Alan Jessup, 88, flips through documents summarizing geothermal research he conducted decades ago as a federal government scientist.
Today he lives in a seniors residence in Calgary. But from 1976 to 1986, Jessup traveled as far west as Mount Meagher, north of Whistler, British Columbia, and as far east as Springhill, North Carolina, while scouting Canada for potential sites for geothermal energy production.
At the time, conflict in the Middle East, not global warming, drove Canada’s efforts to find energy at home, including underground sources hot enough to be used for electricity.
“We knew about climate change, but very few people paid attention,” Jessup said.
Now, this research, begun nearly half a century ago, has taken on new relevance as governments around the world grapple with human-induced climate change and seek alternatives to fossil fuels, with Russia’s war in Ukraine again raising further questions about energy security.
In the early 2000s, prompted by climate change, Steve Grasby, a senior scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada, revisited Jessup’s work. Jessup and his colleagues have studied both the Canadian Cordillera — mountain ranges primarily in British Columbia and the Yukon, as well as parts of Alberta and the NWT — and sedimentary basins, gathering data on what thermal resources could potentially be used to generate electricity.
“In 10 years, they quickly built a really world-renowned research group working on geothermal energy,” Grasby said, adding that the program received the equivalent of what would be about $100 million in funding today.
Alan Jessup, retired federal government scientist, pictured with two reports summarizing decades of research into Canada’s geothermal potential. (Daniel Nerman)
Luckily for him, retired scientists like Jessup had been holding files that the federal government had decided not to keep when the research program ended in 1986 as the price of oil began to fall.
“I had a big garage full of boxes of papers and all kinds of stuff,” Jessup said.
Grasby, whose work now includes an ongoing study of geothermal energy at Mount Meagher, began receiving a lot of mail from former scientists, including Jessup.
“At some point word got out and I started getting random big boxes in the mail addressed to me, people sending me all their old files,” he said. “Even now, decades later, it underlies most of what we know.”
Conflict abroad boosted research at home
In 1973 conflict in the Middle East caused Arab countries to cut oil production, raising prices and even banning oil exports to some countries. It became known as the first oil shock, sending the price of a tank of gas soaring and questioning the security of energy supplies in North America.
In 1979, another oil shock occurred as a result of the Iranian Revolution.
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In response, the federal government launched new energy research programs, including in renewables.
Geothermal energy was one of the five renewable energy research programs the government is investing millions of dollars, including in wind, small hydropower projects, solar power and biomass. In addition to renewables, there were programs for nuclear fusion and hydrogen research.
The energy crisis of the 1970s also prompted the government to launch National Energy Program in the 1980s, which included increasing oil production in Canada, investing in oil sands development and offshore drilling, and controversial decision to set national oil prices.
“When you have a supply problem, you have an oil problem, or you have a fossil fuel problem, the first thing people think to do [is] well, let’s just get more of it,” said Peter Love, a Toronto-based energy consultant who has worked on environmental issues since the 1970s.
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While this was one of the strategies the federal government rolled out, it also took a different approach to energy efficiency.
“They had a very active conservation program,” Love said. “It was a massive program put in place extremely quickly and very effectively.”
Love remembers watching a a televised address by then US President Jimmy Carterurging Americans to conserve energy.
In Canada, the federal government has begun to introduce programs such as those described in 1983 User Resource Guide, promoting the idea of using less energy at home. This includes the Canadian Home Insulation Program, the Canadian Oil Replacement Program – which supported homeowners in the transition from oil to furnaces and promoted energy efficiency – and the Solar Domestic Hot Water Program, water heating systems that are still available today.
Funding stopped when prices fell
When the price of oil fell in the early 1980s, financing for homeowners dried up, but that wasn’t the end of efficiency.
“[The Office of Energy Efficiency] played a major role when [it] we couldn’t spend money on programs to provide improvements to our building codes so that houses and commercial buildings, when they are built, are built more efficiently,” Love said.
During the energy crisis, the private sector also invested in research into alternative energy supplies.
Scientist Louis Drewell, photographed in Bamfield, British Columbia, in 1982, sits next to seaweed he dries to make kombu. (Ron Long)
Louis Druhl, now professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, was establishing a research program in Bamfield, a remote community on Vancouver Island, when General Electric and the American Gas Institute approached him in 1980. They offered him funding to study the feasibility of converting algae in gas.
“There was a frenzy to do something to counter these ridiculous oil prices,” Drewl said. “They poured money into projects like ours … but then all of a sudden the price of oil dropped and they stopped.”
As quickly as the funding came in, it ended, and Druhl published his final report in 1983. It would be years before he and others learned more about the benefits of algae for carbon sequestration.
In 1986, the federal government told Jessup and his colleagues to stop and halted their research. Jessup says he offered to summarize the group’s findings in a report, but there was no interest at the time. It would be two decades before Grasby approached it with renewed interest.
Two years later, in 1988, a NASA scientist named James Hansen to warn US Senate committee about the link between burning fossil fuels and a warming planet. By then, the renewable energy research frenzy brought on by the oil crisis was over.
A new crisis
As the world grapples with climate change, Grasby is turning to drilling technology borrowed from the gas industry, giving a new lease on life to the potential Jessup and his colleagues saw at Meagher Mountain.
“These are things that can be applied to geothermal energy to transition to renewable energy. So it’s an exciting time to see that kind of technology transfer,” Grasby said.
Research scientist Steve Grasby, pictured at Mt Meagher in 2019, where he is exploring the potential for geothermal energy. (Zhuoheng Chen)
As Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine makes governments question the security of fossil fuels, it’s a loving time for Canada to look back to the energy crisis of the 1970s to early 1980s for lessons.
When both the federal government and the private sector “decide to do something, you can really do a lot,” he said.
The US wants to address these concerns domestically, through release of oil from its reserves. In May Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told the US Senate Energy Committee that Canadian oil can be a temporary solution to security problems.
“In this context, recent decisions by the United States and Canada to expand hydrocarbon exports to our European friends to displace Russian oil and gas in the short term are entirely appropriate,” Wilkinson said.
Cars line up for gas at a gas station in Martinez, Calif., Sept. 21, 1973. (The Associated Press/File)
He added that in the medium and long term, other solutions, including renewable energy sources and clean technologies, are essential for both climate and energy security.
Still, Alan Jessup hopes the twin threats of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the climate crisis will encourage more immediate action.
“Now I look and I see the price of gas at the pumps and I’m like, ‘Oh, well.’ Maybe that will stop people from using these things,” Jessup said.
Written and produced by Molly Segal.
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