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Thanks. In principle I am wholeheartedly in support for geothermal as a renewable energy source, especially compared to fossil fuels. I think these kinds of dev

Thanks. In principle I am wholeheartedly in support for geothermal as a renewable energy source, especially compared to fossil fuels. I think these kinds of developments to expand the potential for geothermal resources are super important. I guess I just would like to understand some of the externalities to this particular methodology. Especially since many of the parallels to oil and gas fracking are present, and the environmental track record there is poor.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> I just would like to understand some of the externalities to this particular methodology I would too. Their white paper devotes an entire section to induced seismicity. There is less attention paid to steady-state water requirements. (Given it's just water and brine, and assuming natural prop pants, the threat to the water table seems de minimus, barring something nasty dissolving out of the rocks.)
beerandt 3y ago
It's not parallels to fracking, it is fracking. Except twice as many wells, and less isolated geology. Also, benefits of fracking is the generation of heat and positive pressure from the chemical reactions. If they aren't netting the geothermal gains against the embedded energy in the injection chemicals, all we're seeing is energy accounting tricks, not a technical breakthrough.
AdamN 3y ago
My reading of the comment above is that Geothermal uses the same chemical/physical process to fracture the rock and has to dispose of those chemicals afterwards (or leave them in place). Fossil fuel fracking needs a continuous supply of the chemicals and a continuous problem of finding a reservoir for the used chemicals so the impact is much, much higher.