(107a) "Clean" Hydrogen Anywhere, from Deep Hot Dry Rock Geothermal (DHDRG) Energy Anywhere: Eliminates Transmission and Storage, Lowers Cost and Danger

We wish to accelerate humanity's urgent goals for global climate change (GCC) threat reduction:

1. Transforming the world's largest industry from ~ 85% fossil to ~ 100% GHG-emission-free energy sources and systems
2. Near-total elimination of all GHG emissions for the entire human enterprise, as quickly as we prudently and profitably can.

> Prudently: this will be disruptive, but we must not cripple the global economy.

> Profitably: large amount of capital required will flow only to investments of attractive reward:risk ratios.

The answer to Humanity's energy and GCC emergency may be directly beneath our feet: ubiquitous, abundant, baseload geothermal heat -- if only we could afford to bore deep enough to reach it, anywhere on Earth. Earth's average geothermal gradient, is about 30 C per km depth. At 9 km, at almost 300 C, with enough contact area, abundant energy may be extracted, forever, if the borehole system is managed well. Brought to the surface by water or other working fluid, in a closed system, electricity generation via steam Rankine or Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) generators plus district heating and / or cooling is continuously available. Affordable access to deep geothermal heat eliminates the prospecting risk of finding geothermal fluids and / or "hot spots" in Earth's shallow crust. Novel boring technologies potential for deep, hot, dry, hard, igneous, "basement" rock is boring to 6-9 km depth at ~ 2 % the cost of conventional "abrasive" boring, with relatively small, light, and transportable equipment, perhaps replacing the conventional "drill rig".

Our most promising opportunity will be harvesting "Energy Anywhere" via ubiquitous Deep Hot Dry Rock Geothermal (DHDRG) energy from 6 - 12 km deep "basement" rock; not the more common, shallow, cooler "hydrogeothermal" power plants nor "ground-source heat pump" used for residential and commercial space heating and cooling.

1. Nearly ubiquitous on Earth: "Geothermal Anywhere" promises "Energy Anywhere" -- as electricity, electrolytic hydrogen, and hot water pipelined for district heating and cooling systems (DHCS) -- from a single plant, almost anywhere on Earth, distributed locally.
2. All humanity's energy and energy-source industrial feedstocks are distributed, from autonomous DHDRG plants, from directly beneath demand sites and regions, almost anywhere on Earth. Exploits Earth's ubiquitous "geothermal constant": ~ 30 degrees C per km depth, i.e. ~ 300 C at 10 km.
3. DHDRG plant types: "Advanced Geothermal Systems" (AGS: bored, not fracked, heat exchanger at-depth). AGS is beyond "Enhanced Geothermal Systems" (EGS) which requires heat exchanger fracking at-depth plus large parasitic pumping energy.
4. Requires advanced technology(ies) to bore "deep enough, cheap enough" to profitably access and deliver DHDRG energy. Several vendor innovations are promising.
5. Energy security and system resilience of the consequent proliferation and network of DHDRG plants at demand centers, via local sources and via loose interconnection -- at distribution voltage and via hot water pipelines; this becomes the ultimate non-nuclear distributed energy resource (DER).
6. Provides "free" annual-scale firming energy storage. Leave heat in the ground, i.e. deep Earth, until needed: dispatchable, firm, competitive. High capacity factor for energy generation & conversion assets.
7. Eliminates need for new, large, long-distance (150 km +), large CAPEX, electricity transmission lines and for most energy storage infrastructure investments, with associated siting and permitting delays and costs for both, and their vulnerability to large OPEX from weather damage and battery failures.
8. Probably obsoletes large, new, distant wind and solar plants because of their associated transmission and storage infrastructure CAPEX and OPEX demands and modest system assets capacity factors (CF).
9. Profitability, then global proliferation of DHDRG plants, now requires:

• Novel commercialized, deployment-ready technologies, by which to bore "deep enough, cheap enough" to profitably access and deliver DHDRG energy;
• Repurposing assets of the O&G service industry to drill for heat, generally deeper than for hydrocarbons, beginning with their extant drill rigs and other assets; then customizing and optimizing these drilling and pipeline-building assets;
• Energy and finance industries' understanding, vision, and willingness to invest in complete, 100 - 500 MW-scale nameplate DHDRG plants; probably begin repowering retired coal plants;
• Customers for affordable, annually-firm, on-site, clean energy as electricity, hydrogen, and hot water for district heating and cooling systems (DHCS) -- proceed from load centers and hubs;
• A "Network of DER networks", rather than extant "Grid" topology and control.

Hydrogen (H2) is a carbon-free energy carrier, storage medium, fuel, and chemical feedstock, probably essential for the rapid and profitable transformation of the total human enterprise from fossil to renewables -- especially for transportation fuel, steelmaking, N-fertilizer, feedstock.

Safe, profitable, long-term pipelining of clean gaseous hydrogen (GH2) from diverse, dispersed, Greenhouse-Gas-emission-free sources via extant underground NatGas or other steel pipelines and systems -- as H2 either blended with NatGas or as high purity H2 -- may be unlikely because of hydrogen embrittlement (HE) and hydrogen corrosion cracking (HCC) of the pipeline steel, and of CAPEX for repurposing these pipelines by re-lining them with novel, HE-resistant linepipe.

Attempting total decarbonization via the electricity grid, alone, will be technically and economically suboptimal, causing dangerous delays in arresting global climate change.

Therefore, we urgently need to engineer and proliferate extraction of clean energy via Deep Hot Dry Rock Geothermal (DHDRG) Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS) energy systems, to:

(a) Achieve "hydrogen anywhere", via "geothermal anywhere", via closed-loop AGS with bored rather than Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) fracked stimulated reservoirs;

(b) Eliminate the need for GH2 transmission pipelines, relying on distribution pipelines only; AGS DHDRG systems are the ultimate in Distributed Energy Resources (DER);

(c) Provide total Energy + Industrial Feedstocks [E+IF] for the entire human enterprise from a proliferation of AGS-based DHDRG energy plants, loosely interconnected at distribution voltage and via hot water pipelines in a synergistic network of micro- and mini-grids for resilience and redundancy. Enables geothermal "clean" growth; obsoletes distant, large, wind and solar plants.