A lot of hydroelectric depends on snow pack and glacier runoff that is being adversely affected by global warming. Solar and wind are the only robust hedges against a warm up that might ultimately severely curtail river flow.
replyWe have a lot of uranium and nuclear is fairly renewable at least in the span of a few centuries. The waste issue is a problem.
If it goes down, what happens to all the buildings using geo/earth heat with these probe heads to collect the energy?
replyDoes this effect occur in lets say 10-20 years or is this longterm like 50y+?
At a certain point there won’t be enough heat recovered from the geothermal side of the loop to generate steam on the process side of the loop and power generation will cease. I’m not smart enough to calculate how long that will take, however. I think you could still use the geothermal energy at a lower temperature for district heating and cooling, but a mechanical engineer would be more qualified to answer that.
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