Sage Geosystems, a Houston-based developer of geothermal energy and storage technologies, has a Department of Defense contract to examine the feasibility of installing a geothermal power system for Ft. Bliss. The U.S. Army Climate Strategy has a target of reducing greenhouse gasses from its facilities by 50% by 2030 (with a net-zero goal by 2050) and installing a microgrid on every base by 2035 in order to enhance energy security. 

Harnessing Dry Rock Geothermal Energy

A unique aspect of Sage’s technology is that it strives to tap into heat and pressure in what are known as dry-rock formations. Most installed geothermal systems are based on hydrothermal formations, where the geology interacts with existing water near the surface to produce steam. While the latter are relatively easy to extract heat from to run turbines for electricity, they are also relatively rare and relegated to regions with volcanic activity. 

“There are 16 gigawatts of geothermal power generation around the world,” said Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems. “And all of that is hydrothermal, which geologically is a rare occurrence. Our understanding of geology and drilling techniques are enabling us to realize a goal of deploying geothermal energy everywhere.”

Sage’s technique drills down into rock formations to a depth of 9,000 to 20,000 feet where the ambient temperature is between 218 and 485 degrees Fahrenheit. This heat exists essentially everywhere. Fluid pumped into well reservoirs is heated by the surrounding rock and is then extracted to run a Rankine cycle turbine that runs on lower temperatures. Even better, it can heat “supercritical” CO2 (which has been pressurized to a near-solid state) to drive a turbine, which Taff says is more efficient. Sage has designed and built and is now testing a supercritical CO2-cycle generator. 

In a production facility, about 18 wells are envisioned that would produce a steady output of 50MW, enough to power at least 10,000 homes. Not all the wells are active at the same time. The process of introducing fluid to be heated and extracted eventually cools the surrounding rock. However, this heats back up again over time due to the ambient geological conditions. Plant managers rotate active wells, rather like farmers rotate crops, to keep the facility productive. 

Utilizing Fossil-Fuel Industry Tech

Taff said the company makes use of “off the shelf” drilling and related equipment from the oil and gas industry to construct its geothermal wells and reservoir fields. It’s an interesting example of fossil fuel technology being used to create clean energy. 

“Our technology relies on geological analysis and modeling that also originated in the oil and gas drilling industry,” Taff said. 

If the economics prove promising, the Ft. Bliss feasibility study could evolve into a test facility. Sage performed a similar study at the U.S. Air Force’s Ellington Field base in south Texas two years ago and is now building a prototype geothermal plant there. The technology can also be applied to long-term energy storage by using the Earth’s heat to keep fluid reservoirs at usable temperatures, ready to be tapped. The company has a contract with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to build a 3MW geothermal energy storage facility for deployment later this year. 

Earth Day 1970 brought people (mostly white, young, and liberal) together on college campuses and in school auditoriums. High schoolers biked through smog-choked Denver and picked up litter on the state capitol lawn. Walter Cronkite hosted a CBS News special at the end of the day in which he concluded, “As a demonstration, it was mixed—beyond expectations here, far below there.” 

He underestimated.

Earth Day rode on a growing movement for environmental reform. Congress had passed the Clean Air Act in 1963 and the National Environmental Policy Act in January 1970. But actions accelerated after Earth Day, including—in fairly short order—the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency; the passage of the Clean Water Act, National Forest Management Act, and Endangered Species Act; and the beginning of the process to phase out leaded gasoline.

Earth Day largely succeeded in its goals: Skies have cleared up considerably from where they were, even in places like LA (although it still has a long way to go). And urban sewers like New York’s East River are now prime waterfront property. What’s more, Earth Day was part of a global trend of eco reform. Paris’s Seine River will (probably) be a competition venue at this year’s Summer Olympics. EarthDay.org claims to be active in more than 190 countries. 

Earth Day’s 1990 Reboot

In my freshman year of college—two decades after the first Earth Day—I joined a coalition of students in Washington, D.C., who united with Hayes and other earlier-generation leaders to reboot the movement.

Some of the environmental threats were still obvious and in the popular zeitgeist. “I’ve gotten real concerned over what’s going to happen with all the garbage,” Andie MacDowell’s character tells her therapist in the 1989 movie Sex, Lies, and Videotape. I felt the same. I could easily smell Staten Island’s massive Fresh Kills Landfill when I visited my big sister in New York City in the early 1990s. (It’s since been buried and turned into a park.)

But climate change was largely invisible. You couldn’t see the floods, droughts, disappearing glaciers, or planetwide coral bleaching that were, at that point, mostly just predicted to happen. So public attention focused on the obvious—like all that garbage. Recycling bins appeared everywhere. My “earthy-crunchy” friends and I even dug through trash cans on campus to redirect glass, aluminum, and plastic to the proper containers.

Corporate America jumped on the new environmentalist wave—in its marketing. The chemical industry assured the public that plastic could be rejuvenated at scale—part of many proclamations by companies that were often little more than feel-good advertising. Three decades later, as little as 21% of all U.S. recyclables make it into the bin, according to new research from The Recycling Partnership. And almost all the plastic that does still ultimately ends up in landfills, according to Greenpeace, which concluded that recycling plastic at scale is essentially impossible.

Of course climate change was on activists’ minds decades ago: It was already the biggest concern for many in my circles. But it was a lot harder to communicate to the public. Earth Day got a second reboot in 2000 to focus more on this greatest of challenges.

Earth Day in the Climate Era

Today is the 54th anniversary of Earth Day. That’s not the kind of round number that usually triggers a retrospective. But this is the most significant Earth Day in decades—the first in which the planet has consistently passed the 1.5 C warming mark that portends a point of no return.

Climate change has met our expectations from all those years ago—in the worst way. And it’s no longer hidden. Unprecedented Canadian forest fires choked the east coast last year and are expected to this year. Torrential rains just doused the Arabian Peninsula, of all places. Half the world’s coral reefs will be subjected to bleaching ocean temperatures this year, and global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. The list could go on for pages and pages.

But many of the most hopeful expectations have also come true—especially in green power. Since 1977, solar panel costs have dropped from $126 per watt to 26 cents—and solar is now recognized to be the cheapest form of energy in most cases. Wind power prices are actually dropping faster than experts had predicted just a few years ago. CO2 emissions per capita have fallen considerably in the U.S. and China.

The progress on electric vehicles is stunning. General Motors’s all-electric EV1 was quite sophisticated when it debuted in 1996, and even pretty respectable by today’s standards. It was notoriously expensive to develop and produce, however. GM got cold feet, shut down production, and in 2003 began a process of literally crushing nearly all the models as their leases expired. 

But the product’s demise inspired Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning to found Tesla Motors in 2003. Electric vehicles are now the leaders in innovation and style. They may not be taking off as fast as boosters had hoped. But their growth rate is in line with how all new technology gradually ramps up. Sure, electric vehicles accounted for just 7.6% of the U.S. auto market in 2023, but that’s up from 5.9% in 2022, and it could top 30% by the end of the decade, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Changing Views

Hearts and minds have changed, too. Environmental values have progressed from the earthy-crunchy minority to the bulk of people today. A Pew Research Center survey (from 2021) found that the majority of every U.S. generation, from Boomers up, feels that addressing climate change should be a top priority. The percentages generally go higher as respondents’ age goes lower. And the partisan divide may be fading. About half of Millennials and adult Gen Zers who identify or lean Republican felt that addressing climate change needs to be a priority. (Another study shows that anxiety about the climate predominates among younger people across 10 countries, including the U.S.)

A Deloitte survey found that slight majorities of Millennials and working-age Gen Zers in 44 countries research a company’s environmental impact and policies before accepting a job (though far fewer would quit over what they learn).

And many corporations have progressed from greenwashing to serious sustainability commitments that might meet with approval, such as in material sourcing, waste reduction, green-energy purchasing, and more. Several of these efforts are led by people Worth has honored in the Worthy 100 and Groundbreaking Women, such as Vincent Eckert (Swiss Re), Alex Liftman (Bank of America), and Rachel Slaybaugh (DCVC).

Do all these positive technological and cultural developments bring hope that humanity will turn back from the brink? Yes. Are they a guarantee? No. 

Stay tuned.

Musk stated that this new batch of layoffs is due to a “duplication of roles”; however, there is a more plausible culprit. For the first time in the company’s history, its stock has been down over 31% year-to-date, as reported by Business Insider. Furthermore, Fast Company reports that sales have fallen by 8.5% each year since 2020. The company’s analysts describe this as a disaster, as some of Tesla’s competitors—such as Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, and BMW—have increased their sales in Q1. 

But Tesla isn’t alone. Ford, for example, has recently announced a delay in rolling out its new line of electric pickups and SUVs. Ford explained that it will first work on adding gas-electric hybrids, citing a slower-than-expected EV sales market as the reason for the change.

EV Market Shift Isn’t a Reason to Panic

Over the past few months, we have all heard about how the slowing EV market keeps us from hitting our CO2 emission-reduction goals. But there is no reason to panic, as the industry is following the natural product adoption process. 

Any marketing or sociology course will likely include Everett M. Rogers’s idea of the “adoption curve.” It details who and to what degree consumers adopt a new technology or product. Any population can be split into five categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. 

The Adoption Stages

Innovators make up about 2.5% of the overall population. They’re eager to try anything new, not scared off by risk or the idea of failure. You can find them on crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo or Kickstarter, investing in products still in their conceptual stage. 

Then you have early adopters, who make up a whopping 13.5%. They’re willing to work around or ignore kinks in a product. But unlike innovators, they’re not as willing to risk failure. Thus, they’ll test it out before preaching it to the choirs. Think of them as the first people to own a Blackberry or iPhone. Were there bugs? Yes. Did they care? No. Did they preach about the usefulness of either product? Also, yes. 

Then, you get to the early and late majority, who together make up 68% of the population. The only real difference between the two is that the early majority is more trustworthy of data that shows a product or technology does solve a problem, at which point they are willing to try it out.

Lastly, there are laggards, who make up the remaining 16%. These are the few who refuse to try new tech even if a product is objectively better than its predecessor. They won’t naturally adopt it; rather, they must be convinced of its use and value time and time again before they even think it might be worth a look.

Where Did the Consumers Go?

So, how does this connect back to Tesla and EVs? 

Simple. Environmentalists, journalists, and market analysts alike were excited about early growth because they looked at sales data driven by innovators and early adopters. Now, we’re confronted by the reality of persuading the majority—which takes time. We jumped the gun in our excitement. That’s all. 

Let’s be frank: EVs have kinks that the majority do not want to deal with. Consumer Reports’ latest annual car reliability survey found that “EVs from the past three model years [have] 79% more problems than conventional cars.” The most common issues are with the battery and charging system, which would be the equivalent of a traditional car having an issue with its gas tank.

If you’re wondering where the majority is comfortable, that’s hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). The latter vehicles can run on battery power for an average day around town and then switch to a gas-electric mix if they have to go further. When Pat Ryan, CEO of the car shopping app CoPilot, spoke with NPR, he stated, “The mainstream has adopted hybrids, so hybrid sales are white-hot.” Also, some PHEVs qualify for federal tax credits.

Using iPhone’s Roadmap for EV Expectations

Going back to the iPhone example, we can use its adoption as a roadmap of expectations for EVs. Innovators bought the product in 2008-2009; the early adopters then naturally came in with the iPhone 3GS as the product still had some bugs but nothing that would risk failure. And then with the iPhone 4, the market exploded in 2012. The early and late majority saw the mountain of evidence on how having constant access to their emails and the internet added something to their personal or professional lives but without the bugs. But that was after three years of innovators and early adopters acting as the guinea pigs.

With EVs, we are currently in limbo between the early adopters and the early majority because of persisting issues with charging speed, range, and overall reliability—just as the iPhone was before the 4’s release. In order to have the same boom as the iPhone, EV automakers need to do what Apple did—a complete upgrade. 

The iPhone 4 introduced what are now staple features, including the retina display and Facetime. Overall, it had over 100 new features and upgrades. Steve Jobs effectively took an iron to all of the 3G and 3GS’s wrinkles (antenna gate notwithstanding), such as spotty network connections and issues caused by the battery. Sound familiar?

So, as EV production begins to roll back to a more realistic pace, please note that this is the combination of the natural adoption cycle and the need for automakers to take an iron to EVs’ proverbial wrinkles.

“There are many challenges associated with a concept power plant, and the standoff distance was one of them,” said Ryan Ramsey, First Light’s chief operations officer. “This result has now given us a clear and simpler pathway to increasing the standoff distance in a power plant, which will be several meters.”

Commercial-scale fusion reactors based on this design will require electric guns positioned far enough away to survive the intense heat of the reactor chamber and still be accurate enough to hit the fuel target.

Kicking Off a Fusion Reaction

A number of companies are pursuing various approaches to achieving sustained fusion reactions as a means of generating electricity. First Light is among those focused now on the inertial containment process, where pressure from the bombardment energy helps achieve the conditions necessary for fusion. Other popular methods use electromagnetic fields to produce the needed pressure.

The U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility (NIF) now almost routinely announces headline-grabbing inertial containment advances. These are often touted as examples of how commercial fusion generation is just around the corner. In this context, “ignition” means that more power was generated from a fusion reaction than was used to create it.

According to First Fusion’s Ramsey, the ignition demonstration at the NIF in December 2022 was a watershed moment for inertial fusion. “NIF’s result has revolutionized the way we think of fusion and is one of the biggest milestones towards developing a commercial fusion source, because it proves that the core physics works,” he said.

A Simpler, Cheaper Ignition System

However, NIF’s mission does not necessarily include commercial fusion development, and its expansive and expensive laser-based system is not practical for sustained power generation. 

The trick is accomplishing ignition using more modest means that can be scaled into a commercial power generation setting. First Light has settled on an approach to ignition that uses lower-powered electric guns to create intense pressure instead of massive lasers that create intense heat, as at the NIF.

First Light’s system fires coin-shaped metal alloy projectiles at a special gel surrounding the hydrogen fuel. This gel transmits the inertial energy of impact into a pressure wave that compresses the hydrogen atoms, triggering fusion and a massive release of energy.

Ramsey characterized the design of the fuel-gel package as the company’s “secret sauce” that enables it to use projectiles that can be fired at much lower power levels than laser-powered, heat-based inertial containment systems require. Individual fuel packages may be dropped into a chamber and then hit by projectiles accelerated to hypersonic speeds. The projectiles are pulse-fired at targets, with each ignition event creating intense heat that turns water into steam that drives a turbine to generate electricity. 

Achieving Commercial Scale

First Light says its recent achievement demonstrates that its electric guns can be made accurate, powerful, and reliable enough to deliver projectiles on targets consistently in a power plant setting. At the same time, fusion is still a bit hazy as to when it will generate electricity for consumers. Estimates range from a decade to never. Consider First Fusion’s achievement: There is a long way to go from 10 cm to several meters. Also, the electric gun is only one part of the problem. 

“We have various streams progressing in parallel, too,” Ramsey said. “A major focus for us is to continually improve our amplifier technology that is wrapped around the fuel capsule.” He adds that the company will continue to design and develop a pilot power plant based on its projectile fusion approach. 

The important features of inertial containment remain in laboratory projects and simulations. At the same time, the radical improvement in the standoff range of the electric gun, one of its key components, shows that the way forward is promising.

While flying private does emit more carbon per person than riding coach or even first class, the overall scale of the pollution is relatively small. Aviation is responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization, and private jets account for 2% of that 2%.

What’s more: The business aviation sector has been at the leading edge of efforts to decrease carbon emissions. And it offers various programs for flyers looking to reduce their environmental impacts.

Sustainable Aviation Innovations

Private aviation manufacturers pioneered innovations such as lighter composite materials and fuel-reducing winglets that have been adopted by the airline industry.

Embraer, which has manufactured the best-selling light jet for the past decade, its Phenom 300, is developing the Energia family of concept aircraft using renewable energy propulsion technology. Under development are hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid-electric airplanes, and dual-fuel engines that could, for instance, run on traditional jet fuel or hydrogen.

Bombardier, which makes the Global 7500, a private jet that can fly nonstop from Hong Kong to New York, manufactures both its long-range business jets and the super-midsize Challenger 3500 with an environmental product declaration. The verified EPD measures the impact from design to production and over the plane’s lifetime. That includes supply chains, down to the wood veneers that adorn the cabin finishings.

In December, Textron Aviation launched SustainableAdvantage with industry sustainability solutions provider 4Air to help aircraft owners reduce carbon emissions. It already uses renewable, zero-emission wind energy for manufacturing at its Kansas production facilities.

Carbon Offsets for Flights

Large and small private jet flight providers have been offering carbon offsets for over a decade—allowing flyers to invest in carbon-reduction projects to make up for the emissions from their flights. Stratos Jet Charters, an Orlando-based charter broker, first offered a carbon-offset option for clients when it launched in 2007.

According to buyer’s guide Private Jet Card Comparisons (of which I’m founder and editor-in-chief), more than three dozen fractional and jet card providers currently offer carbon offsets for clients.

Sentient Jet, which invented the jet card in 1999, includes in its price 300% offsets to account for warming emissions. Since 2021, it has offset 1,339,235 metric tons of CO2.

The offset efforts range from forestry projects in Massachusetts and Tennessee to installing efficient cookstoves in Malawi and funding renewable energy projects in India and Turkey.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel

Not all offset programs are as effective as claimed, and they aren’t enough on their own to reduce emissions. The private aircraft industry is undertaking deeper emission-cutting efforts.

VistaJet says it is on its way to being carbon neutral by 2025—25 years ahead of the industry’s goal. Its efforts include carbon offsets but also more efficient flight planning, eliminating onboard plastics, and cleaning up the vast supply chains it takes to operate one of the world’s largest private jet fleets.

Along with all the other providers, VistaJet is also promoting sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, which can be made from municipal waste, used cooking oil, biomass or other sources in place of petroleum. SAF has the potential to reduce carbon emissions by up to 80%.

NetJets, the world’s largest private flight provider, has invested in a facility in the Philippines that will turn trash into SAF. Like most providers, it has focused beyond flying to ensure its corporate offices are carbon neutral.

SAF is still just a tiny fraction of the jet fuel market, accounting for less than 1%, and it can cost 3-5 times as much as traditional fuel. (Although no planes run on 100% SAF, but rather a blend with standard fuel.) But many private aviation companies are offering it as an option, helping to build demand and foster the industry.

Another challenge is that the places where SAF is available still need to be expanded. To counter that problem, Victor, a U.K.-based broker, now allows clients to choose SAF for each of their charter flights using a process called book and claim. That means even if SAF isn’t available for their flight, the sustainable fuel they purchased is used by another aircraft at a different location, thus reducing output. Jet Aviation, a unit of General Dynamics and a leading private jet management company and charter operator, does the same for its customers.

And those six-minute celebrity flights that create such a stir are what’s called “empty-leg repositioning.” After an airplane drops off its owner, it must then fly empty to an airport with available parking spots. There’s a shortage of spots, in part, due to protests against expanding airports.