Vision - Ocean Geothermal Energy Foundation

Vision Statement

To solve the problems of global warming and climate change, the world needs a new energy source to replace coal, oil and other carbon-based fuels. OGEF’s mission is to fund the R&D needed to tap into the earth’s vast geothermal energy resources on the ocean floor. Help us develop the renewable energy technology that will reduce global warming and stop climate change.

OGEF Goals

The most recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change establish that climate change is accelerating and is already damaging the environment and the world economy. The evidence summarized in the reports also makes it clear that global warming results from human activity, including the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. These factors have been analyzed for more than a decade, and yet 110,000 megawatts of the new electric generating capacity built in the US during the ten years between 2002 and 2012 was natural gas-fired, almost double the 58,000 megawatts of new wind- and solar-powered capacity installed during the same period.

Wind and solar are renewable; they are also, however, intermittent resources. Because of the need to balance intermittent forms of generation, California and Germany (both of which have installed large amounts of wind and solar power) are considering batteries and other forms of storage for electricity. Such storage is, however, expensive, and it results in wasting some of the energy due to inefficiencies, instead of creating more energy. A much better response to the need to replace fossil fuel electrical generation is to use geothermal energy, which provides baseload electricity and is cost competitive with other forms of renewable power. There are not, however, enough geothermal resources in the conventional reservoirs on land to satisfy these needs.

There are, however, immense geothermal resources in the ocean floor that can be found, developed and utilized efficiently and effectively to provide the foundation for the generation of 100% of electricity from renewables worldwide. The Ocean Geothermal Energy Foundation, or “OGEF,” is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the first goal of which is to research and develop a system to use geothermal energy from the ocean floor, which is a vast resource never before accessed for electricity generation. This resource has the capacity to solve many of the world’s problems with energy, including global warming and climate change.

As OGEF’s initial goal is achieved and the generating systems are in operation, OGEF’s second major goal can be pursued. The solution to global warming and climate change will require not only the replacement of coal and other carbon-based fuels for the generation of electricity, but also the replacement of petroleum and other carbon–based fuels for transportation. The two most likely replacements are electricity and hydrogen. To the extent that electricity is the replacement, the extra off-peak electricity from the ocean generators will provide much of the energy needed. To the extent that hydrogen is the replacement, the extra off-peak electricity from the ocean generators will be used in electrolysis stations. Electrolysis is more efficient with supercritical water than with liquid water, so the stations will be placed on the ocean floor to take advantage of more of the supercritical resources.

The result of achieving these two goals will be the unification of the energy industry. Currently, the energy industry is divided into two separate industries: the production of fuels for transportation and heating; and the production of electricity. The electricity industry must be able to adjust distribution immediately to the level of demand. The production of fuels, however, is kept at a relatively constant level and substantial inventories of fuel are created and subsequently used as needed. In the future, once OGEF’s goals are realized, electricity generated in excess of current demand will be used to create inventories of transportation energy; temporary increases in demand for electricity will be met by reducing temporarily the production of inventories of transportation energy.

OGEF’s research and development will assure that the systems will perform with the efficiency and effectiveness that is needed to compete with fossil-fuels. Such performance will rely on the very high temperature and large volume of the resources and on current developments in technology such as turbines operating on supercritical CO2 and advancements in the efficiency of electrolysis. The research and development will also assure that the systems can stop global warming and reduce climate change.

OGEF’s goal is to finish the research and to develop the needed technologies. If you want to support these activities, please donate. Research and development takes money, and the more support that OGEF gets, the faster the research and development will progress. Thanks!