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Like many towns across Alberta, the landscape around Hinton is a pincushion of oil wells. At the bottom of some of the deeper wells, temperatures can reach upwards of 120 degrees Celsius, and that geothermal heat could be about to spur the town on to its next energy windfall.
A plan is underway to pump water up from deep underground, capture the heat it brings to the surface, then re-inject that water into the ground. The captured heat could warm a dozen municipal buildings or even eventually provide electricity.
“That’s attainable, that’s not a huge technical challenge. The question is at what cost,” Jonathan Banks, a research associate in geoscience at the University of Alberta, told DeSmog Canada.
The town recently got $1.2 million in federal and provincial grants to explore the feasibility of the project, known as a Front-End Engineering and Design, or FEED, study. That should be complete by the end of the summer.
“If the FEED study shows that the project is viable…we could start building the system in the fall of 2018,” Banks says, cautioning that there are a number of unknowns, such as an uncertain regulatory process.
A big part of why newly elected town councillor Dewly Nelson thinks the oil-friendly residents should welcome geothermal to town? It all runs on the same infrastructure and knowledge as the oil and gas industry, making it an excellent way to make use of existing oilfields and some of the workers who have been hit by low oil prices.
“If it ever really takes off on a large scale in Canada, it will be because of oil and gas,” he says.
From the Global Geothermal News archives:
- Thursday, March 8, 2018 - Canada: Study to Assess Feasibility of the Hinton Geothermal District Heating System
- Thursday, February 8, 2018 - Canada: Hinton Geothermal Well Pair Could Return Investment in 16 years
- Tuesday, February 6, 2018 - Canada: $1.2 Million Investment in Hinton Geothermal Heat Project
