Drake Landing is a hybrid. They collect solar energy and store it in a geothermal field. The field is very shallow. That technology is more properly described as geoexchange. The wells that they drill are really just exchanging energy between the solar energy that radiates down on earth and what the soil can absorb. They pass energy back to the houses when they need it in the winter, and they store it in the summer when there's excess sunshine and excess heat.
What we're speaking about, though, is actually drilling fit-for-purpose wells, or repurposing oil wells. Our typical depth is about three kilometres, so we're more akin to oil and gas, not necessarily urban activities where heat exchange is.... There are about 300 installations already across Canada, mostly in Ontario and Quebec.
Can we do more in heat exchange or geoexchange? Absolutely, but we're trying to imagine an entirely new industry—geothermal energy proper—which are these three-kilometre-deep wells. We go down to a reservoir of hot water, versus having to just store it in the shallow earth.