Meager Creek Development Corp is taking a new approach to a well-known geothermal resource in Canada – using the earth’s energy to produce green hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a hot commodity in the energy transition. It can be used in fuel cells for cars or blended for home heating. However, it takes energy to produce and that energy isn’t always green.
In the coastal mountains near Vancouver, Canada, Meager Creek could be the first place to use geothermal energy to create green hydrogen and bring it to market.
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Read the video transcript:
Madison Ritchie, vice president of operations, WellDunn Exploration
What’s interesting about Canada is we assume that we don’t have volcanoes when we do. An active volcano is considered anything that’s been active within the last 10,000 years, so, we do check that box.
Craig Dunn P. Geo, president & owner of WellDunn Exploration, president of Meager Creek Development Corp
The geothermal opportunity at Meager Creek has been a known entity for over 40 years.
Madison Ritchie
This project is part of what’s called the Garibaldi Volcanic Belt.
Craig Dunn
At a place like Meager with a 200℃ opportunity at less than two kilometers, we’re actually into some of the cheapest power on the planet.
This is a ring of fire opportunity that the rest of the world has already developed.
Madison Ritchie
Countries who take advantage of geothermal energy, places like the Philippines or Iceland, they’re built on these kinds of weird weaknesses in the crust where you can have magma or this kind of heat structure come close to surface.
What’s interesting in Canada is that we’re not immune to that. We just have it in a different form.
Craig Dunn
This is going to be a green energy project that is going to be within three hours of Vancouver and potentially one of the first to develop a geothermal resource into a green hydrogen market.
Madison Ritchie
I think what’s really shifted now is we have the ability with something like a green hydrogen production where you can take the power generated from a geothermal power facility and produce a usable product, like green hydrogen, that you can then sell to the market, whether that’s from transportation to natural gas.
Craig Dunn
With the advent of 2050 goals in terms of net zero and a number of increases in carbon pricing, we’ve seen the hydrogen market change fundamentally.
Madison Ritchie
One of the big challenges I think we face on the planet is the transportation sector. For me, geothermal hydrogen can change the world in the sense that you can take something like the Earth’s heat, turn it into power, and then take that power and turn it into something that ultimately looks like fuel.
So whether it’s going into a blended natural gas for delivery to warm your home, or if it’s going into a car, that ability to transition transportation is really going to be the next step that we need to have an answer for.
And I think green hydrogen or hydrogen in general really can fit that bill in a way that nothing else really has so far.