How a Technology Similar to Fracking Can Store Renewable Energy Underground Without Lithium Batteries

California and Texas are among the states in the U.S. installing giant lithium-ion batteries to store renewable energy to use when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. These batteries are reducing the use of fossil fuels as a backup energy source when demand is high.

Eversource Energy, a utility company in Massachusetts, installed a networked geothermal system that provides heat for residential and commercial buildings across the city of Framingham. The connected system allows excess heat from one building to be redirected to another that needs it. It’s the first of its kind in the United States.

A utility company in Framingham, Massachusetts, worked with climate advocates to build a unique geothermal heating and cooling project that spans a whole neighborhood. A group of residential and commercial buildings share the infrastructure necessary to harness stable underground temperatures for heating and cooling, which reduces their greenhouse gas emissions and energy bills.

Thermal storage technologies are lowering businesses’ energy costs and carbon emissions while reducing strain on the grid during peak times. Two hotels in California implemented a system that makes ice when energy demand is low and uses the ice during peak demand times to cool the building.

In Gateshead, England, Lanchester Wines keeps its storage warehouse at a stable temperature year-round using geothermal heat from an abandoned coal mine nearby. The water that naturally floods the mine is geothermally heated below ground, then a heat pump system pulls that water to the surface to transfer that heat to the warehouse.

A regional cap-and-trade program in the northeast United States has reduced carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and led to overall job gains in the economy. Up to 50 percent of the region’s CO2 reductions are attributable to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative program and nine of the states participating report training more than 8,000 workers.

Dozens of states across the US are adopting programs that offer solar power for low-income communities in order to cut down on their utility costs and provide renewable energy that they previously would not have had access to. Some of these programs also incorporate other social goals into their programs, such as offering job training or developing sites of backup energy should there an outage. Solar development is currently one of the fastest growing industries in the US, and analysts predict that the nation will be able to hold over 2,000 megawatts of solar capacity this year alone.

There are state differences in green investment and this can affect the economy of each, especially post-recession. Green investing can create more jobs and have an indirect impact by encouraging more business due to cheaper electric bills from greater use of renewable energy.

An economic shift to renewable energy could take decades, but thanks to rapidly evolving disruptive technologies, dropping prices of solar and wind power sources, and increasing market demand for green business, the new age of renewable energy could encompass the world economy much more quickly.

Rahr Malting, a brewery in Shakopee, MN, has found a creative way to sustainably address their energy needs. The company partners with the Mdewakanton Sioux Community to use waste barley hulls from the malting factory to generate electricity for their facilities, selling excess power to the public grid while the waste heat sprouts the malt to make beer.