The Philippines is eyeing to firm up collaboration and prospective private sector partnerships with the United States for targeted deployment of next-generation geothermal technologies in the country.

According to Energy Secretary Raphael P. M. Lotilla, the Philippines will “identify advances made by fracking in the United States that has developed new knowledge of tapping geothermal sources.”

He emphasized that the tie-up being explored will be between private sector players – including possible partnership that the Lopez-led Energy Development Corporation (EDC) could pursue with American counterparts.

“We would be working with their private sector – we are in touch with them. They are also working with our private sector here. EDC for example, and the other geothermal companies are looking at it,” the energy chief stressed.

Lotilla is currently in the US as part of President Marcos’ delegation to the Trilateral Leaders’ Summit (with the inclusion of the Japanese government) – which is happening in Washington DC and part of the agenda will be on energy investments.

The US, in particular, has recently unveiled next-generation technologies that could significantly ramp up capacity generation from geothermal resources – including those with enhanced geothermal systems (EGS); closed loop advanced geothermal systems (AGS) as well as other designs that are being experimented on to reposition geothermal as a green source that will serve as the ‘saving grace’ for the energy transition that the world is traversing.

Enabled by support from the US DOE, their national laboratories, academic institutions and private sector players are also looking at the potential of geothermal for long duration energy storage (LDES), which will be an ideal fix to the intermittency of other renewables – primarily wind and solar.

As explained, the next-generation geothermal technologies will no longer lean on the conventional hydrothermal reservoirs underground, instead, the drilling will be done on dry rocks or independent reservoirs will be engineered with the application of hydraulic stimulation or extensive horizontal drilling – and with the injection of new fluids, the geothermal resource could be brought out into the surface.

By parallelism, it was specified that the emerging EGS and AGS development platforms for geothermal could be regarded as ‘technology cousin’ to the fracking system first introduced in the oil and gas industry – which so far had yielded higher success rates; while also saving costs on drilling.

In the recently concluded CERAWeek conference in Houston, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm asserted that “geothermal has such enormous potential. If we can capture the ‘heat beneath our feet,’ it can be the clean, reliable, baseload scalable power for everybody -- from industries to households. “

The US energy chief added “at scale, this market is significant: we're talking about at least $250 billion investment opportunity to meet the goal that we have for 90 gigawatts of capacity by 2050. “

She conveyed that “recent demonstrations—both at DOE and in the private sector—are driving rapid cost reductions in geothermal, on the order of 50% reduction in the past two years.”

Granholm qualified that the advanced geothermal technologies “use all of the skills and infrastructure of traditional oil and gas drilling,” with her noting that “the oil and gas industry is incredibly well-positioned to lead in geothermal. “

And to ease the investment track for next-generation geothermal projects, the US energy chief indicated that “key barriers have already been taken out of the way. For example, all federal oil and gas leases can be converted to geothermal leases without having to go through any permitting review. “

She thus apprised private investors that “many of you can repurpose your permits and use your existing workforce, literally today, to build new geothermal projects.”