Talking Climate Tech 026 redux

♨️ Minewater Geothermal | 🇬🇧 Drill UK Drill | 📉 Trump v Growth | 🐠 Hot Dip

Issued to subscribers 30th May 2025.

Half-term school holidays are almost over, phew 😅

It's ok, no judgement here, this is a safe place - we've all been feeling it right? It's never quite as fun and playful as your typical Bluey episode 🤷‍♂️

We had my partner's Dad down to visit [thankfully!] from The North this week, County Durham. We got chatting about the minewater resource for geothermal heat, heat networks and the other local projects up in Gateshead, including Lanchester Wines.

Your usual 💸 Startup News is on hold this week, as we're diving into a Minewater Geothermal 🔦 Spotlight Part 1 feature, a change from our regular programming.

🔦 Spotlight

Minewater Geothermal ♨️

Firstly, is Minewater a geothermal energy resource? Yes. Qualified for the avoidance of doubt, as this comes up in discussions on LinkedIn by Geothermal evangelists who think Geothermal can only be hot springs in a handful of volcanic locations globally.

Not by me, but by Geologists and Geothermal experts, and the British Geological Society - here is a Minewater system scope:

UK Opportunity 🇬🇧

Decarbonising Heat is the big elephant in the room of UK Gov. policy right now - we continue to push forward with Transport and Power decarbonisation, but Heat is somewhat neglected - heating homes, buildings and heating water accounts for over 40% of Great Britain’s energy consumption and around 20% of our greenhouse gas emissions [DESNZ] - it's something we need to rapidly progress.

Simon Todd explored this for us in a previous article on decarbonising Heat via Geothermal in the UK:

Geothermal to Accelerate the Decarbonisation of UK Heat

The decarbonisation of Heat is a major challenge for the UK. It represents approximately 50% of our energy use, ranking ahead of Transport and Power.

KonfabSimon Todd

We need all the tools in the box, and we happen to have significant legacy mine infrastructure. The #heatbeneathourfeet via Minewater offers great promise and opportunity - it's right there, at relatively shallow depth. The temperature is well-suited to be boosted with heat pumps for heat networks. The drilling and infrastructure costs are reduced due to the previous industrial subsurface activity.

Relatively speaking, this is low-hanging fruit we can accelerate deployment on. What does the scale look like?

...there are just over 6 million homes, and over 300,000 offices and businesses above abandoned coal mines.

Locationally, it also addresses the Just Transition and the opportunity to return value to those regions previously impacted by the socio-economic impacts of mine closures. New jobs, levelling-up, low-cost renewable heat - we are ticking all the right boxes. ✅

Project Progress ⛏️

Is this new ground [😄] for the UK, are we leading the charge? Yes and no - we aren't first out of the gate. The IEA have been pushing this along over the last few years, and two EU projects have been progressed in Germany and the Netherlands.

And in Germany, a demonstrator project:

a mine thermal energy storage system with water heated up to 60°C.
Three wells have been drilled into the former colliery below the Fraunhofer IEG site at Bochum. A 30 kW solar collector has been installed, with heated water injected into the mine...the pilot became fully operational in 2023.

Part 2 in next week's newsletter will look at the Gateshead Minewater Heat Network, the Lanchester Wines project, plus what's next!

🔎 Deeper Dive

Heatwave 🌊

It's getting hotter round here, dip a toe in for a paddle and you might be thinking you are in the Med. we are in the midst of a localised ocean/sea heatwave, at +4℃. More here.

Temperatures in the seas around the UK and Ireland have soared in the past week with some areas now 4C warmer than normal, with potential implications for marine life

Trump Watch 💥

Another busy week in the 'land of the free' [sic], what has the less cool of the Mr T's been up to?

Quite a lot as usual - not even any time for Golf this week, remarkable - I'm sure he will get his average bac-up again!

Big Beautiful Bill 💣

Lots going on here, most notably it's the vehicle to dismantle the IRA funding for climate tech and clean energy innovation. Oh, and of course, there is Medicaid, Affordable Care, Food Benefits, State Benefits, etc.

You can read the full breakdown and receipts for all the impacts here. The tax cuts for the wealthiest are estimated in the $trillions, and it's likely to add $3-4 trillion to the national debt. More here.

Are you sensing the hokey-kokey in-out, backwards-forwards, upside-down nature of the Trump chaos? One reporter asked about TACO this week - the tariff merry-go-round labelled by Wall St.

"TACO trade," which stands for "Trump always chickens out"

"Don't ever say what you said," Trump told the reporter. "That's a nasty question."

More on that fabulous exchange here. 🤣

Back to the Big Beautiful Bill and the impact on Climate Tech industries and the Energy Transition - well, yes, it's massive.

Following on from last week's chart from Cleanview, 78% of new clean energy projects are built in Republican districts. Here is another - 43GW of IRA projects that have benefited GOP States to date:

More on the hold-outs, or lack of them, here. As it now heads to the Senate, let's hope for more robust pushback from Republicans as they battle with the dilemma of local growth, manufacturing, jobs, and low-cost clean power, versus bending the knee.

The impact of the IRA cull - Energy Innovation has modelled it:

• Between 2026 and 2034 (the reconciliation window), national GDP decreases by nearly $1.1 trillion, cumulatively
• Wholesale power prices increase roughly 50 percent by 2035 from the loss of new generation capacity
• Cumulative annual consumer energy costs increase more than $16 billion in 2030 and more than $33 billion by 2035
• Jobs fall by more than 830,000 in 2030 and nearly 720,000 in 2035

Magic it Away 🪄

Now the EPA is under the proverbial Jackboot, it's become quite the turncoat. Via the NY Times here, the EPA is to wave its magic wand and declare that Fossil Fuel Power Generation in the US is no longer polluting. There you go. Done. ✅

Here is a graph from the EPA, as you can see FF Power Gen is 2nd behind Transport, with a fair bit of emissions.

In its proposed regulation, the agency argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants that burn fossil fuels “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or to climate change because they are a small and declining share of global emissions. Eliminating those emissions would have no meaningful effect on public health and welfare, the agency said.

Very much contrary to the science and its own published data. Just last year, the EPA was waxing lyrical about the life-saving and health benefits from new regulations on Coal that came in under Biden's stewardship:

...by 2035 the nation would annually avoid up to 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital visits, 1,900 cases of asthma, 48,000 school absences and 57,000 lost work days

The US Power Sector contributes to the atmosphere 1.5 billion metric tonnes of emissions per year, which is more than most countries entire emissions budgets - checks notes - it would rank the US Power Sector [alone], 5th in the global account of total emissions, ahead of Japan. 🤯

Drill Britain Drill 🇬🇧

Not standing still on US fossil fuels, DJT decided it was best send out some advice to the UK and Kier Starmer, pushing for another North Sea oil and gas boom!

..."that in order to get their Energy Costs down, they stop with the costly and unsightly windmills, and incentivize modernized drilling in the North Sea, where large amounts of oil lay waiting to be taken.”

Doh, why didn't we think of that before! 🙄

Report from AP. Don has never been one to let facts and data get in the way of a good soundbite - unsurprisingly, there are a couple of issues here.

The North Sea is in decline; the Oil majors are leaving; what's left is becoming increasingly uneconomic; oil doesn't benefit the UK economically, [aside from tax collection] as we don't own it - 80% goes to global markets;

Crude production in the region fell from a peak of 3 million bpd in 1999 to just 800,000 bpd in 2022, with proven oil reserves decreasing from 8.4 billion barrels in 1980 to 2.5 billion barrels in 2020

Lisa Fischer, energy systems at E3G:

The U.K.’s basin is fundamentally in decline… Propping it up is like pouring money down the sink. 

On the Gas front, Norwegian gas is cleaner with lower emission intensity; we have reduced reliance on gas to reach >50% of 2024 electricity generation from renewables.

Since the Ukraine invasion in 2020, the additional cost of Gas has impacted the UK by £90bn over regular wholesale costs. 🤯

It's the transition away from a fossil fuel-based economy to a clean power, delivering energy security, less global and geopolitical price volatility, and fewer emissions, that will benefit the UK.

Crypto Grift Continues 💰

The big diner went off, all sorts of big-wig random people coughed up to come and garner the President and the US's favour.

On why the blind trust isn't blind, obviously 🤣

More on the wider Leavitt defence here - hint, it's paper thin.

Who was the top bidder? Have a guess...yes, it's the former #1 crypto enemy of the state, Justin Sun, who you might remember from a previous Newsletter...

"Sun has been in the news in the last few months because, after he ploughed $75 million into Trump family crypto, per NBC News, the SEC put a 60-day pause on the charges of market manipulation and offering unregistered securities it had been pursuing against him since 2023"

🏡 Konfab News

Climate Tech Impact_South 01 🚀

We have lift off!

It happened - I put out the call with just 2 weeks' notice, and people arrived, [a very pleasant surprise], for a climate tech community building, social, learning, and fun evening.

We had a very relevant and appropriate mix of stakeholders looking to drive collaboration, impact and growth in the South:

🛳️ Maritime 🌊 Tidal energy 🌊 Wave energy ☀️ Solar ♨️ Infrared heating 🧠 Data analytics 🎓 Academia 🚸 Education 👩‍🔬 Scientific 🎨 Creatives 🗣️ PR ✨Talent and resourcing 🤑 Finance + Legal 📝 Local Gov.

Great talk from Damian Bemben of Ada Mode, on applications of AI in the Energy Sector, and some AI 101 for context.

Fantastic support from Southampton City Council and Barclays Eagle Labs, who partnered on the venue and refreshments. 👏

Exciting news for Climate Tech Impact_South 02, the University of Southampton will be hosting in September, and our guest speaker spots are coming together already - stay tuned!

😃 Good Stuff

Pylon of the Month ⚡

After last week's cultural piece, this week's Tower of Power from Pylon HQ does have a whiff of literary culture and drama to it....allow me to set the scene:

A bearded man lies flat on his back, arms wide apart, in a field. He has one leg. Nearby, some wires hang from the base of an electricity pylon, to which a box seems to be attached. The man is Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 46 years old, a political militant, publisher and millionaire.

Pylon Murder Mystery!? 🔎

Feltrinelli was responsible for translating and publishing the novel Dr Zhivago in the West after the manuscript was smuggled out of the Soviet Union. 📚

His death, murder? Perhaps not, apparently the result of trying to blow up the electricity pylon as part of his involvement with ultra-left politics.

The irony, I suspect he might be blowing up something quite different if around today. 🤣

On that bombshell....

Thanks as always, let's keep pushing forward - remember, the momentum is unstoppable despite everything you might see and hear! 🌍

Stay warm, cool, dry, wet and safe wherever you are 🙏

Kane

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