Acquisition expected to boost city’s geothermal sector

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This article was published 07/12/2022 (1354 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s Ed Lohrenz has long been recognized as one of the North American leaders in geothermal energy design.

For the past few years he has been sharing that expertise as the primary instructor for the industry’s international association’s training program, the curriculum for which Lohrenz also wrote.

He will now be deploying his specialized skills in more and larger projects after his Winnipeg geothermal consulting business, GeoOptimize, was acquired by Chicago-based Endurant Energy.

“Ed is recognized around the world as one of the best in the business,” said Dave Yanni, the chief development officer of Endurant. “For us to acquire his company was a no-brainer.”

Terms and conditions of the sale were not disclosed, but officials from both companies said Winnipeg will not be losing one of its home-grown industry leaders but instead the deal will cause the Winnipeg operation to grow its industry footprint in Manitoba both by supporting Endurant’s work — which it has been doing for about 10 years already — and continuing to work as a consultant to third party projects.

While the benefits of geothermal technology have been well understood for some time — renewable, sustainable, reliable energy (unlike wind and solar the energy source under the ground is steady and predictable) with little to no greenhouse gas emissions — industry players have been somewhat frustrated by the relatively slow pace of growth.

“One of the problems in the industry is that systems are perceived as being very expensive and that they don’t necessarily work very well,” Lohrenz said.

Yanni said, “I’m biased. I’m an industry booster, but geothermal is not growing nearly as fast as it should be.”

The impetus for saying something like that is geothermal has been a proven winner when it comes to reducing the fossil fuel dependency of buildings around the world.

“People may think it is complex, but for instance the physics behind solar energy is far more complicated,” said Yanni.

The other problem area for growth is the availability of skilled players in the field. That’s one the reasons Lohrenz has been doing a lot work raising the knowledge level of engineers across North America.

“It is just not something that is taught in the universities,” Lohrenz said.

But he is convinced demand is on the rise.

“I have heard so often from the engineers who I teach, saying that they have to learn more about geothermal because so many of their clients are asking for it,” he said.

Endurant, which has about 45 employees — GeoOptimize employs three engineers in Winnipeg as well as Lohrenz — is rapidly growing.

Last year it was acquired by the private equity firm, LS Power to back accelerated growth of the company which it claims to the market-leasers.

But even though industry growth has been in the modest four-to-eight per cent range, Yanni believes that an inflexion point has materialized.

“The seriousness around electrification of buildings is really driving more people to consider geothermal for heating and cooling,” Yanni said. “Lots has happened over the last couple of years to fundamentally change the outlook for geothermal.”

In addition to geothermal’s effectiveness for building HVAC operations, Yanni’s also talking about economic advantages emerging with rising costs and volatility in the price of gas, poor gas pipeline infrastructure in some cities in North America and the inclusion of tax benefits for geothermal technology that were part of the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.

Among other projects, GeoOptimize worked with Endurant on geothermal installation at Prairie Dale Middle School in Sharnzenfeld, Man. That project was complicated by the fact that the 65,000 sq. ft. building sits on top of the drinking water aquifer for a neighboring town, requiring special design considerations.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca