quaze says a single supercritical well could produce up to 10 times as much energy as a conventional geothermal project.
09:39And Quaze gave us a live demonstration on how they plan to reach it.
09:44We're going to put in earplugs, not because of the millimeter wave, but because the compressed air that comes into
09:51the system is very loud.
09:53So I'm putting in earplugs right now.
10:00Whoa!
10:01Isn't that safe?
10:02The light is completely bright.
10:04I guess you can see how the air is pushing all the other stuff out of the way.
10:09Wow.
10:10About 30 seconds to go.
10:12Okay, it says 30 more seconds to go.
10:15Wow, that's pretty cool.
10:18That's it.
10:19Oh man, that's so cool.
10:24And you can see it's like lava cooling, right?
10:28I would say the heat hitting my hands right now is probably like, you know, a campfire that has died
10:36down.
10:36Not hot, not too hot to touch.
10:41I can still hear it crackling, which is kind of gnarly.
10:46But we're going to just so you could see how this rock became literally glass.
10:54If the drilling thing doesn't work out, maybe you guys can like use this to like get into a bank
10:59vault or something.
11:00I don't know.
11:01Wow, we said that we just make ashtrays.
11:03I know people don't smoke anymore.
11:04That would be an awesome ashtray.
11:05To understand what they might encounter deep underground, Quays hauls huge chunks of rock into the lab.
11:12We're out back at the lab now.
11:14These are 10,000 pound lobes of rock and they represent the different kinds of rock that Quays might encounter
11:21once they start digging down.
11:23They use these for testing and they're very heavy and very expensive to get here.
11:27How the hell do you move these things?
11:28It is incredibly expensive.
11:30Obviously, you need a big forklift that can actually carry the weight.
11:34But it's also incredibly expensive in terms of just getting from the quarry of this size to us as well.
11:40And it's just part of the business.
11:42But even if you solve heat, there's another problem. Pressure.
11:46There are even more challenges that you have to deal with when you're digging super deep.
11:50And in order to show you what that looks like, we came to the Weiss Energy Hall here at the
11:55Houston Museum of Natural Science.
11:56So we're going to take you around and show you a couple of exhibits that show you in a way
12:00that you can't see anywhere else.
12:03So what you see above me is a gigantic representation of a drill bit coming down a borehole.
12:09Obviously, this is probably, I don't know, 30, 40 times the scale.
12:14But it gives you a sense of how these rotating bits create a momentum going down into the hole, removing
12:22material and pushing it out towards the sides.
12:24So once you're getting down deeper and deeper, the rock isn't just hot, it's also heavy.
12:31That's what engineers called lithostatic pressure.
12:34At 10 kilometers down, you're under 40,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.
12:40You're basically trying to hold something open that wants to close.
12:44So what engineers do is something that might seem counterintuitive.
12:48They're actually filling the holes that they dig with drilling mud.
12:53And this drilling mud does three things.
12:55First of all, it cools the bit.
12:57Second of all, it lubricates the entire system.
13:01And third of all, it counteracts the pressure that's acting on the borehole as they go deeper and deeper.
13:06What this display is showing is that this mud has a viscosity that's meant to slow down the flow of
13:16the balls going downwards.
13:17And you could see how getting that and dialing that in just right is important to keeping the borehole stable.
13:24As you go deeper, something even stranger happens.
13:27The rock stops acting like a solid block and starts acting more like plastic.
13:33That's where casing comes in because it's holding up the sides of the borehole as you go down and allowing
13:40you to drop a narrower and narrower channel of pipe down to reach those deeper depths.
13:46So as you could see from this example, we've started out with the widest possible drilling bore, which is 16
13:53inches, and it goes all the way down to five and a half inches.
13:57Quays believes their system could also solve the casing issue.
14:00As the rock melted by the millimeter waves cools, it solidifies into a glassy lining around the borehole.
14:08That creates a hardened layer that will help keep the hole stable.
14:12Just to feel the texture of it is that it does — I do feel that volcanic glass feel.
14:18It reminds me of, you know, when you had a piece of obsidian.
14:20If you've ever had a rock collection at home, that's really what it feels like.
14:23In other words, it's a sort of ready-made casing.
14:26But can this work at extreme depths?
14:29Over the years, Quays has proven they could dig past 100 meters, and now they've set up a test site
14:34in Marble Falls, Texas, where they're aiming to reach one kilometer by the end of the year.
14:39We really want to show that we're going to do a kilometer, and it's really to show that we're very
14:44close to our goal of 10 kilometers.
14:46It's a 10x more, but one kilometer really gives you that depth where it is a viable option from a
14:53field point of view.
14:54We hit the road to find out.
14:56This morning, we were heading from Houston, Texas, where Quays' lab is, to their test site in Marble Falls, which
15:03is on the other side of Austin, where Quays is actually bringing their technology to life in the real world.
15:08I'm standing at the edge of a granite quarry, and you could see why Quays would select this site to
15:15test their technology.
15:16Behind me, you can see that there's layers of sand and clay that have accumulated.
15:20That's called overburden.
15:22But not much further down, you've got this nice pink granite everywhere.
15:26And what Quays is able to do is, without digging too deep, they're able to get to this granite layer
15:32and start using their millimeter wave drill to really get through it.
15:36This is a perfect site for Quays to start proving that their technology works on the hardest rock that is
15:43found in the deepest layers to get to that supercritical geothermal.
15:47This is the first location where Quays has taken their technology out of the lab setting and into the real
15:53world.
15:54And obviously, it's a work site, so I've got to have my hard hat and my safety glasses here.
15:59Okay, let's go.
16:00The gyro rig here can run on diesel, but for now, it's connected to the grid.
16:05I wonder what your monthly electricity bill is.
16:07It's not great.
16:11So, Steve, this hole is going to be the one kilometer hole?
16:15That is correct, yep.
16:16So, we'll be up and drilling in about six weeks, and then we're expecting to hit it in the summer.
16:21So, we're talking maybe two months to get to one kilometer on this.
16:26They're going to take this wire line camera, and they're going to drop it down the hole that's existing.
16:30So, we're going to get an inside peek into the beginning of the one kilometer hole.
16:36What's interesting, though, is that the sides of this don't look like what we saw in the lab, like more
16:41vitrified.
16:42Is there a reason for that?
16:43We are able to go that route as well.
16:46It's faster without it.
16:47So, you don't need that hard shell to prove the point of what you're doing.
16:51That's right.
16:51Got it.
16:52There's another problem with drilling deep into the earth.
16:55We don't actually know what's down there.
16:57Most of what we can tell about the inside of the earth comes from seismic waves.
17:01How they travel and bend, or slow down or speed up, tells us what the different materials could be under
17:07the ground.
17:07We saw how some of this seismic exploration works at the museum.
17:12So, you could see on this cube, it's representing different layers that could contain hydrocarbons, which is more for the
17:19traditional, conventional fracking industry.
17:23But this is the kind of seismic survey that you might see to understand what's below as you go deeper
17:29and deeper into the ground.
17:30And this is also part of this demonstration.
17:32Yeah, this is a real piece of, they call it scenic sandstone, and this is a real geophone.
17:37This is one of those things that they stick in the ground.
17:39They just sort of drive it in like a stake, and then it picks up sound waves.
17:43So, this is a little clapper here.
17:45You can see this is a sound readout, and that's picking up kind of all the way across the frequency
17:49spectrum.
17:49This is going from 200 hertz up to about 1,500 hertz.
17:53And you can see if I stomp, it's making more of the lower frequencies because I'm stumbling, but it's picking
17:58it up.
17:58I mean, it's pretty sensitive.
17:59But scientists keep discovering new layers, like the potential of a core inside the core of the Earth.
18:06For example, when scientists started the COLA super deep borehole, they thought they'd know what they'd hit.
18:11Based on seismic data, they expected to find a layer of the salt.
18:15Instead, they found water and hydrogen gas.
18:18In the U.S., the deepest hole ever drilled, the Bertha Rogers well in Oklahoma, had to be stopped when
18:23it hit molten sulfur and broke the bit.
18:25So, the deeper we go, the less certain things become, and every surprise pushes the machinery to its limits.
18:31And all this drilling can create unexpected outcomes.
18:35Like earthquakes.
18:37I would say that if you want to create an earthquake, you can create an earthquake.
18:40But there is a really widespread engagement with the fact that that is totally not an acceptable outcome.
18:48In November 2017, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck near the city of Pohang in South Korea.
18:56Later investigations concluded that it wasn't a natural event.
19:00Rather, the earthquake had been triggered by an experimental geothermal project.
19:04The quake left 1,800 people displaced and 135 injured.
19:10It also caused at least $123 million in damage.
19:14The nation's energy ministry expressed deep regret and said it would dismantle this project.
19:20Prior to that, the most notable earthquake induced by exploration for geothermal was in Basel, Switzerland.
19:25In December 2006, a 3.4 magnitude earthquake led to minor building damage.
19:31But the operator's insurance company paid out over $7 million in claims and eventually shut the project down.
19:38What about this idea that drilling, I mean any kind of drilling, but this idea that drilling can create seismic
19:46activity that can create earthquakes.
19:47And how do you mitigate that?
19:49Yeah. So to be clear, the drilling aspect of it doesn't create any type of seismic.
19:54It's obviously when you try to do what we call the EGS aspect, when we're actually connecting between the two
19:58wells,
20:00is where potentially you could have these type of issues.
20:03Now, the oil and gas industry has matured significantly where now there's regulation in place,
20:09there's sensors in place to make sure that you never go above a threshold that's unacceptable in that regard.
20:14Really, that threshold is the same threshold as what you typically see in a football game or a rock concert.
20:21That's the threshold which basically the standard is now.
20:24We don't go above.
20:25In terms of a vibration.
20:26In terms of vibration, things like that.
20:27So it's very well managed in terms of the level which is acceptable in that regard.
20:33So we never cross that threshold.
20:35Another challenge for expanding geothermal is cost.
20:38Drilling deeper is slow, risky and more expensive with every kilometer.
20:43Because it means more rig time, more crew, more wear on equipment and more of a risk of failure.
20:50In fact, most of the time in conventional drilling is spent pulling up the rig and replacing a damaged bit.
20:55The core problem is upfront cost and uncertainty.
20:58You have to spend tens to hundreds of millions of dollars before you will know if a well will actually
21:03produce usable energy.
21:05That makes deep geothermal difficult to finance compared to solar, wind or even conventional oil and gas.
21:10Historically, projects like COLA cost on the order of $100 million.
21:15And that's not even adjusted for inflation.
21:18So the economic constraint isn't just can we drill deeper.
21:22It's can we drill deep enough, fast enough and cheap enough to compete with other forms of energy.
21:29That's a yes, according to the CEO of Quaze, who recently testified at a congressional hearing.
21:34So normally, when you're drilling, you are trending in the $1,000 to $2,000 per meter.
21:39That's typically in oil and gas.
21:40It's cheaper in mining because it's a different use case.
21:43So what happens, though, when you go deeper and harder is that that $1,000 to $2,000 per meter
21:48starts to blow up exponentially on you.
21:51To give you a sense, you can get as far as high as $10,000 to $20,000 to $30
21:56,000 per meter to continue to make progress once you're below three, four, five miles.
22:01So we're trying to just skip that $1,000 to $2,000, regardless of the depth, because that's what makes
22:07it economically viable and accessible.
22:08And Henry told me that once a Quaze geothermal plant is up and running, it will prove more economically viable
22:14over time.
22:15The industry term for that is levelized cost of electricity.
22:20It's basically the cost per unit of electricity that a project needs to break even over the course of its
22:26lifetime.
22:26Quaze has an LCOE calculator on their website, and what it does is it allows you to go to a
22:32map of the United States, put a pin anywhere to get a cost of what a geothermal project would have
22:40in your area.
22:41It bundles everything into one number.
22:44The upfront costs to drill and build the project, the ongoing maintenance costs, fuel costs, financing costs, and basically the
22:53overall lifetime output of that energy project.
22:56The amount of cost to drill a hole is about 20% of the overall cost of making geothermal.
23:03So the better answer is we think that the way we're going to make electricity, we can get these levelized
23:09costs of energy down to about $50 per megawatt hours.
23:15A price point of $50 per megawatt hour would make geothermal very competitive with new wind and solar projects.
23:22Do you think that your first commercial project would come close to that number?
23:28We think our first project up in Oregon would be about $100, and then by the time we get to
23:33the end of a kind, we're down to $50.
23:35So far, investors hesitate to back up such problems.
23:38And the paradox is that because the costs are high, it hasn't scaled yet, but it won't scale without investment.
23:45So how do you break that cycle?
23:47This is where oil and gas comes in.
23:49Because geothermal isn't completely new.
23:51It's built on top of an industry that already exists.
23:55Up to 80% of the investment required in a geothermal project involves capacity and skills that are common in
24:00oil and gas.
24:01And today, a large share of that workforce comes directly from the oil and gas industry.
24:07There's 2,000 rigs around the world with all the rig hands and all the people that know how to
24:12operate it.
24:12We basically give them a new set of tools.
24:16In fact, some of the people we met here working for Quays come from fracking.
24:20We're in the drilling cabin, a.k.a. the doghouse.
24:24And I'm here with Mike, Ethan, and Sam.
24:27And these guys are on site.
24:29They're living nearby 15 days out of the month, five days off.
24:34But they're committed to this site, and they're going to be the ones that are making sure that this hole
24:38goes down to 1km.
24:39So I just wanted to talk to you guys because you guys could be part of a new wave of
24:44energy.
24:44Do you ever think about that and what that might mean for the future of everybody?
24:49Supercritical seems like the major unlock to take geothermal to the next level.
24:55And there's some companies dabbling in it and kind of researching it.
25:00Quays attracted me personally just because they're full on committed to making Superhot Supercritical happen.
25:07All the basic tools are the same.
25:10The expertise is similar.
25:11And even the techniques like horizontal drilling and hydraulic stimulation come from fracking.
25:16Which means if geothermal scales, it'll likely use oil and gas infrastructure.
25:21And that matters because oil and gas is one of the few industries with the capital, equipment, and experience to
25:26drill at this scale.
25:28And we're already seeing interest.
25:30Chevron recently announced a joint venture with Baseload Capital.
25:32They have a fund focused on U.S. geothermal development opportunities.
25:37RMCo announced they'll look into geothermal in the Middle East.
25:40And the current presidential administration has opened up public lands to a number of geothermal projects.
25:45But so far, investment has been limited compared to the trillions spent annually on fossil fuels.
25:51The industry is still waiting for a breakthrough.
25:54And until that changes, deep geothermal isn't just a technical challenge.
25:58It's a financial one.
25:59So instead of going deeper, some geothermal companies are changing their strategy entirely.
26:04I would say the main reason people haven't gone deeper is there hasn't been a reason to.
26:09You know, oil and gas is found in shallow areas.
26:12And so the only reason to really drill past 10 kilometers is, you know, to do research well.
26:16And I'm sure you've found a couple of examples of that.
26:18Companies like Furvo are not trying to drill to extreme depths.
26:22Instead of going as deep as possible, they focus on creating more contact with the heat that's already there.
26:28Where the heat is still useful, but the engineering is far more manageable.
26:32And so what Furvo does is we'll drill down into rock that's 400 or 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
26:37And then rather than just leaving a simple vertical well that might only be a few inches in diameter
26:41to try to produce heat from that section, we'll turn and drill horizontally for over a mile.
26:46That process increases the surface area that's exposed to heat, which means more energy can be captured.
26:52So then they pump water underground at extremely high pressure, cracking open the rock and creating a network of tiny
26:58fractures.
26:59And through those fractures, water can flow.
27:01It moves through the hot rock, heats up, and is pushed back to the surface.
27:05It's a process borrowed directly from fracking.
27:09Out in the Nevada desert, Google has already signed a deal with Furvo to help power its data centers.
27:15You're going to be hooked right into the AI data centers soon, right?
27:18Yeah.
27:19That's where all the new market is going in energy these days.
27:22It's trying to figure out how do we power all this new development from AI and do so in a
27:26way that's sustainable and affordable.
27:28It's a huge role to play in that.
27:31So Quaze has a goal of drilling the world's deepest hole, and they have a plan to get there.
27:35But some of the experts I spoke to remain skeptical.
27:39People like Quaze have got a very, very steep road.
27:43I don't think that we're going to see a successful supercritical project in the near term.
27:49Quaze is still five years away from commercial operations at their site in Oregon.
27:53And then there's the issue of whether or not using gas to return powdered rock to the surface is even
27:59viable after a certain depth.
28:00What you see is that drilling on air can be a really effective way of getting down through some challenging
28:06formations that, frankly, mud-based systems struggle with.
28:11But there are limits because as you go deeper and deeper and deeper, it's harder to return that to the
28:16surface.
28:16So the deepest holes that I've ever heard of that have been air-drilled, which is the same, you know,
28:21they're destroying the rock in a different way,
28:23but they're blowing it out of the holes, flying ships and dust, is about 10,000 feet.
28:28And that is pretty expensive to do.
28:31Then there's the idea that any geothermal project using heat to generate electricity is incredibly inefficient.
28:38As we take that working fluid and vaporize it and spin a turbine, a large amount of the energy that's
28:45present in that initial fluid escapes to the atmosphere,
28:49essentially as a required cooling stage that we have to do to make the power plant run.
28:55And only a relatively small amount of the initial energy is available in the final product, which is electricity on
29:02the grid.
29:03We're probably today with modern technology at about the 15% efficiency range.
29:08So according to Wayne, the best use of geothermal is for direct heating and cooling.
29:14If we're taking that geothermal energy and we're using it directly to warm something up,
29:20whether it's our living space or our dairy barn or our beer operation,
29:24we can dramatically improve the efficiency of the system.
29:29And instead of taking 15% of the energy, we could use something more like 85% of the energy.
29:35That's what his team has done at Cornell University.
29:39Instead of traditional air conditioning, they use a passive system that's connected to Cayuga Lake,
29:44where we allow heat to flow from campus to the cold, deep, deep water of Cayuga Lake.
29:52And in doing so, completely bypass the efficiencies that are available with any other type of technology.
30:01So the cooling system that's in place today is probably six to eight times more efficient than the world's second
30:12most efficient cooling system.
30:13And finally, you don't actually need to go to 20 kilometers to access supercritical geothermal.
30:20There's no reason from a point of view of having to produce usable heat to go to 20 kilometers anywhere
30:26in the face of the Earth.
30:28It's too deep.
30:29From a science point of view, yeah, I could view it as, you know, the analog to going to outer
30:34space.
30:35We're going to go to interspace and try to understand the Earth better there.
30:38And we may discover some new things.
30:40But to claim that it's going to produce economic geothermal energy isn't necessary.
30:45But maybe that's not the point.
30:48We're always going to wonder about the world beneath our feet.
30:51So how far can we actually go?
30:53Oh, I don't think there's really any limit.
30:56You know, we could go a lot deeper.
30:58It's just a question of what's the purpose and who's going to fund it.
31:00But it's definitely not a technological limitation.
31:04I'm literally in the hole of a side of a cliff.
31:08Just another stupid thing I'm doing for a YouTube video.
31:13Look at how deep that hole goes.
31:14Like, we owe our longs.
31:16One or two.
31:17You uglyfever, your Spotify, I've lost.
31:17Regular or two.
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