The development of America’s geothermal resources has picked up steam, one could say, after the US Interior Department approved a project in Utah that could generate up to 2 gigawatts of electricity.
Houston-based Fervo Energy received department approval in October for their Beaver County project that is set to start generating energy for clients in 2026.
Wells will be drilled across 631 acres of an area called the Cape, 158 acres of which are public lands.
Fervo said in September that flow rates from the Cape project’s first well test show it has the potential to be the “most productive enhanced geothermal system in history.”
The test demonstrated a single well flow rate of steam sufficient for the generation of 10 megawatts of clean energy, triple what earlier estimates had suggested.
Tim Latimer, Fervo CEO and co-founder, says the company “continues to achieve technical milestones for geothermal development that experts predicted to be set decades from now.”
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If the reader is opposed to fossil fuel extraction, then the Cape Project seems a little like poachers being hired to guard elephants, as Fervo has achieved these testing and approval milestones with fossil fuel workers accounting for over 90% of on-site labor.
This is because the Cape Project has used many of the same methods of drilling and steam injection collectively referred to as “fracking” only instead of trying to push more oil out of the ground, the water is injected into hot rocks so it turns into the steam used to generate clean energy.
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Fervo hasn’t released cost estimates for the project, and says the power generation will grow in phases, with the total potential to reach 2 gigawatts. If so, Engineering News Record reports that it would tie the national record for geothermal power generation, set in 1987 at a northern California power plant called The Geysers.
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