Red Sea Geothermal Provinces

“Today, over two billion people in developing countries live without any electricity. They lead lives of misery, walking miles every day for water and firewood, just to survive. What if there was an existing, viable technology, that when developed to its highest potential could increase everyone’s standard of living, cut fossil fuel demand and the resultant pollution” said Peter Meisen, President, Global Energy Network Institute in 1997. Even though energy is available, technology was not matured enough to tap this energy in the nineties. Now, with the advancement of drilling technology, extracting heat from hot rocks has become a reality. Very soon when CO2 replaces the circulation fluid to extract heat from granites then both fossil fuel based and renewable energy sources will coexists balancing the CO2 emissions and providing energy, food and water security to the rich and the poor countries.

Red Sea rift represents the youngest spreading ridges in the world with a vast amount of heat energy stored on either side. The Red Sea is surrounded by countries with a weak economy. Developing a geothermal energy based economy in countries like Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia will provide food and water security to these countries while for other countries, geothermal energy will help in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Although geothermal energy sources are available in all the countries since the opening of the Red Sea, millions of years ago, this was not brought to the light. Oil importing countries became highly dependent on the oil rich countries to sustain their economy and growth and thus remained poor.

This book unfolds the huge energy source, hydrothermal and EGS, for the benefit of the poor countries to reduce poverty and lift the socio economic status of these countries. The book deals with i) future energy demand, ii) CO2 emissions associated with fossil fuel based power plants, iii) black carbon emissions associated biomass energy source and iv) strategies to reduce CO2 emissions by using geothermal energy as energy source mix in all the countries—oil exporting and oil importing countries— around the Red Sea. The amount of energy available from hot granites in all the countries is well documented. EGS being the future energy source for mankind, this book will form the basis for future research by...read more...