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Dr. Jefferson Tester is the H.P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Professor Tester currently teaches graduate and undergraduate
subjects in thermodynamics and sustainable energy technologies and has won several
teaching awards including the Department's Outstanding Faculty Member Award in
1986, 1987, 1990, 2001, and 2004 and the Institute-wide Graduate Student Council
teaching award in 1990. He has completed a major revision of a core graduate thermodynamics
textbook, Thermodynamics and Its Applications, 3rd edition, co-authored by M.
Modell. In addition, he has recently co-authored a new textbook, Sustainable Energy
– Choosing Among Options, that addresses the multiple attributes and tradeoffs
inherent to evaluating and selecting energy technologies for a wide range of applications
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At
the Venise conference prof. Tester was invited to have a talk on "The Future
of Geothermal Energy as a Sustainable Pathway" in the panel "Energy: Present
and future Sources ".
Recent international focus on the value of increasing
our supply of indigenous, renewable energy underscores the need for re-evaluating
all alternatives, particularly those that are large and well-distributed. To transition
from our current hydrocarbon-based energy system, we will need to expand and diversify
the portfolio of options we currently have. One such option that is often ignored
or undervalued in assessments is geothermal energy from both conventional hydrothermal
and enhanced or engineering geothermal systems (EGS).
A comprehensive assessment
of enhanced or engineered geothermal systems (EGS) was carried out by an MIT-led,
18-member panel assembled to evaluate the potential of geothermal to become a
major primary energy supply for the US. Although geothermal energy is used for
both electric and non-electric applications worldwide from conventional hydrothermal
resources, this study focused on the potential for EGS to provide 100,000 MWe
of base-load electric generating capacity in the US by 2050. The presentation
discussed the three areas important to EGS deployment on a large scale, namely: 1.
Resource - estimating the magnitude and distribution of the US EGS resource
2.
Technology - establishing requirements for extracting and utilizing energy from
EGS reservoirs including drilling, reservoir design and stimulation, and thermal
energy conversion to electricity
3. Economics - projecting costs for EGS supplied
electricity as a function of invested R&D and deployment in evolving energy
markets
Follow the link to download the interview he released to TDF:download
.
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