By Angela Harvey, Chief Customer Officer
Energy security, increased power demands (largely driven by data centres), and the need for reliable, constant renewable energy have placed global interest in geothermal energy at an all-time high. It’s little wonder governments and power companies are looking for leadership on the best ways ahead.
Luckily, as we all know, geothermal is here to help. It delivers renewable, clean, and constant baseload power. But advancing and scaling the industry has challenges, from removing policy barriers to exchanging experiences with new technologies that take geothermal from a location-constrained resource to an energy powerhouse (pardon the pun). At this year’s World Geothermal Congress in Calgary, we shared some great success stories and heard of lessons learned that will benefit everyone.
There is much for New Zealand to showcase in its world-leading geothermal sector, and it was hugely inspiring to spend an evening with those whose collaborative efforts and advocacy can make a difference in other countries. It is the number five producer of geothermal energy in the world supplying about a quarter of its energy from this source.
As a Christchurch-headquartered organisation, Seequent was proud to be part of the New Zealand Geothermal Pavillion at the congress. This was a great opportunity for delegates to meet and chat with expert scientific organisations, engineering companies, and industry leaders, and a group put together by the New Zealand Geothermal Association and Invest NZ/NZTE.
Geothermal’s next frontier
Reflecting on this year’s congress, Chief Executive Graham Grant’s keynote perfectly encapsulated the industry’s critical turning point. While the global demand for reliable, always-on, clean power is undeniable, projects frequently stall due to subsurface uncertainty.
As Graham stressed, you cannot finance what you cannot de-risk.
The next phase of geothermal energy will be defined entirely by confidence — the confidence to invest, scale, and integrate geothermal as core infrastructure rather than a niche alternative.
Seequent Chief Executive Office Graham Grant delivered a keynote speech at World Geothermal Congress in Calgary.
Source: Seequent
‘Geothermal is no longer about some niche interesting clean alternative, but it is actually fundamental baseline infrastructure upon which countries can build,’ he said.
Achieving this requires a collective shift, he said. We must champion better data, foster deeper collaboration across government and industry, and drive clearer subsurface understanding. By changing our narrative, we can equip stakeholders with the certainty they need to make crucial decisions.
The resilient energy system the world needs is already beneath our feet. As Graham said, our task now is not to wait for perfect certainty, but to build enough confidence to act.
Watch Graham’s keynote here.
Seequent-Cascade Institute partnership
While Seequent is proud of its Kiwi roots, I am proud of my Canadian ones and Seequent has large offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Quebec City. It was especially thrilling for us to announce an important collaboration with the Cascade Institute to map Canada’s deep thermal resources and accelerate the development of renewable energy.
This is a perfect example of that drive to work together more closely and build confidence to push on with new initiatives which Graham talked about.
Seequent already supports more than 60% of the world’s geothermal power generation, and has experience in next-generation projects such as Fervo Energy’s Cape Station in Utah and in helping drive the sector forward.
The Cascade Institute partnership will create the Canadian Thermal Model, using novel machine-learning methods to pinpoint deep-heat resources. Improving confidence of where these are will inform investment, policy planning, and project development.
The Canadian Thermal Model will integrate over 20 input layers of geoscientific data related to geothermal energy to evaluate Canada’s nation-wide, deep heat resources.
Seequent is giving access to its world-leading geophysics software to see what is happening below the surface.
Our Energy Segment Director, Jeremy O’Brien, said the potential for significant geothermal development in Canada is sitting there waiting. The model will reduce risk for investors and accelerate work programmes.
There’s so much going on in the geothermal sector, with some breathtaking innovations. Recently, we chatted with Dr Kristie McLin, Principal Investigator at the Utah FORGE project, which is the world’s only field‑scale underground laboratory dedicated to advancing enhanced geothermal systems.
Kristie’s vision is for ‘geothermal everywhere’. She told us that with the ability to drill more cheaply ‘we would be able to develop geothermal systems in many places around the world, not just the obvious places that have the blessing of shallow heat’.
At Utah FORGE, Seequent is making a difference through use of its Leapfrog and Central software platforms, which are interpreting complicated subsurface conditions and allowing openly accessible and interactive data to be available for global research.
This is one of our commitments to support the rapidly growing geothermal sector.
Panel discussions and Megawatt Challenge
One of the great things about the congress is it allows all sorts of views to be heard and experiences shared across a range of formal and informal events.
We all enjoy listening to the experts. I had the pleasure of moderating the digital innovation and geothermal plenary panel, which featured Jeremy alongside XGS Energy Chief Operating Officer Ghazal Izadi, and Cyrg Energy’s Senior Vice-President of Resource & Engineering, Daniel Minguez.
I had the pleasure of moderating a plenary panel which explored digital innovation in the geothermal sector.
Source: Seequent
Panel members highlighted two connected themes in the evolving geothermal industry. In the first, they emphasised the importance of quickly scaling up and continuing to accelerate deployment through using advanced technologies, such as those which simulate reservoir performance, to allow better understanding of the resource and associated risk.
That in turn gives confidence to investors, which leads to further injections of capital, which then allows operations to grow even more quickly.
The importance of collaboration was also highlighted. The geothermal sector can learn much from the well-established practices of the oil and gas industry, as well as from each other. Embracing open-data sharing and using high-performance cloud-compute accelerators can speed up development and overcome any barriers to growth.
A technical workshop panel discussed the future of geothermal resource assessment and management.
Source: Seequent
The following day we had a technical workshop panel looking at the future of geothermal resource assessment and management, which included Seequent Regional Director–Energy, APAC, Clare Baxter, and our Senior Account Executive –Energy, NAM, Kathleen Gould.
Panellists discussed the importance of continuously collecting quality subsurface data and evolving models to support good decision-making, as well as the need for ongoing, practical, and field-applicable learning and programmes for emerging professionals.
They also covered how technology and tools will shape successful projects, as enablers in the improvement of understanding the subsurface.
There was also plenty of interest for everyone in the booth presentations and through the Megawatt Challenge, which highlights the importance of precision in subsurface modelling and shows how geothermal exploration can be sped up by modern software.
Contestants were given real-world geological data and had to use it to find the best well location, select drilling depths, and use software such as Leapfrog and Volsung to predict its maximum power output. The winner was the submission which accurately forecasted the highest megawatt yield.
The challenge is a great way to generate enthusiasm for future geothermal projects. As we are increasingly discovering these days, geothermal power is going to be a mainstay of the transition to clean energy, providing reliable, constant, renewable power which is not dependent on the weather.
In summary
Whether it be in a technical panel, the keynote sessions, or casual coffee chats, the vibe of World Geothermal Conference was consistent: this is a community of experts that want to partner to advance this critical resource.
By working together, these industry leaders will accelerate innovation, impact policies, and shape the industry for the future. I am proud of the role Seequent and subsurface data play. You can learn more about our solutions for geothermal here.