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| After being dropped off, researchers carried heavy equipment plus survival gear, often hiking along mountain goat trails, to reach sites inaccessible by aircraft. Credit: Stephen E. Grasby |
To encourage geothermal energy exploration, the Geological Survey of Canada, with support from Geoscience BC, a nonprofit geoscience research organization, and the Natural Resources Canada Emerging Renewable Power Program, initiated a new project in 2019 focused on reducing exploration risk. A highlight of this project is a recent multidisciplinary field program aimed at developing novel tools to predict the occurrence of highly permeable zones within the Mount Meager volcanic complex, Canada’s only currently active volcano.
The data are currently being processed (into projects by three postdoctoral fellows, six doctoral candidates, one master’s candidate, and one undergraduate at universities in Canada) and will be integrated into a new 3-D model of the geothermal and volcanic plumbing system of the Mount Meager complex. This model should greatly reduce the risk associated with drilling for geothermal reservoirs in volcanic systems of British Columbia and help support Canada’s transition to a clean energy economy.
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Citation: Grasby, S. E., and C. Salas (2020), Searching for Mount Meager’s geothermal heart, Eos, 101, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EO140214. Published on 25 February 2020.
Also...A New Boost for the Geothermal Industry In British Columbia? - New insights from the past could re-ignite the South Meager Geothermal project [September/October 2019 Bulletin] by members of the GRC Student Committee.
