June 4, 2021

Team Profile:
NZ's Pathway to Supercritical
contributor(s)

Melissa Climo

photo credit:
Brad Scott

Supercritical Geothermal: What is it? Why is it important for Aotearoa? How do we get to a supercritical future?

We recently met in Wellington with representatives from government ministries, departments and agencies. Our aim was to talk about geothermal advantages, and to introduce supercritical geothermal. And because we like to share, you can download the presentation here.

We discussed economic viability, the timelines to supercritical being business-as-usual, de-risking exploration, resource sustainability and more. Every time we talk about supercritical, these conversations help to improve our key messages, to challenge our assumptions, and to inform the development of a supercritical strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand.

Our goal in the Geothermal: The Next Generation programme is to support supercritical geothermal to become technically, financially, environmentally and socially viable in Aotearoa New Zealand. In structuring a strategy, we have distilled our learnings thus far down to Four Big Questions:

  1. How do we lead geothermal decarbonisation?
  2. Where are the supercritical resources?
  3. How do we drill into supercritical geothermal systems?
  4. How do we use supercritical fluids?

Yes, they are large questions.

Over the next few months we will be consulting with a range of stakeholders, communities, experts and influencers to examine these questions more closely. In particular, we will be focussing on the regulatory, scientific, engineering and investment barriers which need to be overcome to answer each question.

Stay tuned...

read more

categories

Business Case & Opportunity
Learn

tags

engagement
stakeholders
geothermal: the next generation (GNG)
supercritical
supercritical strategy
geothermal
advantages
geothermal energy use
electricity generation
carbon zero 2050

Further Updates