High heat generating granites of Saudi Arabian shield: Prospect for CO2 emissions reduction and climate mitigation

Countries such as Saudi Arabia are experiencing island heat effect due to large consumption of fossil fuels. The ambient temperature in the cities of Saudi Arabia is increasing faster than the global average due to this effect. The recorded temperature over the past decade has shown an anomalous increase of 0.76 C (IEA, 2013b, Almazroui et al., 2012). Besides such temperature anomalies, Saudi Arabia experiencing flash floods in the recent past. All such abnormal weather pattern is apparently attributed to the large volumes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from domestic and industrial sectors. With the country having greater than 3000 CDD (Cooling Degree Days), more than 80% fossil fuel energy (192 TWh) is spent for space cooling (IEA, 2013, a,b) and by the year 2020 this quantity is expected to exceed 605 TWh (EIA, 2013). The per capita electricity consumption is crossing 8500 kWh (WB, 2012, IEA, 2012). Nearly 446000 Gg of CO2 is being emitted from fossil fuel combustion, while CO2 emissions from electricity and heat production is of the order of 181000 Gg. Manufacturing industries also emit similar amount of CO2. Apparently the micro-weather anomalies are caused due to such large CO2 emissions. The country however has options to implement CDM (clean development mechanism) by reducing CO2 emissions and stabilize its micro-weather anomalies by using hydrothermal and hot dry rock resources (EGS). The country's EGS potential is enormous compared to hydrothermal resources (Fig. 1). High heat generating granites in the Arabian shield occupy an area of about 161 500 km(2) and the heat generating capacity of the granites vary from 8 to 134 mu W/m(3). These granites are under severe NE-SW Compressional regime due to the active Red Sea mid ocean ridge. Thus these granites are the best candidates to initiate EGS projects. Experimental investigation to understand the fracture propagation under confined stress conditions are in progress.