Geothermal potential of Caribbean
There is a whole lot of Geothermal potential in the Caribbean, as those of us who have seen the fireworks from Montserrat’s volcano know all too well. This is sort of like a love/hate relationship. We Love the heat from the volcano which gives us super heated liquid and/or steam for Geothermal power. But we Hate the mess that the live volcano causes on small islands. Right now, Montserrat’s volcano is being temperamental, not shutting down and becoming dormant as we all had hoped would happen YEARS ago. So being a volcano island is a good thing — IF the resident volcano minds her manners and remains dormant.
As the fireworks went off to celebrate the Independence holiday, google’s search engine was aiding in research, using the surname Huttrer + Geothermal. Independence Day seems like appropriate timing since 39 countries could rely on geothermal for 100% power for their citizen’s needs. Changing over from diesel generators to “in country” produced power would certainly be like declaring Independence from Oil Day. Imagine the 39 Independence Day celebrations (the 39 is from the list of 39 countries that could get 100% of their power from geothermal.) Dr. Gerry Huttrer, graduate of Washington State University, name appears on many Geothermal related articles and he seems to be an authority about the Geothermal potential of the Caribbean region. His name appears on the source document most often cited by politicians from Nevis when speaking of the Geothermal potential MW of Nevis. [The link in the article below turned out to be a dead link, this happens often. After much searching I found the original paper that is usually used as the bench mark reference about the Caribbean's Geothermal potential: www.bl-a.com/ECB/PDFFiles/GeoResLAC.pdf Even with a high speed internet connect this document is slow to download. Also you may need to update your copy of Adobe Acrobat before you can complete the download. This article should have been in the DOE database, but it was not. The study was funded by the US DOE.]
Huttrer (3) ranks the islands, in order of development potential, as follows:
1. Guadeloupe
2. St. Lucia
3. Dominica
4. St. Vincent
5. Nevis
6. Saba
7. St. Kitts
8. Grenada
9. Martinique
10. Montserrat
11. Statia
The Huttrer + Geothermal google search illustrates that by changing one word in a search variable is like looking at an old problem in a new way. New documents appeared, or perhaps moved ahead to the first 15 pages of the google search. What is interesting is that perhaps because of Montserrat’s very active volcano — Montserrat’s status as a potential Geothermal nations seems to be overlooked. There are several maps where the island of Montserrat is shown but not named, between Nevis and Antigua, Guadeloupe to the south. Could it be that Montserrat has not joined any of the International Geothermal organizations?
Invest in Geothermal???
“Green Investing” is a relatively new investment strategy and there are a few websites offering Geothermal investment information like Green Chips Review. Using the search string: “Investing in Geothermal”, resulted in 721,000 hits in under a minute. Using oil to generate power on small islands was relatively easy, the oil tankers deliver and the diesel generators produce electrical power. Except now the cost of oil has become a huge burden to small developing island nations — the same islands that could be producing their own power from the “hot rocks under their feet”. The problem with investing in any emerging technology is that it takes time to understand the new game and to know the players.
There will be “snake oil” sellers among the ethical companies and development deals. Humans appear to need a crisis to get them to change their ways and look for alternatives. The ever increasing price per barrel of oil means steeply increasing electric power bills. For many Caribbean countries, their major industry is tourism. If the costs to visit a tropical island far exceeds what most people are willing to pay during major economic downturns, then the island’s economy will suffer. “Caribbean states fight to ride out economic storm“, was one of the similar headlines across the Caribbean region. The increasing cost of a barrel of oil is harmful to island Nations in the short term, but in the long term the price of oil will push Nations to look for alternatives, which also happen to be better for the environment.
Investing in Geothermal (2) is available from the IGA.
# The International Geothermal Association (IGA), founded in 1988, is a scientific, educational and cultural organization established to operate worldwide. It has more than 2000 members in 65 countries. The IGA is a non-political, non-profit, non-governmental organization in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, and Partner of the European Union for the Campaign for Take Off (CTO) the Renewable Energy. IGA is now affiliated to the Renewable Energy Alliance (IREA)
# OBJECTIVE: to encourage research, development and utilization of geothermal resources worldwide through the compilation, publication and dissemination of scientific and technical data and information, both within the community of geothermal specialists and between geothermal specialists and the general public.
Oops it looks like the IGA neglected to list the Eastern Caribbean Geothermal Conference just recently concluded on Nevis. Reporting from this conference was sparce, going by the newsreports apparently only politicians from Nevis and St. Kitts has anything of note to say about Geothermal. However, the agenda of the conference listed several sessions that will hopefully produce some useful technical and overview papers.
Sources
(1) http://www.bl-a.com/ECB/GreenGreen/123100.htm#Pipeline
(2) http://www.iea.org/dbtw-wpd/textbase/nppdf/free/2000/weo2002.pdf
(3) http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/sids/2008_roundtable/presentation/energy_joseph.pdf
Edited to add the link to the 1999 DOE database on Caribbean Geothermal potential.
