Clean energy profile: Former Shell VP helps create new ways to create clean electricity

Content of the article

When Cindy Taff was a vice president at the oil and gas giant Shell in Houston, her middle schooler Brianna sometimes looked over her shoulder as she worked from the front.

“Why are you still working in oil and gas?” his daughter asked more than once. “Is there a future? Why don’t you move to something clean?”

The word considers Taff.

“As a parent, you want to give direction, and am I giving you the right direction?” he remembered.

At Shell, Taff is responsible for drilling wells and bringing them into production. He works in oil and natural gas which is called unconventional in the industry, because oil or natural gas is difficult to get out of the ground – it doesn’t come out like in the movies. This is a term often used for oily shale rocks. Taff is also unconventional for the industry. His friends usually tease him for driving an efficient hybrid.

Content of the article

“You don’t help oil and gas prices by driving a Prius,” he said.

_____

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a series of personal stories from the energy transition – the shift away from a fossil fuel-based world that is largely driven by climate change.

_____

Taff wants Shell to pursue energy that comes from the earth’s natural heat – geothermal energy. His team looked into it, but Shell never bailed on the project, saying it would take too much time to recoup the investment.

When Brianna was in college, she was also interested in energy, but she wanted to work in renewable energy. After the second year, in the summer of 2020, he got an internship at a geothermal company _ which was actually just launched by Taff’s former colleague at Shell – Sage Geosystems in Houston.

Now Taff looks over her shoulder and asks when she’s working from home during the pandemic.

And Sage executives also spoke to Brianna. “We could use your mom here,” he said. “Can you get him to come work for us?” Brianna remembered recently.

That’s how Cindy Taff left her 36-year career at Shell to become chief operating officer at Sage.

Content of the article

Content of the article

“I don’t know why Shell isn’t pursuing it,” he said of applying the company’s drilling expertise to thermal energy. “Then I got this great opportunity to play oil and gas and work with these people that I respect. And also, I want to make my son proud, frankly.

Brianna Byrd, now 24, is an operations engineer and spokeswoman for the company. He is glad his mother, now CEO, left oil and gas.

“Of course I’m biased, she’s my mom, but I don’t think Sage would be anywhere without her,” he said.

The United States is the world leader in electricity generated from geothermal energy, but this kind of electricity still accounts for less than half a percent of total large-scale generation, according to the US Energy Information Administration. In 2023, most geothermal electricity will come from California, Nevada, Utah, Hawaii, Oregon, Idaho and New Mexico, where there are reservoirs of steam, or very hot water, near the surface.

The Energy Department estimates these next-generation geothermal projects, like the one Sage is building, could provide about 90 gigawatts by 2050 — enough to power 65 million homes or more. It relies on private investment, and companies like Sage are introducing this energy into areas that, until now, were considered impossible.

Content of the article

How it works

Sage has two main technologies: The first is to make electricity from heat. Hot and dry rock drilling and fracturing companies. Then an electric pump pushes the water into the fracture, heats it up, and the hot water is released to the surface that spins the turbine.

But something funny happened during the test in Starr County, Texas. By the end of 2021, the team realized that many technologies could also be used to store energy.

If it works, it could be a big deal. Now, to store energy on a large scale, the United States is adding batteries, usually of the lithium-ion type, to solar and wind projects, so they can charge and send electricity back to the grid when the sun isn’t shining or the wind is blowing. not blowing. These batteries typically provide a maximum of four hours of power.

Sage envisions some of the technology being placed in solar and wind farms. When electricity demand is low, they will use extra energy from solar or wind farms to switch on electric pumps, pumping water into underground cracks, leaving it there until electricity demand rises – storing energy below the earth’s surface for hours, days. or even weeks.

Content of the article

It’s a new way to use the technology, said Silviu Livescu, lead author of a report on the future of geothermal in Texas. Livescu knows Taff and has followed the company’s progress.

“It’s the right time for a company like Sage with a purpose, with a mission and technology to show that geothermal really is the energy source needed to tackle climate change,” said Livescu, who founded a different geothermal startup in Austin. , Texas.

Today, Taff is often out in front, talking to politicians and policy makers about the potential of geothermal energy. He attended the UN COP28 climate talks last year to share his vision of this energy.

Sage has raised $30 million to date and counting.

It is building a small (3 megawatt) geothermal energy storage system at San Miguel Electric Cooperative, Inc., south of San Antonio this year. It’s working with a US military facility in Texas that sees geothermal energy as a way to safely power bases. Sage recently announced partnerships for community heating in Bucharest, Romania; clean electricity from geothermal energy for the Meta data center, and energy storage and geothermal projects in California.

Content of the article

The company is finally testing a proprietary turbine to more efficiently convert heat into electricity.

Given his oil and gas background, Taff said he knows geothermal will only be widely adopted if costs come down. The mantra at Sage is: It will be clean and it will be cheap. He is thrilled to be working in a field he feels is on the cusp of playing a big role in cleaning up and stabilizing the power grid.

“I’ve never looked back,” she said. “I love what I do and I think it will be transformative.”

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropy, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Content of the article