The Challenges of Energy in a Finite World

Hot springs are scarce in the desert:

On Monday, a U.S. district judge halted construction of two geothermal power plants on public land in Nevada. The decision was in response to a lawsuit filed in December by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit, and the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, against the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, for approving the project.

Geothermal power plants pump hot water from deep underground and use it to generate steam to produce clean electricity. The Nevada plants are set to be built on a verdant wetland in the desert called Dixie Meadows. The suit alleges that the project threatens to dry up the hot springs that support the wetland and are of religious and cultural significance to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone. The ecosystem is also home to the Dixie Valley toad, a species that is not known to exist anywhere else on Earth.

...Geothermal power plants currently produce a small fraction of U.S. electricity — only about 0.5 percent in 2020. But an analysis by the Department of Energy found that with improvements in technology, that number could go up to 8.5 percent by 2050. Geothermal power plants have several relative advantages, in addition to not directly producing any carbon emissions. They have a small physical footprint compared to wind and solar farms, and they can provide power 24/7. This kind of always-available, dispatchable source of electricity will be critical for grid reliability as intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar increase.

...The plaintiffs have reason to be skeptical. The geothermal company behind the Dixie Meadows project, Ormat Technologies, opened a geothermal power plant in 2011 about 40 miles away on another hot springs called Jersey Valley. The springs dried up entirely a few years after the plant began operating.

The lawsuit also asserts that the project violates the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. “Many of the other springs in the area have been damaged or ruined by development,” the lawsuit says. “Dixie Meadows Hot Springs is therefore the most important and sacred spring to the Tribe, and one of the very last remaining springs in the area.” Members of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe use the site for “healing, soaking, camping, and harvesting native plants for weaving and other uses. These practices require quiet for contemplation, and darkness to see the night sky.”