California has a stated goal of making its energy production carbon neutral by 2045 — but in order to accomplish that goal, it will need to ramp up both its clean energy production and its clean energy storage capacity.
Now, efforts to turn an oil field into a geological thermal energy storage facility could be a big step in the right direction, YaleEnvironment360 reported.
Kern County has long relied on its oil fields for jobs. Now, with dirty, polluting energy sources like oil going out of fashion, the county is looking to turn toward clean energy production and storage instead.
Aiding in those efforts are the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and a private investment group, which are attempting to retrofit depleted oil wells so that they can store solar energy in super-heated groundwater. The project, called GeoTES, is being referred to as “the world’s first attempt to store solar energy in a natural geologic reservoir,”…
