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Presentation—Introduction to the webinar and panelists

Presentation—Katherine Young: GeoRePORT: Geothermal Resource Portfolio Optimization and Reporting Technique (French)

Transcript—English and French

With support from the USAID Power Africa initiative, the Clean Energy Solutions Center hosted a webinar on the Geothermal Resource Portfolio Optimization and Reporting Technique (GeoRePORT) System. This webinar provides an overview of GeoRePORT, a free resource that can be used both to evaluate geothermal resource and project potential. The webinar also discusses the applicability of GeoRePORT for geothermal resource development in East Africa.

The GeoRePORT System is a resource and project assessment tool used to measure potential and guide development in the geothermal sector. Developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), but applicable worldwide, the methodology assesses three categories of geothermal project development: geological, technical, and socioeconomic. The GeoRePORT System provides a process for objectively appraising project progress and resource grade in individual geothermal areas. The system also allows for broader analysis at the portfolio and countrywide assessments, and it was used in the recent DOE Geothermal Vision Study (GeoVision) to identify potential barriers to geothermal development in the United States. This webinar gives an overview of the GeoRePORT system, describing how the system can be used both to evaluate resource grade and project progress and to look at case histories of individual assessments and countrywide assessments.

The webinar presenter was Katherine Young, the Geothermal Program Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the United States. She has been with NREL since 2008, working as a senior energy analyst and focusing her research on geothermal exploration, improving drilling through innovative use of data and new tools, regulatory and permitting analyses, and geothermal resource reporting methodologies. Ms. Young has developed innovative tools, such as the Geothermal Reporting Protocol and Optimization Technique, GeoRePORT; geothermal exploration and area case histories on OpenEI), a wiki-based, crowd-sourced information sharing website; and the Regulatory and Permitting Information Desktop (RAPID) Toolkit, a collection of publicly available information about permits and regulations affecting energy and bulk transmission project development. The resource is intended to facilitate communication between project developers and agency personnel, among agencies at all jurisdictional levels and among all project stakeholders, including the public. Ms. Young received a bachelor’s degree in geological Engineering and Geology from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a master’s degree in Geochemistry from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She has also worked as a field engineer for Schlumberger Dowell, a geology instructor, and a database software designer, developer and trainer.