Renewell
Ep. 40 Turning Leaky Oil Wells into Renewable Energy StorageThe EPA estimates that there are over 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States. Up to 40% of these wells are leaking methane because they're not plugged. Renewell Energy aims to convert 700,000 of these abandoned wells into giant mechanical batteries, enough to power the entire U.S. power grid.
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Why We Made this Film
Oil releases a huge amount of carbon when burned - approximately a third of the world's total carbon emissions. The EPA estimates that there are over 2 million oil and gas wells in the United States that are sitting idle, meaning they’re still owned by a company, but not producing and not plugged. Up to 40% of these wells leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas with an atmospheric warming power 80x that of CO2.
Cleaning up all of the country’s idle wells could take about 100 years and $193 billion. And in the meantime, they’re going to continue to harm the environment through egregious emissions.
We’ll admit - we were skeptical when we first heard about Renewell, a startup working with the oil industry to curb emissions. But they proved us wrong by posing one simple question: what if there was a way to repurpose these abandoned oil wells to help, rather than harm, the planet? By plugging idle wells and converting them to energy storage units for renewable sources like wind and solar, the Texas-based startup thinks they can. And they may even be able to power the entire U.S. grid in the process.
