 It's just gone one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you must be watching Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Pete McInnis-Mark, and every week we bring you science results from the University of Hawaii. You may need the Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, but today my special guest is Nicole Laozi, who is an Associate Researcher in the Water Resources and Research Center at UH, as well as HIGP. So Nicole, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's research in Manila. Thanks, Pete. I believe you've been on here before, so welcome back. Thank you. And today we're going to be talking about geothermal resources in Hawaii, which particularly given Hawaii's plan to be 100% renewable by 2040, I think. 2045. 2045? Mm-hmm. Must be a big deal. So what do we know about geothermal resources in Hawaii? We don't know as much as we should, in my opinion. We only know that there's one proven resource and one existing power-producing geothermal facility on the Big Island of Hawaii, which powers about 20% of the Big Island's electricity needs. Okay. So in general, today we're going to be discussing sort of what some of the potential opportunities are around the state. But before we get into some of the more detailed things, what is geothermal resources? And I think you brought along a first slide, which will give the viewers a little bit of an idea of what we're talking about. So if you can have the first slide. Sure. Here we go. Geothermal energy. Explain to the viewers what we're seeing here, please. So what geothermal means, heat inside the Earth, and we know that as you go deeper into the Earth, it heats up. This is primordial heat from the creation of our solar system. So there's a temperature gradient going down into the Earth and not shown in the dotted line on that bottom left. And what geothermal research does is try to identify places where that gradient is accelerated. So rather than our background gradient on planet Earth, we find hotter, quicker, or more shallowly. And if we can identify where there's shallower heat, we can use that heat to produce energy. And I would guess that the real critical diagram, we've got four illustrations here, but the main one is the bottom left, where the depth in feet shows that for some areas of the Earth, the temperature is increasing rapidly. In Hawaii, we've got volcanoes. Does that make a difference? That's exactly why there is geothermal in Hawaii is because there's heat magma at certain locations in the subsurface of our Earth. And so what we want to do is identify where those hot spots are, and then we can drill into them and extract heat from the surface that can be used to turn turbines through steam. So steam turns turbines, and then we've got electricity for our grid. That electricity is 24-7. It doesn't fluctuate with time and can produce electricity for decades to centuries. And Hawaii isn't the only place on planet Earth where this exists. Presumably places like Iceland or North Island, New Zealand will be comfortable? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, the Philippines, Indonesia, all those places are where there's magmatic sources of geothermal heat in the subsurface, and that heat is being extracted to produce electricity. Replacing fossil fuels. Okay. Yeah. And we've recently heard about geysers in Yellowstone, where we're seeing the effects of this heat from underground coming up the surface. What we're kind of talking about today is more how do you harness this kind of energy? So we're not thinking about geysers like we would see Yellowstone, but we're actually trying to... Well, we would control it, in a sense. We want to control it. Control it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. In a safe way so that we can, man, can use it for electricity, yeah. So the government's strategy of Hawaii becoming energy independent within perhaps 26, 27 years. That must be quite important for you, isn't it? In a sense that geothermal provides an opportunity, a new alternative resource. It's one which, as a homeowner, I haven't thought about. I've got photovoltaic PV on my roof, but this is a new addition to our energy mix. Yeah. So the power supply improvement plan, the PSIP that HECO has put forth, does have some geothermal, increasing geothermal planned over the next 30 years, I believe it is. I would argue that a first step would be to better understand what the potential, geothermal potential in the state is. So I think it was some, in that PSIP there's additional resources or increased megawatts from on the Big Island and some on Maui, but the research that I've been doing suggests that there could be prospective resources on all the islands in the state. So we need to do a little bit more work before. Even though there aren't active volcanoes on Oahu or Kauai, for example, there's still the potential. Yeah. So there's some warm groundwater, even on Kauai, that suggests that there may be residual, well, there is residual heat in the subsurface. We need to do more testing to know whether there's enough heat to produce a resource. I'm really intrigued about this potential energy resource. I think as we go through the next slide or two, we'll actually learn more about why it might be economically viable as well as sort of scientifically interesting. So if we could have the next slide, please. All right. So explain again, we're seeing the Hawaiian islands on the top right and something that looks like the East River, so the Kilauea. Lead us through this slide, please, Nicole. Yeah, that's correct. So the map that shows the islands in the top right shows the results of a publication in 1985 that was the results of the last statewide assessment up until the last few years where my group has been working on an updated statewide assessment to that shown in the top right. And so those areas where you can see the pinkish colors or reddish colors are where that resource assessment found a possibility for subsurface resource. I think oftentimes people think because Hawaii is a volcanic state, you could tap into a geothermal resource anywhere. So drill down and anywhere we'll find that accelerated temperature gradient. But in fact, that's not true. We need to find where their subsurface magma, so where magma was stored in the subsurface that will cool over a long time period and that residual heat is what we'd be looking for. And how that works, the reason there's the image that shows Kilauea's caldera is because Kilauea is the active volcano on the big island. We know that magma comes up from deep in the mantle below the caldera. So you see Kilauea caldera with a summit magma reservoir there. Today that magma is erupting on the surface of the caldera. And then we know that the magma shoots out shallowly. So some kilometers below the surface of the earth along a rift zone. And so very logical places for us to look for a geothermal resource on some of the older volcanoes is where there was the caldera and along those rift zones. All right, so looking, say, at East Maui, Haleakala volcano, the pink areas seem to mimic where the rift zones appear to be. Exactly, yeah. So rather than exploring in central Maui, for example, your geological knowledge would suggest that, well, this is a good place to go back to where the rift zones were, even if we haven't had eruptions in historic times, there might be enough residual heat. That's correct. And you mentioned hot water. Is that a telltale indicator that maybe there's some warm vox underground? It's a pretty good indicator. So if our water wells, so wells that are drilled into the ground for drinking water, are warm, we know that the only thing that can be making them warm is heat in the subsurface. And volcanic heat, obviously. Volcanic heat with some minor exceptions, I should say. We have to ask, why are we interested in geothermal as we try to become energy independent? And this slide actually answers the question, right? Right. So geothermal is the often forgotten renewable energy. It's the one that's probably least mentioned of wind, solar and hydro even. But I mean, in my opinion, geothermal is an excellent renewable energy that's a step above some of the others for the reasons that we can discuss. And yes, it's firm. So that means it doesn't fluctuate with the time of day, with how windy it is, or with tides. It's constant. And how does this amount of energy compare to what a person would get if she has PV on her roof? Much more energy. Well, it depends on the temperature of the resource. But I mean, typically for it to be economical to develop the geothermal power, then it would provide large amounts of electricity. Okay. And the next slide, I think, will show us a little bit about how geothermal compares. Here, we've got an interesting plot, okay? For the viewers, I think the horizontal axis is dollars per megawatt hour. All right. So that's a unit of heat production. Right. And tell us a little bit. We've got perhaps the four main renewable energy sources apart from, well, nuclear isn't really renewable, is it? So let's just compare these ones. So what does this diagram show us? Well, so this shows the cost that a consumer would pay for the renewable energy itself. Yeah, per energy output or megawatt hour. And so geothermal, levelized geothermal is the least expensive. So levelized means an absence of subsidies. So solar is actually quite, if you take away the government subsidies that solar has been receiving over the years, then geothermal is actually a lower cost form of renewable energy than solar. And back to the being constant or firm, that means that we don't need to consider storage or batteries. So now the discussion for solar has often become solar plus batteries, but the lifetime of the batteries is questionable right now or how much energy the battery can store. So we can ignore that discussion for geothermal energy. And I think that the vertical red bars just give us some of the variability, right? Right. So as you were saying earlier, geothermal is almost constant. It's almost constant. Whereas... The cost is stable. Even in the islands where it's windy quite a lot, the large variation in the wind cast or even in solar PV, I guess you can't rely on it, right? I think you can rely on it to a degree. So I wouldn't want to criticize the other renewables, but geothermal does have the advantage that it's constant. Yes, if wind went away, we'd have no renewable wind energy. But wind's probably not going to go away. So it's reliable to the extent that we can count on the fact that there will be wind. And is this full-custor counting? You mentioned the cost of batteries in a solar farm, for example. There must be other maintenance costs, both for geothermal, like if it's got volcanic fluids running through it, you need to replace the pipes. Or if it's wind, the turbines would break once in a while presumably. This, as far as you can tell, is the actual... Yeah, I think those costs are built into this plot. So this is what the consumer pays after a power purchase agreement is enacted with the utility. And which are the ones which are easiest to implement? Because I can put a solar panel on my roof. Is that easier to deal with as opposed to building a new geothermal plant? Yes. Certainly it's simpler to establish a solar system than it is geothermal. So that's one reason why geothermal struggles, which is our next slide. Is that right? Okay, let's just go on to the next slide, I think. So the R&D, the research and development... Okay, not that slide. Let's skip to one more, I think. We can come back to that one, maybe. Yeah, here we go. So yeah. So the upfront costs for development of a geothermal facility are high. Okay. That levels over time, right? But so the exploration phase for geothermal, in terms of doing the type of work that my group has been doing, which would move into naturally a test well. So actually drilling a small diameter test well in the ground costs millions of dollars. And if once you drill that well, you don't find heat, you would bend in that work, right? Right. So solar, there's less risk because you buy your PV panel, you put it on your roof, you know you're going to get something out of it. All right. So the return on the investment is a lot longer coming for geothermal compared to solar. I would imagine wind and hydro is somewhere in between. Probably. Probably. Yeah. But the end use that the low risk stable price for geothermal presumably is quite an important attribute as opposed to some of the high risk for the energies which we're currently involving. Correct. Yeah. Great. Well, I think we're getting near the time for the break. Okay. So let me just remind the viewers. You are watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I'm your host Pete McGinnis-Mark and my guest today is Dr. Nicole Laozi, who's an associate researcher at the Water Resources Research Center and HIVP at UH Manoa. And when we come back, hopefully we'll hear a bit more about geothermal resources in Hawaii. So see you then. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to come visit with us on cannabis chronicles, a 10,000 year odyssey where we explore and examine the plant that the muse has given us. And stay with us as we explore all of the facets of this planet on Wednesdays at noon. Please join us, Aloha. To think tech Hawaii's research in Manoa. I'm your host Pete McGinnis-Mark and my guest today is Dr. Nicole Laozi, who is an associate researcher at the Water Resources Research Center and HIVP at UH Manoa. So Nicole, you're in an organization which I'm surprised is focusing on renewable energy. So can you just tell us a little bit about your background? How did you get here? And if there's a high school student watching today, she wants to follow in your footsteps. What's your history? Good timing on the question. I just gave a talk to high schoolers about my STEM journey, which led me to think back about how I did get here. And STEM is? Science, technology. Engineering and math. Good, okay. In high school, I knew I liked science and I liked the outdoors and I wanted to help the environment. It was that simple. And I started out as a biochemistry engineering at UCLA, where I did my undergraduate because I had been told a story about how a biochemist cleaned a polluted lake by adding some chemicals to it. And I thought I could do something like that. And I really liked chemistry. At UCLA, I found the geology major and that was a very good fit for me because we were outside a lot and we were studying rocks and mountains and volcanoes. Yeah, I loved it. And then I decided to pursue a PhD at UH Manoa where I studied active volcanoes and that was thrilling and fun work. And sort of from there, I did some postdocs in other countries, which led me back to Hawaii where my research now is taking on this more applied work, where I look at groundwater and the renewable energies and I really like that I'm finally back where I'm kind of tangibly working on problems that would improve our environment. And so in your doctoral research, you were studying volcanoes. Did that give you any insight into geothermal resources? Yeah, so I understand the construction process and the eruption process of volcanoes, which when it comes to trying to understand what's happening in the subsurface of the earth to identify where geothermal resource or our groundwater resources might exist or how they work, then that work is really helpful. And the research center itself, we've had Neil Grozba on recently and he's doing geophysics to try and understand groundwater resources. I would imagine there's quite an overlap between his work and what you're trying to do. Absolutely. Yeah, so his work, the geophysics can provide a picture of subsurface structures that would influence where the water is stored or how the groundwater flows. And yeah, that's clear overlap with the work that I've been doing. Okay. And the Water Resources Research Center, what does that do apart from? The mission of water resources is to work on problems of important to the state of Hawaii in the Pacific. And I think it's as broad as that. So really we're trying to understand groundwater flow in different areas of the state. We put in a proposal to do some work on Samoa and trying to help regulators maintain a sustainable groundwater supply into their future and deal with issues like climate change or contamination and that type of. And there must be a wonderful overlap between the kind of work that your center does as well as the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, which is trying to help the state become more energy independent as well. Right. So UH has this range of expertise where you've all got different skill sets and you're tackling basically the same problem, but from different perspectives. Yeah, and really a big picture is required to try and piece it together because for Hawaii, for example, to read its 20, 40, 500 percent renewable energy goal, it's going to take a mix of renewables. So it's not, I don't think geothermal is the answer by itself. Solar is not the answer by itself. It needs to be integrated. Where would you place Hawaii? And we don't have that much time to wait 27 years from now. We've got to be 100 percent renewable. Are we on course, at least within geothermal or is this, are we playing? Not within geothermal, I would argue. Not within geothermal. We need to have the ante for geothermal, but there was a recent study that showed that we're doing well. Okay. It was published in general. In general, yeah. Okay, and I think there are other factors which you've been considering in your work. The slide which we initially showed, if we could just go back to that one, I think it's important for the general public to recognize that geothermal actually is cost-effective in terms of land as well. That the previous one that we would like to see, I think, please. There we go. And so what's the point here, Nicole? We're looking at colored squares, which... Yeah, so the yellow is showing the acreage used by a solar facility. This is in Nevada as compared to the acreage used by a geothermal facility. And note that because geothermal is baseload or provides energy 24-7, there's more energy output from that geothermal plant, which uses really a fraction of the land area that the solar plant uses. Okay, so we're looking at an airplane or a satellite view of some real estate and the size of the squares. The green is producing as much energy from geothermal as... More, 710,000 megawatts per year from the geothermal power plant as compared to under 60,000. So that's a factor of what? Do you have math for me? About 12. 12. So 12 times more energy from geothermal than from solar? At a tenth of the land use. Exactly. So what would we need to do if, say, we were to decide, and I doubt we would, but if we didn't have geothermal but wanted to go entirely with photovoltaic and wind, how much of the islands would actually be covered in this kind of? I haven't done that study, but a lot, right? We need to use a lot of land and we'd need to entertain batteries because neither wind nor solar sustain whatever, firm power. And so, you know, what if the sun doesn't shine for a couple weeks? I think that the state would be in big trouble. Quite recently, I'm noticing with my solar panels, I'm hardly generating any power at all. So the reserve, in absence of geothermal, the emergency reserve would need to be fossil fuels. I think that, I mean. Do you have any idea of the relative cost of the plants which we have here to produce, say, a geothermal plant? Are we talking about, say, in order of magnitude more money or twice as much for the same amount of power? Yeah, I don't have that number, but typically the developer bears the cost. Bears the cost of developing the facility, the infrastructure, and then they sign a power purchase agreement with the utility so that they're paid back over time. Okay, and I presume because it's a more complicated infrastructure, the upfront costs in total dollars is much more than to put a PV farm in place. Certainly, yeah. Yeah, you're sort of, hopefully, looking decades into the future, right? Yeah, I mean the Pune geothermal venture has been operational since the 80s and is still going strong and expanding, and yeah. So the developer has made up the cost of putting that facility in over the decades that it's been operational by selling the energy to the consumer at a lower price than fossil fuels. All right, so clearly geothermal would be a great resource where the rift zones exist around the islands, and I think in some of your other studies in the next, if we skip one slide and go on to the next one, I think you've actually started to investigate what the potential is here. We're trying to figure out how to find geothermal resources. Yeah, so the exploration phase is key and drilling wells is costly and it impacts the environment in a minor way, but it does. So we do everything short of drilling first to try and identify where we have the highest probability of identifying a resource through drilling, ultimately. And so the work that we did, we sort of have a geothermal resource. We need the intersection of these three qualities. So subsurface heat, subsurface fluid because the fluid will transport that heat to the surface, whether it be through steam or through water, and then permeability so that as the water or the steam comes out, more can go in so that it's a kind of a loop. And these are the data sets that we identified and their relative importance, those numbers in parentheses. So looking for the heat, looking for fluids, or looking at the permeability, the ability of the rock to transport water underground. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. And so quite a few of them seem to be of comparable importance. There's some acronyms there we don't need to worry about, but in your own research, are you trying to apply all of these techniques or? Yes. Yeah. Okay. I mean, so this is in phase one of the study, we used existing data. So no new data collected, but just to identify existing data sets that we could put into an algorithm to try and come up with resource probability. And so these are the data sets that we used. All right. So you've actually had some kind of preliminary project to do a statewide assessment. Who was funding that? The U.S. Department of Energy funded that. Okay. So rather than talking just about the geology, you're going to DOE to actually try and develop some of these ideas. And I think that the next slide would show us, if we can go to the last slide, this is basically state of Hawaii, what do the colors mean? The colors, the warmer colors are greater probability of subsurface resource obtained through compiling all of that data on the former slide into an algorithm. So where we see the pinks, we have the highest resource probability. There's a star sort of on the east point of the big island where Pune geothermal venture is. That's the PGV. And so those pinks outline the rift zones of the two active volcanoes, but we're actually quite interested even on the older islands, where we see the yellows and the green. I think the takeaway is that there's some colors even on the other island. Right. But unfortunately Nicole, we're running out of time. So thank you very much for being on the show today. Let me just remind our viewers. You have been watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I've been your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today has been Nicole Laozi, who is an associate researcher at the Water Resources Research Center and HIGP at UH Manoa. So please join us again next week at one o'clock when we have another university guest. And so until then, goodbye for now.