It's seriously maddening the amount of denial of OBVIOUS reasons these people do. I genuinely cannot imagine being that deluded unless I never thought logically about the topic and never even once Googled about it
@@prosandcons-fl2ccGranted it gets real messy, especially some farm subsidies. They essentially hot glue and zip tie the mess that is Modern Capitalism into something that can *kind of* work. The Ideal solution would be switching to some alternative system that thrives off of Abundance, rather than one that thrives off artificial scarcity and such, but WAY easier said than done. In the mean time getting rid of the ones that only help the industrialists/lobbying groups, and tuning them to match the needs of people can probably be done.
Honestly, it's one of those facts that I catch myself doubting because it's so obvious that I feel if most people haven't noticed or are unconvinced by it I must be wrong somehow. Heating subsidies are right there on our bills. They're advertised on the radio. I literally sign off on my tenant's heating assistance for the eldery. Around here, that means the assisted are getting subsidized gas.
I live in a town that was built by coal mines. There is a lake across from my house that has a drain pipe supposedly connected to one of the shafts. The water that comes out of it is like bathtub water, and no matter how far the temperature drops that part of the lake does not freeze. One day I hope my town would consider installing district heating from the mines. I'm sure it will bring a lot of pride to families who have parents and grandparents that worked in the pit. knowing that they're still heating our homes today. Update : I did some digging ( no pun intended) and found out that some buildings are actually using this system already. Our sports center and our assisted living facility is heated from our mines! I don't know why this isn't common knowledge.
Maybe _you_ could be the one to bring it up with your local mayor/council! Somebody's got to be the first one, so why not chuck them an email with the suggestion? It can't hurt to try, and might kickstart something amazing ❤
Mine drainage usually isn't a good thing. We have a mine dewatering tunnel built here in the 1800's called The Jeddo Tunnel. It's more or less an environmental nightmare although it's been going on for like 150 years and we are used to it. Not to mention we are above it, so it's more of a problem for those who live downstream lol
The heat conductivity of the soil is very, very low. After some years the water will become cooler. Why not skipping the green woke nonsense and use gas, oil or coal?
That Pride Factor is what you sell it with. Don't go with how much can be saved or the likes, as much as we think people in government should care about spending they really don't. They do care about their own reputations, and any politician that can claim to have 'brought back some mining jobs' will have an easier time for re-election. Thus, if you want a Politician to do anything, you have to convince them that people will be proud, and thus... vote for the person who brought that pride.
@@holgernarrog Why did you not mention Nuclear? The three sources you name are all... greatly limited. If you are worried health concerns, don't look at Coal deaths per year.
I think the thing to realize about these closed-loop geothermal systems is that their benefits are hard to quantify monetarily. They provide low-carbon power, but not intermittently like Wind and Solar. But unlike Wind and Solar, they have very small surface footprints, meaning we're not dedicating large tracts of land to wind and solar farms. More importantly, they provide baseload power without the need for uranium mining or the associated regulatory system required to keep a nuclear power plant safe (because the greatest threat of a nuclear power plant isn't the tech, it's human stupidity). So we have a tech that 1) provides consistent power; 2) is low-carbon; 3) requires no destructive mining, expensive maintenance, or disposal of dangerous fuels; and 4) takes up very little space (much smaller than a nuke plant and vastly smaller than wind and solar farms). So while yes, it's monetarily expensive, we are paying up front for the benefits.
And there's the challenge with everything that would actually make life better for the majority. We really need a massive investment in stuff like this as well as environmental restoration, regenerative agriculture, water management etc. for a payoff that's going to take years. Not something those in power seem keen on. I hope that changes soon because the price of recovering as the damage gets worse is only going to get higher.
I think you nailed it. When discussing wind and solar, people often forget the land-use issue. (The intermittently issue is bad, but from an environmentalist perspective, land-use is also quite important) The point about human stupidity is correct, it would literally defy the laws of physics for any reactor operating today to go the way of Chernobyl since none follow its stupid design, nor does anyone follow their stupid operating principles. EDIT: I forgot to mention that Russia still uses 6 PowerPoint with RBMK reactors (the type used at Chernobyl) but they were heavily modified after the accident. Russia is the only country in the world which still operates RBMKs and the vast majority of their reactors are not RBMKs. Only nitpick - and I preface this by saying I can't compare the size of a geothermal plant to a nuclear one for the same amount of power - but nuclear plants can safely and cheaply be made *much* smaller than they currently are.
Implementation, allow tax credits or long amortized write downs over a long period, that will spur larger up front capital expense and a stable investment income.
@@jeffbenton6183I’m sorry but there really isn’t a land use issue. Wind and Solar power both can be generated on land that is already used otherwise and can continue to be used like that. For example most solar panels are either in top of building, animal pens, highways or sometimes even on top of acres. There’s a similar thing with wind farms, because the turbines can’t be placed too close together anyways or they just wouldn’t really work, they are always placed on acres or on large stretches of off-shore farms. But all in all both kinds of farms barely make any land unusable
Are any Tories really saying that? Looks like the govt is actually trying a bit in this case... I can't imagine ever voting Tory in my life, but let's not drive division if it doesn't exist.
TL;DR It can be done wrong; you also can _and need_ to do it right. Honestly district heating can lead to suboptimal results. I live in Russia and I have such a heating which isn’t in any way tweakable so I need to open windows in the winter and especially at the end of spring, it gets so unbearable and I ended up even needing a skin cream for my hands. I’m sure it _can_ be done okay, with people being able to change their personal heat output and also pay less when they do so, but I see it can also be done in a way which is hard to remake into such a thing. A pain. So I see why some people can get reluctant aside from silly communism horror storries (I mean Russia is a kind of hell to be in, in many small details and many large details too, but right now and for like two decades it’s not due to communism at all).
I guess it was pushed in communist countries, we also have a district heating network in Budapest, Hungary (formerly eastern bloc USSR puppet state, nowadays Putin's puppet state). But so does Vienna, Austria, which was never forced into communism, and Denmark. I guess it just makes sense. In other words, communism "causes" district heating, but district heating "doesn't cause" communism.
Engineer here, the problem is heat "quality", that is how hot the water actually is and the temperature differential with respect to what youre trying to heat. If the water isnt very hot, and if its very close to room temperature, then you need to pump a very large amount of it to get any significant amount of heating. District heating traditionally uses water near waters boiling temperature for this reason, it has to be hot to be efficient. Early systems used steam. A cursory look into some papers appears to me that these open loop coal mine GSHP's may not even outperform air to air heat pumps coefficient of performance, or at least uts close to it. If it isnt really more energy efficient in the first place, why not just use an air to air heat pump rather than faffing around in old coal mines? Especially considering this doesnt require huge changes to jnfrastructure (time and money).
Good question, that's assuming we're still working with older 1st and 2nd generation DHNs where you need those much higher temperatures. But if we have modern 5th gen heat networks, then it becomes much more possible to rely on minewater heat as your GSHPs don't need to raise the temperature that much. The issue with slapping a bunch of ASHPs on every building is that you'd have the same issue with much greater electricity demand and then you're just kicking the can down the road to the generation source in terms of your emissions tail.
Love the video and all, but, as an American, I can't help but be amazed by the thought that 75%+ of local authorities' budgets are spent on elderly care. In the US, its rare to find a city that isn't spending more than 50% of its budget toward the police... This is nothing to say of climate change or moving towards renewable energies, but just a tangential observation that I hadn't thought about in a while.
@@guystrong7218 I don't understand what you mean. The police budgets are determined by cities, no? If not, then what's setting the budgets? At least in California, as far as I'm aware, its up to individual cities to set their police spending.
Police & Fire are paid for on a regional basis in the UK. It's paid for by your local council rates. Every year you get a statement saying how much has been spent on what. Sheffield City Council near me also has a district heating system which comes from the local waste incinerator.
I think I read one of the problems with an open-system for geothermal is, that these waters often contain a hecking ton of salts and chemicals that can be quite dangerous to equipment, like pipes, pumps etc. So you would have to develop stuff that could withstand these conditions, so it would be better keep a system closed that does not draw in all these chemicals, yet drilling such tubes all the way 5 kilometers into the ground probably risks them being damaged be any kind of underground movement.
Yep, you need to put that water back down there if you don't want the creek or wherever you dump it into to be absolutely lifeless due to the high salinity. The good news about that salinity is that one of the salts is lithium chloride, so it's currently being explored as a lithium mining method in combination with geothermal power in order to produce carbon-neutral battery-grade lithium.
@@hammerth1421 Right, I heard they want to try out such a powerstation / factory setting in Germany in an attempt to get more lithium themselves. Let's just hope they don't drill too deep and cause any earthquakes like it happened in Switzerland a few years ago...or drill even deeper and wake up a Ballrog.
YES, IN FLORIDA IN THE 70'S WE USED OPEN SYSTEM TO COOL AND HEAT A HOUSE, BUT, PUMP FAILERS CAUSED OIL TO LEAK INTO THE WATER SUPPLY SO THEY OUTLAWED OPEN SYSTEMS IN FLORIDA
Fear of nuclear power the way the weasels complain about it is irrational and borne out of ignorance and ideology. Mind you, there are things to be afraid of with nuclear but most of those are hardly mentioned even by those foaming about it. Most of the antinuclear environmentalist groups were kickstarted by oil interests' money quite directly.
Super interesting, I genuinely didn't know the intricacies of geothermal heating networks - seems like a good idea. Also absolutely loving The Simpsons references.
This is excellent, engaging, informative, fact based *and* hopeful? That's not everyday, and it seems i really need to subscribe to that soup emporium guy as well, awesome collaboration.
15:05 THIS. Even if it’s not “the best”, it would keep voters happy. The person going “No we’re shutting down your jobs, vote for us!” Vs “Vote for me and you will still have a job in the future to come!”. I’d also like to see a LCA of all the materials used. A whole lot less e-waste to deal with that Mass-PV Scaling. Granted *Citation Needed* and use of superalloy tubes etc might muddy the water, but yeah. Also storage has to be taken into account.
Nice! In Sweden we've decarbonised heating since the 90s, heat pumps (ground and air) and district heating instead of local burning of fuel. Biggest source of heat in district heating is reused heat (heat that would otherwise be lost). There's a lot of low hanging fruit in district heating. :) But then, you should also watch how much energy housing uses.. Swedens energy use per square meter is one of the lowest in Europe even though we have a lot more winter here.
I want to thank you. You're giving me hope and positivity on climate change without hiding the truth. I didn't think it was possible and it has fone so much good to my mental state. So again : thank you.
If you consider the cost of geothermal heat as % of GDP of a nation. You are going to find that the cost is really, really low. But something ,something rich people and big coal companies and so on.
My liberal council owns 100% of a district heat network that works by burning waste (Theoretically. They actually never linked). The issue is not the council's expertise, since they simply contract companies to build and run this, the issue is the lack of regulation. They are more expensive and keep increasing price, and we get half a dozen outages per year with no compensation. They are not regulated like electricity and gas providers, and we are held hostage by a contract that says we can't have another provider. They need to fix this before district heating networks can be successful in the UK.
Monopolies are always unforced errors and self-imposed pain. Ridiculous. Corruption at its finest. No doubt that company paid a pretty penny or greased many palms of your local council to get to be the sole primary provider of your area. It's how it works....
Three questions: What is the geological impact of running water through the mines for sustained periods of time? How will we efficiently deal with the deposition of minerals in pipes picked up from the walls of mines? And how will a system like this be redundant or capable of providing heating/cooling in the event of pipeline or pump failure?
One thing about these coalbeds is they also leak methane, and whilst it hasn't been commercially feasible to capture and utilise most of that methane historically (around 1% of coalved methane in the UK is probably at commercial viability) it absolutely does make sense to capture and use it on site if you already have a powerplant or district heating system in place. That could extend the operational capability, or add flexibility to power output to handle variability/frequency response if we're talking electricity instead of district heating.
I live near The Geysers complex in California and kept waiting for it to come up lol But I can see why our unique geology isn't the most relevant example for everything the video is exploring
Great post, extremely well done. Nitpicking, now: coal is technically only the 3rd worst fossil fuel. Methane leaks so much that in the short run (88 times more GHE-intensive than CO2) depending on overall fugitive emissions fossil methane is at least 50% worse than coal, and with fossil methane pushing biomethane and landfill methane off the market, it's a lose-lose. Now, you may say coal mining releases a lot of methane, so that it's all a wash. Except coal mining is largely only economically possible because of (leaky) methane recovery. So coal is a feedback of methane, economically. Then there's bitumen. Bitumen recovery is so energy-intensive that a barrel of syncrude from bitumen takes between 1.4 and five barrels of bitumen burned on site. Plus about 3% of its energy content worth of electric energy. So even though oil is slightly less GHE-intensive than coal when burned, overall bitumen is worse. Splitting coal into thermal and metallurgical categories, we see that, like some methane is diverted from burning to make plastics and other industrial chemicals (notably, fertilizer), the slag factor of metallurgical coal reduces overall emissions some 43% from forming cementitious materials, reducing overall average emissions of cement making for OPC. So until you get rid of OPC in cement (which would be great, and is very feasible with geopolymers), coal gets the Bronze, bitumen Silver, fossil methane Gold. Did I mention methane-sourced nitrate fertilizer from methane destroys some soil microbes and leads to NOx emissions in agriculture? Turns out NOx are also GHGs.. another lose-lose of fossil methane. But great geothermal essay. Thanks!
@@d.thomas6988 Not only when burned. When disturbed in the ground, too. "Now, you may say coal mining releases a lot of methane, so that it's all a wash. Except coal mining is largely only economically possible because of (leaky) methane recovery. So coal is a feedback of methane, economically. " Methane's worse, but then in a four horse race (five if you split coal into thermal and metallurgical), and all of them too much for the environment to absorb before the climate crises get significantly worse, may I point out I started by saying it was a nitpick. We need solutions like enhanced geothermal, not nitpicks like mine.
In the US the areas with high geothermal potential are already experiencing severe problems with water availability. Fracking, for whatever reason, uses a lot of water. So water availability for drilling and circulation and steam production is going to be a big hurdle to overcome
Water that is devoted to geothermal could be reused, at least in a closed system if I understood this correctly, ... ( my friends have a closed system with the special fluid which is of course reused again and again) unlike, say, energy generation to heat your shower water from the big dams, which is down due to lack of free water from the sky....ALTHOUGH there are some crazy dam designs which pump the water back up and use it again that I did see - maybe not dooable for Hoover Dam but other places? Also, there is this flat tailed rodent that is improving groundwater retention in some desert conditions, not so much Hoover Dam but Beaver Dam...
@@holgernarrog Whatever the uses, I don't see how we can go on without massive investment in desalination plants. There simply isn't enough groundwater, runoff and rain to supply projected growth
@@tonydagostino6158 Well, according to NASA 1/4 of the solar irradiation or 1/2 of the solar radiation that hits the earth surface is dissipated by water evaporation back to the higher atmosphere. Till now technology cannot compete with this quantities. But most of the rain falls on oceans or is flowing in rivers to oceans without being used by our society. The technology of desalination is improving rapidly. With 50 nukes for 150bn $ (costs in China) total investment perhaps 300 bn$ used for desalination you can make large parts of the Sahara green and feed > a billion poeple. Thus I do not see the limits of desalination for our society. Important is... - To get rid of green amageddon dogma as "climate change". - To get the costs of nuclear down close to the chinese costs by making a cost - benefit evaluation of the nuclear regulation (regulation, certification requirements, test requirements, documentation requirements).
Most of the water problems were caused by reckless growth of farming districts and suburban expansion. As said in a comment before a closed system is largely self-reliant when it comes to water use.
Same goes for switzerland. We move on average every three years and almost all of our apartments where heated by the city’s central trash burning generator. Yes you are physically burning trash which doesn’t seem very green but it gets burned very efficiently, barely leaving anything behind. The heat is used to power turbines, the smoke gets carefully cleaned of all particles that then can get buried without the negative consequences landfills have for the environment. No microplastic btw!
Gas boilers may be 30kW but they are rather oversized for central heating (although less unreasonably sized for domestic hot water production). 5kW/house or so might be a better estimate of heating demand, leading to a heating demand of 18MW/km^2, so things are still good to go. One key issue is that the coal mine water will require a heat pump *somewhere* centralised or distributed. Even with a SCOP of 6 there is linkage between the cost of electricity and heat. I'm hoping for a future where heat is decoupled from electricity, so we don't have to upgrade houses (kerching), insulate many heat network pipes (kerching) or upgrade the electrical grid (kerching). If only we had low cost low carbon form of baseload power.
Distributed heating systems has some problems, we are building a lot in the netherlands. - Monopoly there is only 1 provider so price is releative high - Contruction/refurbish opening the road and install the system in each house is not cheap While this will be a go to as a solution problem is that heating will be more expensive then using gas for a long time so its not really appreaciated by the public at the moment.
Studying environmental and natural resource economics modules at the univeristy of Bath (courseworks due in 4 days, and degree is done in 3 weeks!) And this channel has been fascinating to watch alongside my studies wrapping up. Its deeply encouraging how many ways the issue of sustainable resource production/consumption is interescted by different feilds that can all work together.
The cost of electricity from provider like PG&E only represents 14% of the cost, the other 86% is due to transition/delivery. For PG&E it does not matter the cost of power because it represents a very small portion of their clients total cost.
Great work again, Simon! Aside from learning how various forms of geothermal can be implemented, my key takeaway from this video was: Top-down policy needs to shift from business as usual to emergency measures immediately because... well.. we're in an emergency. If that is not done adequately, we must force those who influence policy to change their behavior, one way or another (cough cough the Shinzo Abe treatment).
Appalachian here. Coal is an evil and my home region and family has been harmed so much for the sake of the rest of the US. If coal is to come back, we need to reassert ourselves to get diversification alongside mining. No more company towns.
Coal industry never helped the workers. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician. Coal was never for the good of the community just the big owners. Coal should have paid everyone in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting through mountains, trashing your landscape for generations. Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect the owners. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician. Coal was never for the good of the community just the big owners. Coal should have paid everyone in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting through mountains, trashing your landscape for generations. Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect the owners. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. It was exploitation at it's finest. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician for that matter. Coal was never for the good of the community just the owners. Coal should have paid EVERYONE in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting mountains in two, poisoning your landscape for generations. The poisoning of America has never stopped. Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect those at the top. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. It was exploitation at it's finest. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying trash politician. Coal was never for the good of the community, just the owners. Coal should have paid EVERYONE in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting mountains in two, crippling your landscape for generations. The poisoning of America has never stopped since the dawn of the industrial age. Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect those at the top. They never gave an F about you guys or the rest of us and that goes the same for both parties.
I've lived in a place that had district heating and the main problem was they didn't measure the amount of heat being used by each dwelling, instead it was just a fixed cost included with the rent. The result was everyone just left all their radiators turned up full and regulated the temperature of their flats by opening the windows.
Great video. One thing I would argue with was the heat density calculation. 30kW per household is an extremely high estimate. While most houses may have a 30kW boiler, they don't need anywhere near that power. Especially since people could run on weather compensation heating on a lower power than they currently do with their boiler.
In my country several cities developed geothermal heating systems in recent years, thanks to existing district heating networks and favorable geology. The largest geothermal heating system in the EU (outside Iceland) started operating last year in Szeged, Hungary. It provides heating to 28,000 households and 400 public buildings thanks to the EU investing €23 million into the project.
I imagine this would be particularly valuable in places like West Virginia, with an economy very strongly dependent on coal mining. It'll be an important task to bring new jobs in renewable energy to places that might be resistant to change, but employing the skills workers already have would be an easy part of that.
Hearing about geothermal energy honestly makes me so happy. I hear so little about it when it has the potential to provide the remaining few percent of generation we need to decarbonize the grid. And I hadn't even heard of using it for heating! Great stuff!
Simon - still missing the value of Tidal power - we are an island. On District Heating - Transport for London (the Underground) has a heat issue, and new tube trains will have air conditioning (more heat in tunnels) - most deep stations have disused lift shafts converted to vent air, however disused City Road station is now Bunhill Heat and Power scheme, but more heat needs to be converted.
Interesting you went up to Mulberry Park, which doesn't (and yep, definitely should have had) have district heating, because there's another estate managed by the same organisation (inherited from Bath City Council housing) which does have some 1980s-ish district heating - the Ballance Street estate on Julian Road. They use gas combined heat and power for it at the moment, though. But the infrastructure's there for supplying and billing for the heat, so it does work. No breakdowns in the 5 years I lived there.
I’m from the uk also and as I’m sure you know Simon we’ve been off coal for about 10 years now I think. But it amazes me how much coal the US still uses for power Also Simon your videos since the channel being in danger video have been so good! Thanks for the amazing content. I like and comment on every video to support
Simon, I'd like to let you know that my nephew Charles, who is an engineer whose occupation has been (he is now of retirement age) to do studies about products. He is married with children who now have lives of their own. He did his own study on whether to install goethermal for his family house in Laval, a suburb of Montreal. He then installed it himself, and has not used any other home-heating system.
Sounds super promising, I did a quick search of "Appalachia geothermal" but in the projects I clicked on a keyword search for "coal" didnt pop up. I guess its good that geothermal projects are in the works, but would need to do more research to see if this district heating/ using abandoned mines concept is being considered here. I guess one question I had was about the flooding of water and whether that could get 'dirty' from the coal mine and then seep into the aquipher? Excellent video btw, it was tuned perfectly to my attention span.
Everywhere I’ve ever seen district heating, it tended to overheat the buildings and people left their windows open, but if you designed the system to only provide enough heat to get to maybe 16C, it would be highly efficient and allow people to customize their desired temperature with room heaters.
Great video Simon! I'm afraid there's a bit of a snag with your district heating network power density calculation: In the video, you reference the fact that lots of homes have 30kW gas boilers in them. Fortunately, that's not because homes have a 30kW heat demand - most homes have a worse case heat demand (i.e. when it's -2C in the depth of winter) of around 5kW, although this depends on the home of course. The reason we have 30kW boilers is because we want instantaneous hot water supplied by our boilers for showering etc. Despite the fact that domestic hot water is a tiny fraction of our overall gas usage, it dominates the power demand for the boiler itself. This also means that boilers are grossly oversized for the purpose of heating because they can only modulate down to a fraction (usually around 25%) of their maximum output, so 7.5kW in the case of a 30kW boiler. Since this is way more heat than most homes need most of the time, boilers often cycle on and off, which you've probably experienced first hand. If one was to get a heat pump installed in place of their gas boiler, they'd typically only get a 5-8kW heat pump installed to match the heat demand of the property. To get around the domestic hot water issue, the heat is buffered in a hot water tank or other heat storage mechanism, such as a heat battery. This allows owners of heat pumps to have nice hot water without requiring a 24-30kW heating source. In my case, I went for a whole house A2A heat pump, and have remained on the gas boiler for domestic hot water. I might swap that out for an electric combination though since my hot water demands are minuscule and gas boilers require you to pay a gas standing charge, and also require servicing (the joys of products that burn things!). Anyhow, in short, this significantly changes your calculation. Hope that helps, and thanks once again for the great video!
As a Canadian, I would like to extend my thanks for mentioning Eavor in this video. I would also like to mention the US company, Fervo Energy, as another North American company doing geothermal. To say this field presents a lot of opportunity is to understate the situation.
Fun fact ancient peoples and pioneers in the new world would often dig cellars to keep their food, because so many feet down everything is heavily insulated so heat and cold can be preserved to warm a home or keep your food fresh.
Great and very informative video! I think a mix of long and detailed videos and some shorter ones would be great. I usually watch the videos during breakfast or during a short break. So I either have to schedule time in the evening to not forget your longer videos (and therefore often forget them), or I have to watch them gradually over the period of 1-2 days (which also leads to me forgetting them). You obviously have the stats and know what works and what doesn't. Just wanted to share my opinion
Harworth group is the division of British Coal that is developing housing on old coal mining sites, and likely a key organisation that needs to be pressured to ensure all future developments use district heating based off the old coal mine infrastructure
In South Holland right now a pipeline is being constructed to transfer heat from the Rotterdam harbor that would otherwise be wasted, to the most populous region of the country. This makes the Dutch rely more on the fossil fuel industry in the harbor; but there will be a huge net decrease in gas combustion. This goes to show that decommisioned industry isn't the only kind of industry that could assist in the energy transition.
I always thought it'd be neat to have glycol loops in buildings, kinda like they used to do with radiators. But have it be bidirectional. Your refrigerator can pull from the "cool" side and dump it's heat into the "hot" side, while your heater can do the opposite.
Heat pumps are good, but geothermal ones are generally rare. Air exchange ones are far more common. I install them both, and the costs are also hugely different. Digging up your garden to several meters deep isnt often even an option. Not to mention, for one home its doable. But no one is calculating what an entire neighbourhood running geothermal heat pumps will do to soil life. It might cool down the soil to a point that roots and microbes cant survive. Plus having lots of them in an area will reduce the available ambient heat reducing efficiency. Air exchange ones do not suffer from similar problems.
You can heat the ground back up in the summer using solar collectors or waste heat from cooling your home. Drilling vertically is common for water sourced heat pumps.
Not my ass surprised to hear Poland mentioned as a shining example of district heating - even though im literslly sitting next to a district heathing unit and even looking dorectly at it x.x Or rather, looking at my cat, sleeping on their heater hammock, but the point still stands. I really shouldn't have been this surprised by this xd I guess the naming being this far off from Polish name for it could be the reason, cause here we call it centralne ogrzewanie [meaning "central heating"] or ogrzewanie miejskie [meaning "city's utilities", as in provided by the city and not produced individually in the household]. They are way way waaaaay cheaper than any other form of heating, that one I can confirm. That's why a flat having district heating is a strong selling point when it comes to renting flats or rooms, any other options means paying a lot more monthly in utilities.
The box! The BOX!
Love your work, soup! I've rewatched your latest simpsons deepdive two times already 😁
I loved it when He said "The Box!" and boxed everyone up!
"electrizidy"
It's BOXIN' time! *proceeds to box all over those guys*
"its all heating water to spin a turbine?"
"always has been."
Turbines, always with the turbines
The sad thing is that's the best way to do it apparently, because solar and wind kinda blow
@@InfernosReaper wind blows, the sun radiates.
@@RAFMnBgaming and both of them suck
@@InfernosReaper nah that's vacuum energy
Whenever I see nonsense about the "cost" of clean energy, I always remind myself the magnitude at which dirty energy is subsidized.
FR. think about how much stuff people would stop using or buying if the subsidies were gone
It's seriously maddening the amount of denial of OBVIOUS reasons these people do. I genuinely cannot imagine being that deluded unless I never thought logically about the topic and never even once Googled about it
@@prosandcons-fl2ccGranted it gets real messy, especially some farm subsidies. They essentially hot glue and zip tie the mess that is Modern Capitalism into something that can *kind of* work.
The Ideal solution would be switching to some alternative system that thrives off of Abundance, rather than one that thrives off artificial scarcity and such, but WAY easier said than done.
In the mean time getting rid of the ones that only help the industrialists/lobbying groups, and tuning them to match the needs of people can probably be done.
7 trillion dollars per year
fossil fuel industry also makes 4 trillion dollars per year in profit, interesting
Honestly, it's one of those facts that I catch myself doubting because it's so obvious that I feel if most people haven't noticed or are unconvinced by it I must be wrong somehow.
Heating subsidies are right there on our bills. They're advertised on the radio. I literally sign off on my tenant's heating assistance for the eldery. Around here, that means the assisted are getting subsidized gas.
I live in a town that was built by coal mines. There is a lake across from my house that has a drain pipe supposedly connected to one of the shafts. The water that comes out of it is like bathtub water, and no matter how far the temperature drops that part of the lake does not freeze. One day I hope my town would consider installing district heating from the mines. I'm sure it will bring a lot of pride to families who have parents and grandparents that worked in the pit. knowing that they're still heating our homes today.
Update : I did some digging ( no pun intended) and found out that some buildings are actually using this system already. Our sports center and our assisted living facility is heated from our mines! I don't know why this isn't common knowledge.
Maybe _you_ could be the one to bring it up with your local mayor/council! Somebody's got to be the first one, so why not chuck them an email with the suggestion? It can't hurt to try, and might kickstart something amazing ❤
Mine drainage usually isn't a good thing. We have a mine dewatering tunnel built here in the 1800's called The Jeddo Tunnel. It's more or less an environmental nightmare although it's been going on for like 150 years and we are used to it. Not to mention we are above it, so it's more of a problem for those who live downstream lol
The heat conductivity of the soil is very, very low. After some years the water will become cooler.
Why not skipping the green woke nonsense and use gas, oil or coal?
That Pride Factor is what you sell it with.
Don't go with how much can be saved or the likes, as much as we think people in government should care about spending they really don't. They do care about their own reputations, and any politician that can claim to have 'brought back some mining jobs' will have an easier time for re-election. Thus, if you want a Politician to do anything, you have to convince them that people will be proud, and thus... vote for the person who brought that pride.
@@holgernarrog
Why did you not mention Nuclear?
The three sources you name are all... greatly limited.
If you are worried health concerns, don't look at Coal deaths per year.
New coal meta just dropped
I think the thing to realize about these closed-loop geothermal systems is that their benefits are hard to quantify monetarily. They provide low-carbon power, but not intermittently like Wind and Solar. But unlike Wind and Solar, they have very small surface footprints, meaning we're not dedicating large tracts of land to wind and solar farms. More importantly, they provide baseload power without the need for uranium mining or the associated regulatory system required to keep a nuclear power plant safe (because the greatest threat of a nuclear power plant isn't the tech, it's human stupidity).
So we have a tech that 1) provides consistent power; 2) is low-carbon; 3) requires no destructive mining, expensive maintenance, or disposal of dangerous fuels; and 4) takes up very little space (much smaller than a nuke plant and vastly smaller than wind and solar farms). So while yes, it's monetarily expensive, we are paying up front for the benefits.
And there's the challenge with everything that would actually make life better for the majority. We really need a massive investment in stuff like this as well as environmental restoration, regenerative agriculture, water management etc. for a payoff that's going to take years. Not something those in power seem keen on. I hope that changes soon because the price of recovering as the damage gets worse is only going to get higher.
I think you nailed it. When discussing wind and solar, people often forget the land-use issue. (The intermittently issue is bad, but from an environmentalist perspective, land-use is also quite important)
The point about human stupidity is correct, it would literally defy the laws of physics for any reactor operating today to go the way of Chernobyl since none follow its stupid design, nor does anyone follow their stupid operating principles.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that Russia still uses 6 PowerPoint with RBMK reactors (the type used at Chernobyl) but they were heavily modified after the accident. Russia is the only country in the world which still operates RBMKs and the vast majority of their reactors are not RBMKs.
Only nitpick - and I preface this by saying I can't compare the size of a geothermal plant to a nuclear one for the same amount of power - but nuclear plants can safely and cheaply be made *much* smaller than they currently are.
Implementation, allow tax credits or long amortized write downs over a long period, that will spur larger up front capital expense and a stable investment income.
@@jeffbenton6183I’m sorry but there really isn’t a land use issue. Wind and Solar power both can be generated on land that is already used otherwise and can continue to be used like that. For example most solar panels are either in top of building, animal pens, highways or sometimes even on top of acres. There’s a similar thing with wind farms, because the turbines can’t be placed too close together anyways or they just wouldn’t really work, they are always placed on acres or on large stretches of off-shore farms. But all in all both kinds of farms barely make any land unusable
Unfortunately it can cause earthquakes and makes farms unusable at times.
Still a good option tho imo
"District heating . . ."
Tories: "COMMUNISM DETECTED"
Are any Tories really saying that? Looks like the govt is actually trying a bit in this case...
I can't imagine ever voting Tory in my life, but let's not drive division if it doesn't exist.
US Republicans _and_ US Democrats: "COMMUNISM DETECTED"
TL;DR It can be done wrong; you also can _and need_ to do it right.
Honestly district heating can lead to suboptimal results. I live in Russia and I have such a heating which isn’t in any way tweakable so I need to open windows in the winter and especially at the end of spring, it gets so unbearable and I ended up even needing a skin cream for my hands.
I’m sure it _can_ be done okay, with people being able to change their personal heat output and also pay less when they do so, but I see it can also be done in a way which is hard to remake into such a thing. A pain. So I see why some people can get reluctant aside from silly communism horror storries (I mean Russia is a kind of hell to be in, in many small details and many large details too, but right now and for like two decades it’s not due to communism at all).
I guess it was pushed in communist countries, we also have a district heating network in Budapest, Hungary (formerly eastern bloc USSR puppet state, nowadays Putin's puppet state). But so does Vienna, Austria, which was never forced into communism, and Denmark. I guess it just makes sense.
In other words, communism "causes" district heating, but district heating "doesn't cause" communism.
The only people who respond to things that way are the extreme conservatives.
Extremists of all types are characterized by very narrow minds.
Man, this trusty Adobe Premiere Preset for 'look at this graph' gets me every time
In other words... "Every time I do, it makes me laugh."
Engineer here, the problem is heat "quality", that is how hot the water actually is and the temperature differential with respect to what youre trying to heat. If the water isnt very hot, and if its very close to room temperature, then you need to pump a very large amount of it to get any significant amount of heating. District heating traditionally uses water near waters boiling temperature for this reason, it has to be hot to be efficient. Early systems used steam.
A cursory look into some papers appears to me that these open loop coal mine GSHP's may not even outperform air to air heat pumps coefficient of performance, or at least uts close to it. If it isnt really more energy efficient in the first place, why not just use an air to air heat pump rather than faffing around in old coal mines? Especially considering this doesnt require huge changes to jnfrastructure (time and money).
Good question, that's assuming we're still working with older 1st and 2nd generation DHNs where you need those much higher temperatures. But if we have modern 5th gen heat networks, then it becomes much more possible to rely on minewater heat as your GSHPs don't need to raise the temperature that much.
The issue with slapping a bunch of ASHPs on every building is that you'd have the same issue with much greater electricity demand and then you're just kicking the can down the road to the generation source in terms of your emissions tail.
"The extreme north" 🫤 Place is south of my entire country... 😅
Oh don't worry it's a silly britishism - we argue about which bits of our country are north and south, as if we have never used a compass or a map
My understanding is that Britain is divided into thirds: the South, the North, and Scotland
Do you live in Svalbard???
@@columbus8myhwthere is also wales and the midlands
@columbus8myhw 😅about right we allso have the Midlands around Birmingham
Wales N.ierland Mann and the Devonshire Cornwall westerlands
Love the video and all, but, as an American, I can't help but be amazed by the thought that 75%+ of local authorities' budgets are spent on elderly care. In the US, its rare to find a city that isn't spending more than 50% of its budget toward the police... This is nothing to say of climate change or moving towards renewable energies, but just a tangential observation that I hadn't thought about in a while.
TBF local authorities are in charge of very little and police spending is not one of those. Its mainly bins and potholes.
@@guystrong7218 I don't understand what you mean. The police budgets are determined by cities, no? If not, then what's setting the budgets? At least in California, as far as I'm aware, its up to individual cities to set their police spending.
@@TheDilla Central government are the main source of funding for police - UK is much more centralised system than the US
@@guystrong7218 oh okay that's interesting
Police & Fire are paid for on a regional basis in the UK. It's paid for by your local council rates. Every year you get a statement saying how much has been spent on what. Sheffield City Council near me also has a district heating system which comes from the local waste incinerator.
I think I read one of the problems with an open-system for geothermal is, that these waters often contain a hecking ton of salts and chemicals that can be quite dangerous to equipment, like pipes, pumps etc. So you would have to develop stuff that could withstand these conditions, so it would be better keep a system closed that does not draw in all these chemicals, yet drilling such tubes all the way 5 kilometers into the ground probably risks them being damaged be any kind of underground movement.
Yep, you need to put that water back down there if you don't want the creek or wherever you dump it into to be absolutely lifeless due to the high salinity. The good news about that salinity is that one of the salts is lithium chloride, so it's currently being explored as a lithium mining method in combination with geothermal power in order to produce carbon-neutral battery-grade lithium.
@@hammerth1421 Right, I heard they want to try out such a powerstation / factory setting in Germany in an attempt to get more lithium themselves. Let's just hope they don't drill too deep and cause any earthquakes like it happened in Switzerland a few years ago...or drill even deeper and wake up a Ballrog.
YES, IN FLORIDA IN THE 70'S WE USED OPEN SYSTEM TO COOL AND HEAT A HOUSE, BUT, PUMP FAILERS CAUSED OIL TO LEAK INTO THE WATER SUPPLY SO THEY OUTLAWED OPEN SYSTEMS IN FLORIDA
Damn could have sworn the geo thermal guy was the spiffing brit at first
I wish I was spiffing Brit levels of cool
I'm sure he'd find a way to cheese it.
“The extreme North”
*points to what Scottish people call “The South”* 🤣
More Simpsons references, I only learn via Simpsons references
theres better ways to do it
Same
there's other ways to learn?
I'm learnding!
Why fear radioactive waste that might harm a small area in the distant future when coal is harming the entire globe constantly right now?
Fear of nuclear power the way the weasels complain about it is irrational and borne out of ignorance and ideology.
Mind you, there are things to be afraid of with nuclear but most of those are hardly mentioned even by those foaming about it.
Most of the antinuclear environmentalist groups were kickstarted by oil interests' money quite directly.
I fear subsidizing the most expensive electricity
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
Also, it gives you an excuse to force the circulation of the mine water, which can become acidic or hazardous if allowed to sit.
Super interesting, I genuinely didn't know the intricacies of geothermal heating networks - seems like a good idea. Also absolutely loving The Simpsons references.
This is excellent, engaging, informative, fact based *and* hopeful? That's not everyday, and it seems i really need to subscribe to that soup emporium guy as well, awesome collaboration.
I’ve always been mad that no one ever talks about geothermal energy in this convo, like, ever. So thank you!
SO HAPPY that you're making videos still! I watch on nebula and RUclips
15:05 THIS.
Even if it’s not “the best”, it would keep voters happy. The person going “No we’re shutting down your jobs, vote for us!” Vs “Vote for me and you will still have a job in the future to come!”.
I’d also like to see a LCA of all the materials used. A whole lot less e-waste to deal with that Mass-PV Scaling. Granted *Citation Needed* and use of superalloy tubes etc might muddy the water, but yeah. Also storage has to be taken into account.
I audibly gasped when Soup came out because I really wasn’t expecting him, but y’all’s content scratches the same itch so it makes a ton of sense:)
Nice! In Sweden we've decarbonised heating since the 90s, heat pumps (ground and air) and district heating instead of local burning of fuel. Biggest source of heat in district heating is reused heat (heat that would otherwise be lost). There's a lot of low hanging fruit in district heating. :)
But then, you should also watch how much energy housing uses.. Swedens energy use per square meter is one of the lowest in Europe even though we have a lot more winter here.
..and a lot of wood.
Installing a PILE of pipes can also be seen as a huge surge of Union Plumber Jobs…
(Also mostly doing freshwater/heat transfer fluid, not sewage)
NO PILE OF PIPES ARE NEEDED, PLASTIC PIPING BURIED IN THE BACK YARD IS ALL YOU NEED, FLEXIBLE, NO JOINTS EXCEPT AT THE SURFACE
I want to thank you. You're giving me hope and positivity on climate change without hiding the truth.
I didn't think it was possible and it has fone so much good to my mental state. So again : thank you.
If you consider the cost of geothermal heat as % of GDP of a nation. You are going to find that the cost is really, really low. But something ,something rich people and big coal companies and so on.
A example of geothermal energy for district heating is Schwerin in northern Germany. Their plant went online last year and supplies 2000 households
Commenting for engagement ❤
He's married already ;)
The Lord's work
All hail the mighty algorithm!
My liberal council owns 100% of a district heat network that works by burning waste (Theoretically. They actually never linked). The issue is not the council's expertise, since they simply contract companies to build and run this, the issue is the lack of regulation. They are more expensive and keep increasing price, and we get half a dozen outages per year with no compensation. They are not regulated like electricity and gas providers, and we are held hostage by a contract that says we can't have another provider. They need to fix this before district heating networks can be successful in the UK.
Monopolies are always unforced errors and self-imposed pain. Ridiculous. Corruption at its finest. No doubt that company paid a pretty penny or greased many palms of your local council to get to be the sole primary provider of your area. It's how it works....
Three questions: What is the geological impact of running water through the mines for sustained periods of time? How will we efficiently deal with the deposition of minerals in pipes picked up from the walls of mines? And how will a system like this be redundant or capable of providing heating/cooling in the event of pipeline or pump failure?
Best Ground News advertisement I've ever seen. Spreading ideas and information is something you and GN do very well. Thanks for educating us!
I'll check them out
In Iceland houses are heated with hot water which is heated using geothermal sources
In addition to energy production, some companies in germany try to extract lithium from the water, making it a mining operation...
YES, IN THE USA NOW, THE SALTON SEA GEO SYSTEM NOW WILL PRODUCE LITHIUM FOR CAR BATTERIES,
One thing about these coalbeds is they also leak methane, and whilst it hasn't been commercially feasible to capture and utilise most of that methane historically (around 1% of coalved methane in the UK is probably at commercial viability) it absolutely does make sense to capture and use it on site if you already have a powerplant or district heating system in place. That could extend the operational capability, or add flexibility to power output to handle variability/frequency response if we're talking electricity instead of district heating.
Geothermal energy is amazing 🙋🏻♂️ places like Iceland, New Zealand, Japan, and parts of the USA being examples of good places for them.
Enhanced geothermal makes almost every nation conceivably geothermal nations, in time.
I live near The Geysers complex in California and kept waiting for it to come up lol But I can see why our unique geology isn't the most relevant example for everything the video is exploring
Trouble is the few cant make millions from it.
@@Guitar6ty that's not true.
@@Panetierre_ pray tell?
Are Lesser North, North, and Extreme North the actual names of regions? That’s very cool.
Great post, extremely well done.
Nitpicking, now: coal is technically only the 3rd worst fossil fuel.
Methane leaks so much that in the short run (88 times more GHE-intensive than CO2) depending on overall fugitive emissions fossil methane is at least 50% worse than coal, and with fossil methane pushing biomethane and landfill methane off the market, it's a lose-lose. Now, you may say coal mining releases a lot of methane, so that it's all a wash. Except coal mining is largely only economically possible because of (leaky) methane recovery. So coal is a feedback of methane, economically.
Then there's bitumen. Bitumen recovery is so energy-intensive that a barrel of syncrude from bitumen takes between 1.4 and five barrels of bitumen burned on site. Plus about 3% of its energy content worth of electric energy. So even though oil is slightly less GHE-intensive than coal when burned, overall bitumen is worse.
Splitting coal into thermal and metallurgical categories, we see that, like some methane is diverted from burning to make plastics and other industrial chemicals (notably, fertilizer), the slag factor of metallurgical coal reduces overall emissions some 43% from forming cementitious materials, reducing overall average emissions of cement making for OPC. So until you get rid of OPC in cement (which would be great, and is very feasible with geopolymers), coal gets the Bronze, bitumen Silver, fossil methane Gold.
Did I mention methane-sourced nitrate fertilizer from methane destroys some soil microbes and leads to NOx emissions in agriculture?
Turns out NOx are also GHGs.. another lose-lose of fossil methane.
But great geothermal essay. Thanks!
Coal also produces methane gas when burned
@@d.thomas6988 Not only when burned. When disturbed in the ground, too.
"Now, you may say coal mining releases a lot of methane, so that it's all a wash. Except coal mining is largely only economically possible because of (leaky) methane recovery. So coal is a feedback of methane, economically. "
Methane's worse, but then in a four horse race (five if you split coal into thermal and metallurgical), and all of them too much for the environment to absorb before the climate crises get significantly worse, may I point out I started by saying it was a nitpick.
We need solutions like enhanced geothermal, not nitpicks like mine.
I'm sure it was "worst compared to the energy source we've studied"
@@xwtek3505 Yeah, but that's a rigged game: any energy generation compared to enhanced geothermal is "worst" in a two-horse race.
In the US the areas with high geothermal potential are already experiencing severe problems with water availability. Fracking, for whatever reason, uses a lot of water. So water availability for drilling and circulation and steam production is going to be a big hurdle to overcome
Water that is devoted to geothermal could be reused, at least in a closed system if I understood this correctly, ... ( my friends have a closed system with the special fluid which is of course reused again and again) unlike, say, energy generation to heat your shower water from the big dams, which is down due to lack of free water from the sky....ALTHOUGH there are some crazy dam designs which pump the water back up and use it again that I did see - maybe not dooable for Hoover Dam but other places?
Also, there is this flat tailed rodent that is improving groundwater retention in some desert conditions, not so much Hoover Dam but Beaver Dam...
The author gives you an optimistic green woke dream and you answer with reality.
@@holgernarrog Whatever the uses, I don't see how we can go on without massive investment in desalination plants. There simply isn't enough groundwater, runoff and rain to supply projected growth
@@tonydagostino6158 Well, according to NASA 1/4 of the solar irradiation or 1/2 of the solar radiation that hits the earth surface is dissipated by water evaporation back to the higher atmosphere. Till now technology cannot compete with this quantities.
But most of the rain falls on oceans or is flowing in rivers to oceans without being used by our society.
The technology of desalination is improving rapidly. With 50 nukes for 150bn $ (costs in China) total investment perhaps 300 bn$ used for desalination you can make large parts of the Sahara green and feed > a billion poeple.
Thus I do not see the limits of desalination for our society.
Important is...
- To get rid of green amageddon dogma as "climate change".
- To get the costs of nuclear down close to the chinese costs by making a cost - benefit evaluation of the nuclear regulation (regulation, certification requirements, test requirements, documentation requirements).
Most of the water problems were caused by reckless growth of farming districts and suburban expansion. As said in a comment before a closed system is largely self-reliant when it comes to water use.
Same goes for switzerland. We move on average every three years and almost all of our apartments where heated by the city’s central trash burning generator. Yes you are physically burning trash which doesn’t seem very green but it gets burned very efficiently, barely leaving anything behind. The heat is used to power turbines, the smoke gets carefully cleaned of all particles that then can get buried without the negative consequences landfills have for the environment. No microplastic btw!
A very excellent meme at 15:41 for presenting a graph. I love it.
Gas boilers may be 30kW but they are rather oversized for central heating (although less unreasonably sized for domestic hot water production). 5kW/house or so might be a better estimate of heating demand, leading to a heating demand of 18MW/km^2, so things are still good to go.
One key issue is that the coal mine water will require a heat pump *somewhere* centralised or distributed. Even with a SCOP of 6 there is linkage between the cost of electricity and heat. I'm hoping for a future where heat is decoupled from electricity, so we don't have to upgrade houses (kerching), insulate many heat network pipes (kerching) or upgrade the electrical grid (kerching). If only we had low cost low carbon form of baseload power.
Distributed heating systems has some problems, we are building a lot in the netherlands.
- Monopoly there is only 1 provider so price is releative high
- Contruction/refurbish opening the road and install the system in each house is not cheap
While this will be a go to as a solution problem is that heating will be more expensive then using gas for a long time so its not really appreaciated by the public at the moment.
Graphite can be used to store heat so lets mine coal for geo thermal energy and use the coal for thermal atorage.
Studying environmental and natural resource economics modules at the univeristy of Bath (courseworks due in 4 days, and degree is done in 3 weeks!) And this channel has been fascinating to watch alongside my studies wrapping up. Its deeply encouraging how many ways the issue of sustainable resource production/consumption is interescted by different feilds that can all work together.
Don't fly to Canary for graduation party 😼🍾
The cost of electricity from provider like PG&E only represents 14% of the cost, the other 86% is due to transition/delivery.
For PG&E it does not matter the cost of power because it represents a very small portion of their clients total cost.
PG&E heads' should decorate tall poles.
Great work again, Simon! Aside from learning how various forms of geothermal can be implemented, my key takeaway from this video was: Top-down policy needs to shift from business as usual to emergency measures immediately because... well.. we're in an emergency. If that is not done adequately, we must force those who influence policy to change their behavior, one way or another (cough cough the Shinzo Abe treatment).
Appalachian here. Coal is an evil and my home region and family has been harmed so much for the sake of the rest of the US.
If coal is to come back, we need to reassert ourselves to get diversification alongside mining. No more company towns.
Coal industry never helped the workers. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician. Coal was never for the good of the community just the big owners. Coal should have paid everyone in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting through mountains, trashing your landscape for generations.
Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect the owners. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician. Coal was never for the good of the community just the big owners. Coal should have paid everyone in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting through mountains, trashing your landscape for generations.
Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect the owners. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. It was exploitation at it's finest. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying politician for that matter. Coal was never for the good of the community just the owners. Coal should have paid EVERYONE in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting mountains in two, poisoning your landscape for generations. The poisoning of America has never stopped.
Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect those at the top. They never gave an F about you guys and that goes the same for both parties.
Coal industry never helped the workers. It was exploitation at it's finest. You all were just being used. You were expendable. Your lives never mattered to the company or any lying trash politician. Coal was never for the good of the community, just the owners. Coal should have paid EVERYONE in the community profit shares but ofc they won't and never have. Now it's worse than ever - these destroyers are replacing humans with highly effective machines and cutting mountains in two, crippling your landscape for generations. The poisoning of America has never stopped since the dawn of the industrial age.
Laws could have changed this but politics was always paid to protect those at the top. They never gave an F about you guys or the rest of us and that goes the same for both parties.
Fun fact: The Geotermal Gradient is among the highest in some places in the Carpathian Basen on the world, yet, geothermal is not used at all. Yippie.
Having done some math on different forms of heating for a course, I'm surprised district heating hasn't already taken off in more places! It's great!
I've lived in a place that had district heating and the main problem was they didn't measure the amount of heat being used by each dwelling, instead it was just a fixed cost included with the rent. The result was everyone just left all their radiators turned up full and regulated the temperature of their flats by opening the windows.
Boston has district heating! Same in Fall River. Just these old radiators in old houses emitting near, and I saw no way to turn them off or up/down
Great video. One thing I would argue with was the heat density calculation. 30kW per household is an extremely high estimate. While most houses may have a 30kW boiler, they don't need anywhere near that power. Especially since people could run on weather compensation heating on a lower power than they currently do with their boiler.
In my country several cities developed geothermal heating systems in recent years, thanks to existing district heating networks and favorable geology. The largest geothermal heating system in the EU (outside Iceland) started operating last year in Szeged, Hungary. It provides heating to 28,000 households and 400 public buildings thanks to the EU investing €23 million into the project.
My dorms were heated via the waste heat from the Coors beer factory!
I imagine this would be particularly valuable in places like West Virginia, with an economy very strongly dependent on coal mining. It'll be an important task to bring new jobs in renewable energy to places that might be resistant to change, but employing the skills workers already have would be an easy part of that.
Hearing about geothermal energy honestly makes me so happy. I hear so little about it when it has the potential to provide the remaining few percent of generation we need to decarbonize the grid. And I hadn't even heard of using it for heating! Great stuff!
Fantastic video, once again. Huge thanks Simon for spreading awareness and inform people!!!
Simon - still missing the value of Tidal power - we are an island. On District Heating - Transport for London (the Underground) has a heat issue, and new tube trains will have air conditioning (more heat in tunnels) - most deep stations have disused lift shafts converted to vent air, however disused City Road station is now Bunhill Heat and Power scheme, but more heat needs to be converted.
Amazing video as always Simon. Sincerely hope youtube starts treating you better soon
You have cast the Heat Pump spell. Technology Connections need to be referenced.
Allowing disused coal mines to fill with water also helps to keep down the sea level. The same goes for building aquifers.
Interesting you went up to Mulberry Park, which doesn't (and yep, definitely should have had) have district heating, because there's another estate managed by the same organisation (inherited from Bath City Council housing) which does have some 1980s-ish district heating - the Ballance Street estate on Julian Road. They use gas combined heat and power for it at the moment, though. But the infrastructure's there for supplying and billing for the heat, so it does work. No breakdowns in the 5 years I lived there.
11:41 I thought you said evil Technologies Incorporated😂
Oh my god, the Simpsons references were absolutely next level. Your videos always teach me something, I really appreciate that!
This is one of the best explained videos on one of the most interesting premises ive seen in a while. Kudos! You've earned a sub
This is an incredibly high-quality video, @simon clark. You have really outdone yourself.
I’m from the uk also and as I’m sure you know Simon we’ve been off coal for about 10 years now I think. But it amazes me how much coal the US still uses for power
Also Simon your videos since the channel being in danger video have been so good! Thanks for the amazing content. I like and comment on every video to support
Simon, I'd like to let you know that my nephew Charles, who is an engineer whose occupation has been (he is now of retirement age) to do studies about products. He is married with children who now have lives of their own. He did his own study on whether to install goethermal for his family house in Laval, a suburb of Montreal. He then installed it himself, and has not used any other home-heating system.
How about we use dry oil wells for geothermal...
Sounds super promising, I did a quick search of "Appalachia geothermal" but in the projects I clicked on a keyword search for "coal" didnt pop up. I guess its good that geothermal projects are in the works, but would need to do more research to see if this district heating/ using abandoned mines concept is being considered here. I guess one question I had was about the flooding of water and whether that could get 'dirty' from the coal mine and then seep into the aquipher? Excellent video btw, it was tuned perfectly to my attention span.
The minecraft greenscreen backgrounds in the video make me trust simon more
Everywhere I’ve ever seen district heating, it tended to overheat the buildings and people left their windows open, but if you designed the system to only provide enough heat to get to maybe 16C, it would be highly efficient and allow people to customize their desired temperature with room heaters.
Thanks for another great video! I watch your videos whenever I see them being published. See you in the next one!
I'm happy to see that the Netherlands already uses a lot of these options in many places
Great video Simon! I'm afraid there's a bit of a snag with your district heating network power density calculation:
In the video, you reference the fact that lots of homes have 30kW gas boilers in them. Fortunately, that's not because homes have a 30kW heat demand - most homes have a worse case heat demand (i.e. when it's -2C in the depth of winter) of around 5kW, although this depends on the home of course. The reason we have 30kW boilers is because we want instantaneous hot water supplied by our boilers for showering etc. Despite the fact that domestic hot water is a tiny fraction of our overall gas usage, it dominates the power demand for the boiler itself. This also means that boilers are grossly oversized for the purpose of heating because they can only modulate down to a fraction (usually around 25%) of their maximum output, so 7.5kW in the case of a 30kW boiler. Since this is way more heat than most homes need most of the time, boilers often cycle on and off, which you've probably experienced first hand.
If one was to get a heat pump installed in place of their gas boiler, they'd typically only get a 5-8kW heat pump installed to match the heat demand of the property. To get around the domestic hot water issue, the heat is buffered in a hot water tank or other heat storage mechanism, such as a heat battery. This allows owners of heat pumps to have nice hot water without requiring a 24-30kW heating source.
In my case, I went for a whole house A2A heat pump, and have remained on the gas boiler for domestic hot water. I might swap that out for an electric combination though since my hot water demands are minuscule and gas boilers require you to pay a gas standing charge, and also require servicing (the joys of products that burn things!).
Anyhow, in short, this significantly changes your calculation. Hope that helps, and thanks once again for the great video!
As a Canadian, I would like to extend my thanks for mentioning Eavor in this video.
I would also like to mention the US company, Fervo Energy, as another North American company doing geothermal.
To say this field presents a lot of opportunity is to understate the situation.
"Look at this -..-graph", did not see that coming
You said, “If your rocks aren’t hot enough…” That is so much more family appropriate than what I thought I heard the first time through.
I was not expecting a surprise Soup video today, but I got a surprise Soup video today.
I love all the Simpsons references. They really made this entertaining to watch. This video is super interesting. Good content. Thanks for making it.
Fun fact ancient peoples and pioneers in the new world would often dig cellars to keep their food, because so many feet down everything is heavily insulated so heat and cold can be preserved to warm a home or keep your food fresh.
I'm in New England and my grandparents still keep canned goods in a root cellar
21:27 just a heads up, while you do have 30kw boiler, you are not using the entire 30kw, like ever. It's an overkill
13:11 The volcano erupting the moment he finished his line as if to say “ワシを馬鹿にしておるのか⁉️” is just awesome.
this was excellent, Simon! keep up the good work you're doing
Now we know what they can do to Centralia, Pennsylvania 🌋
Great and very informative video! I think a mix of long and detailed videos and some shorter ones would be great. I usually watch the videos during breakfast or during a short break. So I either have to schedule time in the evening to not forget your longer videos (and therefore often forget them), or I have to watch them gradually over the period of 1-2 days (which also leads to me forgetting them). You obviously have the stats and know what works and what doesn't. Just wanted to share my opinion
Blimey, this was incredibly gripping! Thank you so much for a great video, Simon and Soup :)
Harworth group is the division of British Coal that is developing housing on old coal mining sites, and likely a key organisation that needs to be pressured to ensure all future developments use district heating based off the old coal mine infrastructure
In South Holland right now a pipeline is being constructed to transfer heat from the Rotterdam harbor that would otherwise be wasted, to the most populous region of the country. This makes the Dutch rely more on the fossil fuel industry in the harbor; but there will be a huge net decrease in gas combustion. This goes to show that decommisioned industry isn't the only kind of industry that could assist in the energy transition.
4:31
“Geo means Earth. Thermal means heat. thus concluding our deep dive into geothermal energy”
*Ad instantly plays*
Thank you for the very informative video! Also, thank you for providing references, I definitely want to check those out! :)
Really liking these recent videos!
I always thought it'd be neat to have glycol loops in buildings, kinda like they used to do with radiators. But have it be bidirectional. Your refrigerator can pull from the "cool" side and dump it's heat into the "hot" side, while your heater can do the opposite.
Gas boilers are notoriously oversized and Combi boilers are typically sized based on instantaneous hot water needs.
Heat pumps are good, but geothermal ones are generally rare. Air exchange ones are far more common. I install them both, and the costs are also hugely different. Digging up your garden to several meters deep isnt often even an option. Not to mention, for one home its doable. But no one is calculating what an entire neighbourhood running geothermal heat pumps will do to soil life. It might cool down the soil to a point that roots and microbes cant survive. Plus having lots of them in an area will reduce the available ambient heat reducing efficiency. Air exchange ones do not suffer from similar problems.
You can heat the ground back up in the summer using solar collectors or waste heat from cooling your home.
Drilling vertically is common for water sourced heat pumps.
I thought April's fools day was at the start of the April, not end of the April?
The Pope changed it.
The April fool is that it’s already the end of april
Subscribed for "Oh that's why it's called that" and **Look at this graph** KEEP EM COMING
As someone from iceland the function of a boiler really confused me for a long time
Not my ass surprised to hear Poland mentioned as a shining example of district heating - even though im literslly sitting next to a district heathing unit and even looking dorectly at it x.x Or rather, looking at my cat, sleeping on their heater hammock, but the point still stands. I really shouldn't have been this surprised by this xd I guess the naming being this far off from Polish name for it could be the reason, cause here we call it centralne ogrzewanie [meaning "central heating"] or ogrzewanie miejskie [meaning "city's utilities", as in provided by the city and not produced individually in the household].
They are way way waaaaay cheaper than any other form of heating, that one I can confirm. That's why a flat having district heating is a strong selling point when it comes to renting flats or rooms, any other options means paying a lot more monthly in utilities.