Matthew Killeya: Hello and welcome to Strictly Geothermal, the official podcast of the National Geothermal Centre. I'm Matt Killeya I'm an entrepreneur and campaigner and lover of all things geothermal. Okay, so that's it for our second episode. you so much for joining us for a fascinating and thought-provoking conversation with Professor John Gluyas ⁓ from history of geothermal in the UK to talking about some of the exciting projects that we already have, from ⁓ listening to of John's stories about projects overseas.

Charlotte: And I'm Charlotte Adams, hydrogeologist and CEO of the National Geothermal Centre and a lover of rocks and water.

Matthew Killeya: So fantastic, so we're on our second episode. It's great to be back. As always, we're here to excite and engage ⁓ and people about geothermal and the huge potential it has in the UK. and things that we can learn from other countries and also some of the roadblocks, the things that we need to do to make this happen on a mass scale in the UK.

Charlotte: I hope you'll agree that we had some excellent insights there from Professor John Gluyas Thank you for joining us for our second podcast in our series. And today we're delighted to be sharing our conversation with Professor John Gluyas who has a varied career across the geo energy sector and also a founder member of the National Geothermal Center. I had the pleasure of meeting John when he left industry to join Durham University around about 20 years ago now. And that's been an incredibly... So after that conversation, I'm feeling optimistic about the National Geothermal Centre and Geothermal more widely. And I'd like to thank you very much for listening to us and I hope you'll join us next time ⁓ on Strictly Geothermal. So goodbye from me, Charlotte Adams. fruitful working relationship. I now consider John a friend as well as colleague and it's been delightful working with him over the years. So we couldn't have picked anybody better really to have a really thorough conversation about the UK geothermal

Matthew Killeya: and me, Matthew Killeya

Charlotte: Thank you. sector. So we're delighted that you can join us today, John. Thank you very much.

Jon  Gluyas: lovely to be here Charlotte, so I'm looking forward to it. Thank you.

Charlotte: And obviously you've had a varied and very impressive career from geologist to oil and gas, also founder of numerous companies, worked across the sectors, ending up in the academic sector, and also more recently to co-founding the National Geothermal Centre. It must be quite hard to choose from that impressive array of things that you've done over the years and there's more besides that we haven't even touched upon. But could you tell us about... one particular career highlight for you.

Jon  Gluyas: Well, I think, first of all, it's a roundabout way of you saying you're getting on a bit, John. So I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'll take one example from the petroleum time and then one from the academic time. I suppose the link that joins everything together for me is trying to understand the interactions in the deep earth between rocks and fluids. So in the first instance, back in 2003, I was part of a, created a company

Matthew Killeya: Yeah.

Jon  Gluyas: a of years beforehand, which became the first to redevelop a completely abandoned North Sea field. And when that field originally called Argyll, we called it, rechristened it Ardmore, came on stream, the well we drilled produced at a rate which made it in the top 10 fields in the North Sea for a brief time from a single well. And that came from time in South America, in Venezuela, understanding what people leave behind rather than searching for something new. And the second one has some parallels. Again, back in industry in 1999, I tripped over a piece of work on a field in Pakistan, which suggested the gas field that I was looking at had quite a lot of helium in it. Again, nobody was interested, but come the academic time, I was interested to find out why humanity just failed to actively search for helium and just hoped it turned up from time to time. And so we set about an exploration program which delivered the first new helium province in 100 years. And the area we found in Tanzania not only was the first new province in 100 years, it was the only one to date which is ⁓ unassociated with hydrocarbons. So both really ⁓ great joy from proving the world wrong in a way.

Matthew Killeya: Hi John, so welcome, it's great to have you here. That's really interesting listening to that. And I think I was just picking up that you were, know, obviously someone that is, looking for new opportunities ⁓ and always of slightly irritated by things that are left unused. ⁓ And I'm curious in terms of your geothermal, when did that capture your imagination, that of your career? ⁓

Jon  Gluyas: Well, Matt, you've captured me particularly well there because the idea on Geothermal goes back to a return to South America, to Bogotá in Colombia in late 1997. And ostensibly I'd gone there to buy a slice of a very old field called Canyon Limon. Huge field, huge oil and gas field. And what struck me at the time, and I can't remember how much oil it was producing. But what struck me at the time is that every day the field produced a million barrels of boiling fresh water, very little salt in the basin there. And it struck me if you're producing a million barrels a day, there are about six and a quarter barrels in a cubic meter. So 150,000 cubic meters of boiling water a day. What happens to all that energy when it cools? And it was before Google and the internet, and I worked out If a cubic centimeter losing one degree centigrade is 4.18 joules, how much is a million barrels worth? And of course, it's an enormous amount of energy. I'd asked my reservoir engineer with whom I traveled what we could do with this energy. And he said, ⁓ can't do anything. It's low grade. And the same problem I witnessed in the late ⁓ as well. Again, with a company I'd helped find, we ended up with a geriatric ⁓ old field from Shell in the North Sea producing copious amounts of boiling water and not having enough power to actually manage the field properly. And again I asked the question, what can we do with all this hot water? And again the answer was nothing. And it wasn't until I arrived in Durham and had the same conversation with a fellow engineer from across campus. And first of all he said, what's a barrel? And when I explained what a barrel was, He swore quite fruitily, sat down and said, well, with so much hot water, yes, of course you could do rather a lot. And that was in terms of thinking about power generation. And that coincided actually with my first meetings with Charlotte. And we began to swap stories on geothermal. And that's how it all began.

Charlotte: Yeah, and it's been great ever since, hasn't it, John, I would say. And translating that into many years of research and collaboration has been a fantastic opportunity. And thinking, you know, now, obviously, two years ago, you're one of the founder members of the National Geothermal Centre. So why do you feel that now is the time for the UK to get into geothermal?

Jon  Gluyas: Mm. Well, I've been thinking now is it in retrospect now is the time since the 1980s. Now, in the 1970s, there was an oil crisis. We'll probably return to thinking about the impact of that later in the conversation. But that stimulated a piece of work from the British government, which resulted in half a dozen or seven wells, I think it was being drilled across the UK to tap for geothermal. But by the time they were drilled, we were an oil producing nation. And looking back at that, the work that was done really underpinned the work over the last few years that we've done to form the National Geothermal Centre. We've recognised the resource. We've also recognised some of the things which are thwarting development. But as things stand, with the crisis over gas supply from 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and the current war in the Middle East with Iran means that what you might think is traditional resources in terms of oil and gas, because we are a net importer, are really tough. And if we could displace some of that with our home geothermal, then we'd be in a much better place in terms of energy security and inward investment and so on. So now is as good a time as any. know, with oil retailing, whatever, $150 a barrel, what better time to make the most of Hot water beneath our feet.

Matthew Killeya: That's really interesting, John. And you've touched on energy security there, which is obviously a big problem at the moment. Once again, it's reared itself as a big problem. I'm just curious, like more generally, if we think about geothermal and, are the problems that are faced by the And, you know, in a of competing technologies, are problems that can be best solved by geothermal.

Jon  Gluyas: So the UK ⁓ has an energy which covers energy use, covers heating, transport and power generation. And we've done great things in the UK using particularly wind, but now solar to displace coal and subsequently gas from that power generation sector. And yet half of all the energy we use the UK is for heating. And what we tend to do for the most part is burn gas. gas now we import most of what we require. And why do we burn gas at a thousand degrees centigrade to keep our houses warm at 25 degrees centigrade? You know, there are some easier options where geothermal would fit in very nicely and complement what we've done with the other renewables. So it's not a panacea, but it will hit what is often called the elephant in the room, and that's keeping the folk of the UK warm, particularly during these cold winter and spring months.

Charlotte: Yeah, and if we've agreed that it's a time to be doing geothermal in the UK and there's all these drivers now that we didn't have earlier on when geothermal was looked at back in history, then how do you feel? Because obviously the geology of the UK is a little bit different to some areas that you would classically associate with geothermal. But how is our geology suited and how are our resources based in the UK to supply this?

Jon  Gluyas: Well, the first thing to say with regard to that, if there's anyone in the audience that might have been down a mine in the UK, or even a cave system, the deeper you go underground, the warmer it gets. The deepest mine in the UK is Boulby on the Cleveland, Yorkshire coast, and at a kilometre down, it's about 40 degrees centigrade. That's warmer than yours and my blood, and certainly enough to keep our housing and other buildings warm. The geology, in a sense, is almost irrelevant, the heat gets greater with depth. For sure, there are some areas we can develop more easily than others and the UK has got a plethora of those, you know, from your own background and mining. We've created, what is it, 23,000 mines in the UK, nearly all of which are abandoned and all are now at ambient temperature, you water's flooded in and it's the same temperature as the rock, so we can extract heat from those. The areas we drilled both onshore and offshore for oil and gas, offshore there are 10,000 wells have been drilled. Maybe one in three has found oil or gas. Every one of them has found heat. And the same is true for the wells drilled onshore. So things like aquifers, deep aquifers where you don't have the opportunity to make potable water, you do have the opportunity of extracting heat. And then the ones that tend to hit the news more often. are the hot granites we find in Cornwall, in the Grampians and close to me here in Durham in Weylo.

Matthew Killeya: so another way that we thinking that the UK might be ⁓ well ⁓ in of pushing ⁓ further geothermal, as well as the geology, is just in terms of the skills and knowledge that we have in the UK. So we've already touched on your background in ⁓ oil and ⁓ and it like there's quite overlap there in terms of ⁓ skills and knowledge expertise. ⁓ Is that one of the reasons that UK oil and gas industry that we might be well suited to do this?

Jon  Gluyas: much so, Matt. There are currently something like 37,000 people directly employed in the petroleum industry in the UK. There's another quarter a million in the supply chain. ⁓ ⁓ industry, quite frankly, is dying. know, ⁓ going through the same old story on the TV and radio at the moment. Let's drill, drill, drill in the North Sea. Yes, you will find a little bit more oil. Yes, you will find a little bit more gas. But basically, it's played out. In other words, there is going to be a lot of drilling and very little to return for it. Those skills, those talents, that knowledge could easily be applied in geothermal. Probably one of the most impressive groups who've developed in the North Sea are the drilling engineers. know, they can place a well. Well, think of some of the wells drilled in the Wych Farm area down in Dorset go down two kilometres. and then laterally some 15 kilometres. And if we had that kind of technology applied to geothermal energy, we'd be quids in very easily to supply the heat we need across the nation. But it's not just drilling technology, it's the reservoir engineers, it's the petrophysicists, the geologists, my own discipline, but also the supply chain. We make materials which are used for transporting fluid in pipework. water is somewhat easier and somewhat safer than petroleum. So let's apply our skills to that. And if we do that, it means that we're bringing inward investment. know, we were ceasing to spend money to buy petroleum products, be it oil or gas overseas, but spending them locally in the UK. And the experience in the Netherlands over the past 20 years or so has been by promoting that process, that's attracted further inward investment. In other words, We're helping the balance of payments at a time when on the Radio 4 this morning, I picked up the news that real issue is the lack of fiscal headroom because we're spending so much of our ⁓ generated in the UK to buy energy from other people. Let's do it ourselves.

Charlotte: Yeah, and clearly there's massive opportunities there in terms of aligning with government priorities such as the job creation that you've talked about there and the economic growth that's associated with it and also in helping the UK meet its aspiration to become a clean energy superpower. And we've got a few schemes in the ground now and I was going to ask you a little bit more about those. Which do you feel are the most impressive geothermal projects? Obviously we've all got our own kind of favourites that we've had maybe more or less involvement with over the years, but what's your take on the most impressive ones?

Jon  Gluyas: Bye. Well, don't get too embarrassed, Charlotte I think the most impressive one to date in the UK is Gateshead, which, of course, we had early discussions on, but it was you who took it from that idea through to fruition, with the folks like Jim Gateshead Council. And the reason I think it's so ⁓ impressive that it's engaged with the people. You know, there's a great legacy across the UK, but particularly in the northeast of England, a memory of coal mining. And when discussing with former mining communities the opportunity to redevelop flooded mines for community-based heating, it really does touch a very positive nerve. We find ourselves being pulled by communities to deliver these kind of projects. More than that though, Gateshead was executed understanding the risks in terms of chance of success and is delivered. And even when one of the really nice twists of Gateshead in a way, and this is a great compliment to Jim Gillon and the team, is that when success was near, the gas supply companies tried to undercut them price-wise. But the Gateshead council were able to win that battle in the end and demonstrate not only the community buy-in but reduction in price. In other words, delivering energy to the people equitably, not just securely and at low environmental cost, but equitably. It's a real winner. there are now other projects which are developing in the UK. So we've got a bit of history with Gateshead. Just the other week, I think 26th of February maybe. We had our first power generation in the UK from geothermal energy down in Cornwall at the United Downs project. Wow, Ryan Law and the team there, they've taken 20 years to get there and they've overcome all kinds of obstacles. But with a well at five kilometres deep and steam being produced, we're now seeing power into the grid. And that's an amazing first. It joins a club of 35, 36 nations that have already gotten there. So it's great to be in, well, still, suppose, the Premiership or Division 1 of geothermal for power generation. thinking of the future as well, I'm really impressed by the comprehensive way with which University of York are executing their geothermal drilling, which should drill either late this year or next year. They're engaging with community, they're engaging with academia, they're engaging with industry and taking quite a challenge to well, as you well know, drilling to the lower carboniferous limestone, the same system that produces the hot water in the city of Bath and has produced hot water and oil in some systems in Lincolnshire and Hampshire and so on. But that's another great first. There are others I could mention, and I'm no doubt someone who listened to this and think. you failed to mention my project. What is good to see is that there are projects in all fronts. There are projects in Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales. The whole nation is beginning to recognise the potential here.

Matthew Killeya: Yeah, and it's really fascinating to listen to you talk about those three projects. And some of our listeners won't even know about those. it's part of job here seems to just be to try and kind of promote those and communicate them. And obviously that's part of what we're trying to do on Strictly Geothermal. So I wanted to ask you about those three projects quite different to each other. And I think earlier in our conversation, you said we could do geothermal anywhere in the UK, which is obviously a big statement and really a sort of exciting prospect. But I think just to drill down on that a little bit, like are there places where you would start or where it could work better in terms of sort of either geology or the types of buildings that need heat in certain locations?

Jon  Gluyas: But there are, clearly you need demand as well as supply. looking at the geology, the sorts of areas that work well, we've talked about the old mining areas, which are a great place to start. We mentioned as well these deep aquifers, know, the Cheshire Basin sits adjacent to the conurbations of Liverpool and Manchester. The Worcester Graben's got similar cities around that area. Down in the Wessex Basin, the only geothermal plant, we've got a leftover from those 1970 wells down in Southampton could be much better developed. So they're all areas around there. The granites potentially provide this power option. But if we also begin to, if there's a little anecdote I tend to tell when I'm giving presentations on geothermal, the only major population centre in the UK that doesn't have ⁓ a deep basin or a granite beneath it is London. And, you know, as I often say again, there's a lot of hot air in London. And when people chortle, I say, really? I know I'm being quite serious because, you know, London has been a heat island for what, two centuries or so. You only have to go in the tube on a summer's day and you realize just how flimmy, flipping hot it is. Well, it's good to say that on the Northern line, that heat from the tube is being used to heat buildings. So, you know... There are multiple opportunities there. terms of where you might of it differently, think of it on the demand side of things, ⁓ now seeing a great interest from hospitals. It's an idea I had ⁓ or four years ago, and it's now sort of spread, permeated around. I was thinking particularly around the ⁓ of ⁓ same aquifer that you find in Cheshire or in... Northern Ireland, they tend to be red sandstones. so the project was called Red Beds, Red Beds for Hospitals. But we're already seeing that. Scunthorpe Northern, I think it's called in Lincolnshire, has the first geothermal system for a hospital operational. And we're also seeing interest from the military. I mean, just think, if the military need to import oil and gas to keep themselves going, if we can displace some of that requirement by producing power for ⁓ electricity generation or heating of ⁓ army bases, then the demand in terms of fossil fuels that you need to import for the military would lessen. And we're seeing the Navy and the RAF have both shown real interest in geothermal energy.

Charlotte: Yeah, and I think we need some of that kind of change in the messaging because I think as geologists we're a bit guilty of saying you've got granites here, you could have that, you've got mines here, you could have that. But I think we probably need to change people's mindsets. So they're saying we're building a hospital or we're building a new town, can we have geothermal and leave it to us to worry about how we deliver that. So I think that's...

Jon  Gluyas: Yeah, and Joe, think you made a particular breakthrough a couple of years ago. For years, we've been talking about what the resource base is and talking in terms of ⁓ exajoules or megajoules or terajoules. And you flip that around. You said 25 % of all UK housing is built on former coal mining areas, just as a place where we can start supplying. So I think that tying in between society and what we as geoscientists or engineers think is the key to success.

Charlotte: think avoiding the exegels is good. And clearly there's ⁓ countries that are further ahead than the UK in terms of their geothermal resources. Can you tell us about any that you've had the opportunity to visit and the lessons that we could learn from those?

Jon  Gluyas: Well, I'm a great one for visiting any hot springs I can, whether it's in Guadeloupe or Iceland or where else. Alberta are in Canada, Europe, number of places, Kalawevari. But I think some of the... Well, one thing that struck me recently colleagues here at Durham University, we were approached by Auckland University in New Zealand to ⁓ them with Geothermal you think, hang on a minute. Why? Why is someone in New Zealand calling us to talk about geothermal energy? New Zealand was the second country to develop geothermal power in 1958. And right at the end of the conversation, the guys from Auckland said, you know, we have a real problem. We've got well-developed geothermal in the country, but no one knows about it. And you think, wow, this is quite bizarre. in a sense, I think that we have a...

Matthew Killeya: you

Jon  Gluyas: a strange, almost a paradox in geothermal. It has next to no surface footprint, can supply heat, which if you're feeling warm, it's not like switching a light on. You don't notice it's there. And at the same time, so that provokes the lack of understanding. But at the same time, that's the great positive thing about geothermal. It's very difficult to complain about something that you can't see. So we've had criticism of ⁓ fields being turned over to PV or scenery being ruined by wind farms. There ain't anything to see with geothermal, so it's a great positive, but at the same time it keeps it as a mystery. As far as countries go though, you know, there's a lot of catching up to do. I mentioned earlier about the 1973 oil crisis, the parallels which are being drawn at the moment.

Matthew Killeya: Yeah.

Jon  Gluyas: and the UK drilled those seven geothermal wells. The same happened in France. We got lucky towards the end of the 1970s and we found oil and gas in copious amounts and forgot about geothermal. France didn't have that luxury and continued to develop geothermal. Paris, the whole of the metro area, is underpinned by geothermal heat. Similarly, the Netherlands have used a scheme whereby folk drill for oil and gas and don't find it, they have to evaluate the well for geothermal energy. And if you've bought tulips recently from Amsterdam, almost certainly they will have been grown under glass heated by geothermal energy. As far as template or road map to go, we've been following Germany. It's about 10 or 15 years ahead of us. Similar size population, similar size resource, similar problems. And it's proving quite useful in terms of understanding the relationship between the number of jobs we create and the amount of heat we deliver. But I suppose if we need to nod our head to the real star when it comes to geothermal heat, China's got about 10 times more geothermal heat deployed than anywhere else in the world. And China, like the UK, you know, we don't have a volcano between us, but we can develop that geothermal heat. So aside from the obvious Italy or Iceland or West Coast of the USA, where they do have volcanic resources, we can still make an enormous contribution to low carbon energy by delivering heat. And the key thing to remember is the earth's hot. It's been hot for four and half billion years, and it'll be hot for another four and a half billion years. We're not going to be able to deplete that heat. We may mismanage it. But we ain't going to ever run out of geothermal heat.

Matthew Killeya: Yeah, so just picking up on that, John, I mean, you've talked about some of the very impressive projects in the UK, we have there. They're sort of somewhat disparate at the moment. And obviously what we don't have in the UK is a kind of mass rollout of geothermal. At the same time, there are countries that clearly ahead of where we are based on what you just said. And there are lessons that we could learn. ⁓ I'm curious, as you touched on a roadmap, like what do you see as the sort of main stumbling blocks ⁓ the UK in terms of doing this? Is it kind of technology or is it policy or is it something else? ⁓

Jon  Gluyas: Well, the one thing it isn't is technology. mean, whether you go to the Netherlands, Germany, France, China, USA, the technology is there and it's improving all the time. know, there's a phenomenal project in Utah called Forge and the big capital expenditure issue with geothermal is being eroded away by the massive steps forward that Forge has made with drilling technology, improving the drilling rate and therefore reducing that capital expenditure. For the UK, I think it's unfamiliarity. We've had a very benign energy past. The UK was the first to exploit coal in a big way and has enormous quantities of coal in the ground. And just as we coming off that ⁓ fossil fuel, we had the good fortune to discover oil and gas. And for a brief time in the 1990s, 2000s, the UK was one of the top oil and gas producing nations in the world. And so we've got a memory which is energy is easy. You know, there was a time, I think, during the John Major government when we did away with the Energy Minister, it just wasn't seen as a problem. Of course, that's come back to bite us a little bit. And so I think it's that history. Again, the number of developers I've spoken to who would say GSM sounds ever so risky. Let's just do gas. We'd understand that. Well, he might understand it, but as 2022 proved the cost of gas can rocket overnight. So I think there are a couple of things. We're getting societal buy-in, particularly in the coal mining areas. ⁓ We need to... ⁓ We need to spread that. There are some real good signs. For the first time ever, we now have a government minister who has within his portfolio geothermal energy. And as part of the National Geothermal Centre, we're engaging with him and trying a bit of education, bring some more knowledge into Westminster. Once we have a bit of regulation in place to understand, so companies can understand what their commitments are. or what is required, think we will see a blossoming, a move away from pioneers to wholesale geothermal development.

Charlotte: And so just to kind of summarise our conversation, obviously you've touched on some of those aspects there, but if you had a magic wand and we were looking into the future, ⁓ know, looking to that future, what hopes do you have for geothermal in the UK?

Jon  Gluyas: Well, you know, in the twilight of my career, I think it's the one thing that I can really contribute towards the UK into society. So I remain extremely positive about the geothermal potential. You know, we talked about energy security, we talked about low emissions, we talked about jobs and growth, inward investment, societal buy-in. there's, you know, in 1956, the UK passed a seminal act. It was the Clean Air Act, and I was born a year later, and that Clean Air Act made our cities so much safer from the point of community health. If we adopt geothermal energy, if we improve our built environment, then we also get much better air quality. some of the issues over ⁓ longevity and healthy longevity of people will start to ease by removing fossil fuels from our environment. And the way we can do that, homegrown, is with geothermal energy. whilst it's not a panacea, it's pretty damn good. It addresses so many of our issues, be it commercial, societal, security-wise.

Charlotte: Thank you John, that's been fantastic, really excellent to speak with you and drill down into this if you pardon the pun.

Jon  Gluyas: Thank you very much indeed Charlotte and Matt.

Matthew Killeya: Thank you.