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Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Trump can put geothermal in a position to power America's future
The Trump administration is getting it right when it comes to the importance of American energy dominance and bolstering domestic energy production. And, with its National Energy Emergency executive order, geothermal energy is getting the attention it deserves. That's why we, as conservatives, are united behind an 'all-of-the-above-and-below' energy approach. Utilizing the full range of energy options we have here at home will bolster American energy manufacturing, creating economic boosts in communities across the country and strengthening our national security. Geothermal energy is a small but mighty part of our nation's energy mix. In 2023, this unique energy source generated only 3.9 gigawatts (GW) of electricity onto America's electric grid — just 0.4 percent of our total electricity. This underutilized technology taps into heat stored in the earth to generate electricity or provide heating and cooling for a variety of applications. Geothermal energy is reliable, resilient and affordable nearly 100 percent of the time. Traditionally, these technologies are only useful in areas with easily accessible heat resources, such as those in the American West or in Iceland. However, by adopting innovations from the oil and gas industry — such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling — geothermal hot spots are much more accessible. Some estimates suggest that these innovations could eventually unlock up to 5,000 GW of energy right here in the U.S. That's more than four times the capacity of all current U.S. power plants combined. Today, geothermal energy's benefits are already making a difference for many Americans, especially in Texas. Since 2010, almost every school in Denton Independent School District has used geothermal cooling systems to improve air conditioning efficiency, lowering energy costs in the hot Texas summer. That's making high-quality education more of a reality for students. The military also sees value in geothermal energy. Last September, the U.S. Air Force signed a deal with Sage Geosystems, a Houston-based startup company, to construct a demonstration project that utilizes geothermal energy for energy storage in Starr County, Texas. If successful, the Air Force may develop a full-scale project at Ellington Field Joint Air Reserve Base in Houston, providing the reliable energy needed for America's military installations. Although geothermal energy is on the cusp of significant growth, it is not widely known by the public. That makes our mission simple: educating Americans about the untapped potential of this critical resource, promoting policies that unlock American resources and combatting policies that reduce investments into domestic energy research, development and deployment. Last month, CRES Forum and Project Innerspace co-hosted an event on Capitol Hill to do just that. The event, which was open to the public, brought together industry leaders, policymakers, advocates and academics to highlight the opportunity presented by advanced geothermal technologies. During the event, we shared our strong support for geothermal energy and provided a conservative case for the technology. We were also joined by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Rep. August Pfluger (another Texan) and Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), who all voiced strong support as well. But talk is cheap, and securing federal support that incentivizes private investment is not an easy task. That's why we pledge to work with the president and Congress to enact meaningful policies that lower energy prices, promote domestic energy production and achieve energy dominance. And with new, private investments into geothermal projects exceeding $1 billion since September 2022, we have a leg up to advance President Trump's robust energy agenda. Not to mention, this will benefit Americans nationwide, from our hometowns of Virginia Beach, Va., to Friendswood, Texas, and beyond. Now, with renewed conservative leadership in the White House, American energy dominance isn't just possible, it's inevitable. But we must play our cards right. Advancing federal energy policy using an 'all-of-the-above-and-below' approach will allow us to bolster domestic energy production, curb our reliance on foreign entities, lower energy costs and create good paying jobs nationwide. And a kicker for those skeptical? We can utilize geothermal with essentially no emissions. Sounds like a win-win. Heather Reams is president of CRES, a nonprofit that seeks conservative solutions to address America's energy, economic and environmental security. Randy Weber represents the 14th District in Texas. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
The Hill
07-05-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Trump can put geothermal in a position to power America's future
The Trump administration is getting it right when it comes to the importance of American energy dominance and bolstering domestic energy production. And, with its National Energy Emergency executive order, geothermal energy is getting the attention it deserves. That's why we, as conservatives, are united behind an 'all-of-the-above-and-below' energy approach. Utilizing the full range of energy options we have here at home will bolster American energy manufacturing, creating economic boosts in communities across the country and strengthening our national security. Geothermal energy is a small but mighty part of our nation's energy mix. In 2023, this unique energy source generated only 3.9 gigawatts (GW) of electricity onto America's electric grid — just 0.4 percent of our total electricity. This underutilized technology taps into heat stored in the earth to generate electricity or provide heating and cooling for a variety of applications. Geothermal energy is reliable, resilient and affordable nearly 100 percent of the time. Traditionally, these technologies are only useful in areas with easily accessible heat resources, such as those in the American West or in Iceland. However, by adopting innovations from the oil and gas industry — such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling — geothermal hot spots are much more accessible. Some estimates suggest that these innovations could eventually unlock up to 5,000 GW of energy right here in the U.S. That's more than four times the capacity of all current U.S. power plants combined. Today, geothermal energy's benefits are already making a difference for many Americans, especially in Texas. Since 2010, almost every school in Denton Independent School District has used geothermal cooling systems to improve air conditioning efficiency, lowering energy costs in the hot Texas summer. That's making high-quality education more of a reality for students. The military also sees value in geothermal energy. Last September, the U.S. Air Force signed a deal with Sage Geosystems, a Houston-based startup company, to construct a demonstration project that utilizes geothermal energy for energy storage in Starr County, Texas. If successful, the Air Force may develop a full-scale project at Ellington Field Joint Air Reserve Base in Houston, providing the reliable energy needed for America's military installations. Although geothermal energy is on the cusp of significant growth, it is not widely known by the public. That makes our mission simple: educating Americans about the untapped potential of this critical resource, promoting policies that unlock American resources and combatting policies that reduce investments into domestic energy research, development and deployment. Last month, CRES Forum and Project Innerspace co-hosted an event on Capitol Hill to do just that. The event, which was open to the public, brought together industry leaders, policymakers, advocates and academics to highlight the opportunity presented by advanced geothermal technologies. During the event, we shared our strong support for geothermal energy and provided a conservative case for the technology. We were also joined by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Rep. August Pfluger (another Texan) and Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), who all voiced strong support as well. But talk is cheap, and securing federal support that incentivizes private investment is not an easy task. That's why we pledge to work with the president and Congress to enact meaningful policies that lower energy prices, promote domestic energy production and achieve energy dominance. And with new, private investments into geothermal projects exceeding $1 billion since September 2022, we have a leg up to advance President Trump's robust energy agenda. Not to mention, this will benefit Americans nationwide, from our hometowns of Virginia Beach, Va., to Friendswood, Texas, and beyond. Now, with renewed conservative leadership in the White House, American energy dominance isn't just possible, it's inevitable. But we must play our cards right. Advancing federal energy policy using an 'all-of-the-above-and-below' approach will allow us to bolster domestic energy production, curb our reliance on foreign entities, lower energy costs and create good paying jobs nationwide. And a kicker for those skeptical? We can utilize geothermal with essentially no emissions. Sounds like a win-win.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A Clean-Energy Boom Could Be Built on Oil and Gas Technology
The United States is in the midst of an energy revolution. Under the Biden administration, the country shoveled unprecedented sums of federal dollars into clean-energy projects—battery factories, solar farms, nuclear plants—while also producing and exporting record volumes of oil and gas. President Donald Trump has vowed to ramp up energy production further, but takes a skeptical view of solar and wind power. But Trump's 'Drill, baby, drill' mantra extends beyond fossil fuels. His administration is embracing geothermal energy, which is primed for a very American boom. In the United States, geothermal energy, which uses the Earth's heat to create electricity, supplies less than half of 1 percent of the country's electricity, but few other clean-energy sources offer as much promise right now. Many climate activists support geothermal energy as a renewable power source that generates zero-carbon electricity. A recent report from the Rhodium Group, an energy-research firm, projected that geothermal could meet as much as 64 percent of new electricity demand from data centers by the early 2030s. America is far behind rivals such as China and Russia in manufacturing solar panels or building nuclear plants. But geothermal makes use of an area of the U.S. industrial base that has grown in recent years—oil and gas production. Cindy Taff, whose company, Sage Geosystems, is anticipating geothermal's potential growth, told me about a recent drive she took through southern Texas that illustrated that overlap. 'The same drilling rig that drilled our well in September was on a lease right off the highway drilling an oil-and-gas well,' she said, laughing. 'It's just the same.' Taff came from the oil industry: She was once a vice president at Royal Dutch Shell who commanded a team of 350 employees using hydraulic fracturing (better known as fracking) to drill their way through five countries' bedrock. Fracking had driven an oil-and-gas boom starting in the mid-2000s, and her team had looked at using the same technique to tap the Earth's underground heat. At Shell, 'we never actually drilled wells' to try it on geothermal energy, she told me. 'It was frustrating.' The opportunity looked big enough to her that she started Sage. Much like oil and gas, geothermal energy, which harnesses the planet's molten core to make steam, had long been confined to the places where access came easy—the American West, where Yellowstone's famous geysers hint at the heat below, or volcanic Iceland. In those places—generally volcanic hot spots where magma flows at shallow depths in the Earth's crust and underground water reservoirs—geothermal energy can be a substantial source of power. Currently, it provides roughly 10 percent of Nevada's electricity generation and as much as 5 percent of the power California produces; Iceland generates 30 percent of its electricity, and Kenya nearly half, from geothermal. Traditional coal or nuclear plants generate heat to turn water into steam, which spins turbines to make electricity. Geothermal power stations do the same using hot water from underground reservoirs. Sage uses fracking technology to crack open hot rocks even deeper underground, enabling access to heat in more locations. The company's drillers then inject water into the well, prying open the stone fissures and creating an artificial reservoir. When Sage releases that water, the pressure from underground shoots it upward, and the heat creates vapors that spin turbines and crank out electricity. This system can also serve as storage for weather-dependent wind and solar: Extra electricity from turbines and panels can pump water into Sage's wells that can be released later to produce electricity. Sage expects to have its first energy-storage facility up and running in Texas in the coming weeks, but already has a deal to sell power to Meta's data centers. And a similar start-up, Fervo Energy, demonstrated that it could use fracking technology to successfully produce 24/7 carbon-free energy back in 2023, at a pilot project in Nevada. Geothermal does have certain advantages compared with other sources of renewable energy. Solar and wind need large areas of land, huge volumes of minerals, and a massive new network of transmission lines. (Plus, China dominates those industries' supply chains.) Hydroelectric dams are less dependable in a world where water is growing scarcer and precipitation harder to forecast. Nuclear reactors cost billions of dollars and take years to build; the U.S. depends heavily on counties such as Canada, Kazakhstan, and Russia for uranium fuel, and has yet to establish the infrastructure to either permanently store or recycle nuclear waste. For now, most of the efforts to debut next-generation geothermal technology are still in the American West, where drilling is relatively cheap and easy because the rocks they're targeting are closer to the surface. But if the industry can prove to investors that its power plants work as described—which experts expect to happen by the end of the decade—geothermal could expand quickly, just like oil-and-gas fracking did. That the 'enhanced' geothermal industry piggybacks on technology from the fossil-fuel industry also puts it in a position to grow. 'In the U.S., our manufacturing base is falling apart. But we have a ridiculously good industrial base in oil and gas,' Charles Gertler, who until recently worked at the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office and co-authored a report outlining a pathway for the industry's growth, told me. 'The fact that you can just rely on many of the same tools and people and technologies and supply chains is the reason a lot of folks are so excited.' Investors have been cool on the industry since a handful of conventional geothermal projects went under two decades ago. But Gertler estimated that, if five to 10 new geothermal projects prove successful, banks will open their wallets again. Unlike other renewable-energy sources, the emerging geothermal sector has received little direct support from the federal government. By the time Fervo had demonstrated it could frack for geothermal energy, the Biden administration had already passed two monumental climate-spending laws, which directed billions of dollars toward technologies such as solar, wind, and nuclear power, but just $84 million for early-stage geothermal. Companies such Fervo and Sage could still benefit, though, from tax credits for producing zero-carbon electricity, if Republicans in Congress don't repeal key parts of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. 'I don't know where that's going,' Representative Celeste Maloy, the Utah Republican in whose district Fervo is building its first large-scale plant, told me. But she said slashing the requirements for obtaining federal permits—which her party is eager to do—could give the industry enough of a boost that 'it almost doesn't matter what happens to the IRA incentives.' (No company has made that case to her, she allowed.) Like any energy industry, geothermal has external costs that could become bigger issues as it grows. In 2017, an early experiment in enhanced geothermal energy in South Korea triggered a serious earthquake. (Earthquakes doubled in Texas in 2021 thanks to oil and gas companies injecting sludgy wastewater into underground wells.) Locations with particularly good hot-rock resources could end up overlapping with threatened species, just as one of the nation's biggest lithium projects ran up against an endangered wildflower or one of California's largest solar farms put tortoises at risk. Environmentalists primed to see anything with Big Oil's fingerprints on it as suspicious will find plenty of connections between this industry and fossil-fuel companies. And, as the industry scales up, it will use larger volumes of water. Fervo, for one, has been pushing to use water too brackish for agricultural or municipal purposes, Tim Latimer, Fervo's chief executive, told me: 'So we're not really fighting with people over water even though we're in the western desert.' Other companies, such as XGS Energy, are boring more conventional wells and keeping water contained in closed-loop pipes, eliminating the risk of losing any water at all in the process. Electricity has to come from somewhere, though, and as demand surges, the Trump administration is winning over support even from some Democrats to keep coal plants open longer. Meanwhile, gas power plants are expanding. To keep the lights on—while keeping utility bills and global temperatures down as much as possible—the country will need to employ all available resources of clean power, and perhaps especially those the current administration is willing to support. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
04-04-2025
- Business
- Atlantic
A Clean-Energy Boom Could Be Built on Oil and Gas Technology
The United States is in the midst of an energy revolution. Under the Biden administration, the country shoveled unprecedented sums of federal dollars into clean-energy projects—battery factories, solar farms, nuclear plants—while also producing and exporting record volumes of oil and gas. President Donald Trump has vowed to ramp up energy production further, but takes a skeptical view of solar and wind power. But Trump's 'Drill, baby, drill' mantra extends beyond fossil fuels. His administration is embracing geothermal energy, which is primed for a very American boom. In the United States, geothermal energy, which uses the Earth's heat to create electricity, supplies less than half of 1 percent of the country's electricity, but few other clean-energy sources offer as much promise right now. Many climate activists support geothermal energy as a renewable power source that generates zero-carbon electricity. A recent report from the Rhodium Group, an energy-research firm, projected that geothermal could meet as much as 64 percent of new electricity demand from data centers by the early 2030s. America is far behind rivals such as China and Russia in manufacturing solar panels or building nuclear plants. But geothermal makes use of an area of the U.S. industrial base that has grown in recent years—oil and gas production. Cindy Taff, whose company, Sage Geosystems, is anticipating geothermal's potential growth, told me about a recent drive she took through southern Texas that illustrated that overlap. 'The same drilling rig that drilled our well in September was on a lease right off the highway drilling an oil-and-gas well,' she said, laughing. 'It's just the same.' Taff came from the oil industry: She was once a vice president at Royal Dutch Shell who commanded a team of 350 employees using hydraulic fracturing (better known as fracking) to drill their way through five countries' bedrock. Fracking had driven an oil-and-gas boom starting in the mid-2000s, and her team had looked at using the same technique to tap the Earth's underground heat. At Shell, 'we never actually drilled wells' to try it on geothermal energy, she told me. 'It was frustrating.' The opportunity looked big enough to her that she started Sage. Much like oil and gas, geothermal energy, which harnesses the planet's molten core to make steam, had long been confined to the places where access came easy—the American West, where Yellowstone's famous geysers hint at the heat below, or volcanic Iceland. In those places—generally volcanic hot spots where magma flows at shallow depths in the Earth's crust and underground water reservoirs—geothermal energy can be a substantial source of power. Currently, it provides roughly 10 percent of Nevada's electricity generation and as much as 5 percent of the power California produces; Iceland generates 30 percent of its electricity, and Kenya nearly half, from geothermal. Traditional coal or nuclear plants generate heat to turn water into steam, which spins turbines to make electricity. Geothermal power stations do the same using hot water from underground reservoirs. Sage uses fracking technology to crack open hot rocks even deeper underground, enabling access to heat in more locations. The company's drillers then inject water into the well, prying open the stone fissures and creating an artificial reservoir. When Sage releases that water, the pressure from underground shoots it upward, and the heat creates vapors that spin turbines and crank out electricity. This system can also serve as storage for weather-dependent wind and solar: Extra electricity from turbines and panels can pump water into Sage's wells that can be released later to produce electricity. Sage expects to have its first energy-storage facility up and running in Texas in the coming weeks, but already has a deal to sell power to Meta's data centers. And a similar start-up, Fervo Energy, demonstrated that it could use fracking technology to successfully produce 24/7 carbon-free energy back in 2023, at a pilot project in Nevada. Geothermal does have certain advantages compared with other sources of renewable energy. Solar and wind need large areas of land, huge volumes of minerals, and a massive new network of transmission lines. (Plus, China dominates those industries' supply chains.) Hydroelectric dams are less dependable in a world where water is growing scarcer and precipitation harder to forecast. Nuclear reactors cost billions of dollars and take years to build; the U.S. depends heavily on counties such as Canada, Kazakhstan, and Russia for uranium fuel, and has yet to establish the infrastructure to either permanently store or recycle nuclear waste. For now, most of the efforts to debut next-generation geothermal technology are still in the American West, where drilling is relatively cheap and easy because the rocks they're targeting are closer to the surface. But if the industry can prove to investors that its power plants work as described—which experts expect to happen by the end of the decade—geothermal could expand quickly, just like oil-and-gas fracking did. That the 'enhanced' geothermal industry piggybacks on technology from the fossil-fuel industry also puts it in a position to grow. 'In the U.S., our manufacturing base is falling apart. But we have a ridiculously good industrial base in oil and gas,' Charles Gertler, who until recently worked at the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office and co-authored a report outlining a pathway for the industry's growth, told me. 'The fact that you can just rely on many of the same tools and people and technologies and supply chains is the reason a lot of folks are so excited.' Investors have been cool on the industry since a handful of conventional geothermal projects went under two decades ago. But Gertler estimated that, if five to 10 new geothermal projects prove successful, banks will open their wallets again. Unlike other renewable-energy sources, the emerging geothermal sector has received little direct support from the federal government. By the time Fervo had demonstrated it could frack for geothermal energy, the Biden administration had already passed two monumental climate-spending laws, which directed billions of dollars toward technologies such as solar, wind, and nuclear power, but just $84 million for early-stage geothermal. Companies such Fervo and Sage could still benefit, though, from tax credits for producing zero-carbon electricity, if Republicans in Congress don't repeal key parts of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act. 'I don't know where that's going,' Representative Celeste Maloy, the Utah Republican in whose district Fervo is building its first large-scale plant, told me. But she said slashing the requirements for obtaining federal permits—which her party is eager to do—could give the industry enough of a boost that 'it almost doesn't matter what happens to the IRA incentives.' (No company has made that case to her, she allowed.) Like any energy industry, geothermal has external costs that could become bigger issues as it grows. In 2017, an early experiment in enhanced geothermal energy in South Korea triggered a serious earthquake. (Earthquakes doubled in Texas in 2021 thanks to oil and gas companies injecting sludgy wastewater into underground wells.) Locations with particularly good hot-rock resources could end up overlapping with threatened species, just as one of the nation's biggest lithium projects ran up against an endangered wildflower or one of California's largest solar farms put tortoises at risk. Environmentalists primed to see anything with Big Oil's fingerprints on it as suspicious will find plenty of connections between this industry and fossil-fuel companies. And, as the industry scales up, it will use larger volumes of water. Fervo, for one, has been pushing to use water too brackish for agricultural or municipal purposes, Tim Latimer, Fervo's chief executive, told me: 'So we're not really fighting with people over water even though we're in the western desert.' Other companies, such as XGS Energy, are boring more conventional wells and keeping water contained in closed-loop pipes, eliminating the risk of losing any water at all in the process. Electricity has to come from somewhere, though, and as demand surges, the Trump administration is winning over support even from some Democrats to keep coal plants open longer. Meanwhile, gas power plants are expanding. To keep the lights on—while keeping utility bills and global temperatures down as much as possible—the country will need to employ all available resources of clean power, and perhaps especially those the current administration is willing to support.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How Texas oil workers, technology are helping build a new renewable boom
This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. It is part four in a four-part series. Read part one here, part two here and part three here. On any other day, David Rodriguez's truck would have been helping extract oil, and as he sucked mud from a well beneath a towering drilling rig, any passersby might have assumed he was doing just that. 'Compared to oil and gas, it's the same thing, man,' Rodriguez shouted over the motor. But he was working to produce something entirely different. Rather than pulling oil out of the earth, the hole he was helping drill would be used to store clean, transient power from south Texas wind and solar farms. Rodriguez, who was helping drill the hole for geothermal energy company Sage Geosystems, is one of a growing number of workers across Texas employing some of the same skills and technology used to extract fossil fuels for the production of renewable energy. Those efforts come at the height of the largest oil and gas boom in American history, which centers on an expansive oil-producing region extending across western Texas and eastern New Mexico known as the Permian Basin and has been driven by the increasing use of novel technologies like fracking and horizontal drilling. That boom has seen oil and gas output consistently hit record levels in recent years. At the same time, however, due to the pace of drilling and the declining need for workers amid the rise of high-tech forms of extraction, the expansion in production has come with a sharp and protracted decline in both the number of rigs and rig workers. 'We drilled ourselves out of a job,' consultant Mark Pinson said, eyeing the bobbing pump jacks that were still pulling oil from the Eagle Ford shale. The Texas rock formation was once at the heart of the oil and gas boom. But beneath its bones lies another resource central to the new movement in the region's energy industry: heat that Texas companies like Sage and Fervo Energy hope to tap for clean power. The field centered on that geothermal energy has long been a niche one in the renewables sector because of its reliance on a very particular set of underground conditions: accessible, superheated pools of underground water, like those found beneath pockets of California, the Pacific's Ring of Fire and the nation of Iceland. Over the past decade, however, hundreds of millions in investor capital have flowed into largely Texas-based firms seeking to develop methods that could be used to generate geothermal power virtually anywhere in the country. One big pitch for the industry is security for the grid as a whole. Investing and bipartisan political support for geothermal in Texas has picked up after the state's deadly 2021 blackouts showed the need for secure power sources not subject to extreme weather or alleged market manipulation by oil and gas companies. In the 2023 Texas legislative session, geothermal proponents' ability to cast themselves as a bulwark against the risks of extreme weather helped the industry win nearly unanimous support for its policy agenda in a session where renewables were under nearly continuous assault. More recently, the Department of Defense has been a major backer of the technology, which it describes as a means of giving bases access to a source of power that neither the weather nor adversaries can shut off. A more subtle case for the industry focuses on job security for the oil and gas industry. Proponents — largely oil industry veterans — see geothermal as a long-term life raft for oil and gas workers increasingly idled as layoffs beset the industry. Though oil may not be 'a dying industry, it's definitely not a growth industry,' former Chesapeake Energy Director Fernando Aguilera told The Hill. 'The opportunities for development are not the same that they used to be 10 years ago.' President Trump and the Texas GOP have pledged to boost the country's already record oil and gas production with support for additional drilling. But that backing doesn't guarantee the oil industry's enthusiasm to expand drilling — especially when increasing supply could threaten profits. 'We like oil at $70,' Permian oilman Kirk Edwards said, warning that oversupply and the drop in fuel prices that Trump has promised would kill industry profits. The political support for drilling appears poised to help bolster the burgeoning geothermal industry, however, as does soaring demand for electricity in Texas driven by population growth, data centers and crypto mines. Geothermal is one of the few renewables that Trump supported in his executive order declaring a national energy emergency, and in March Energy Secretary Chris Wright threw his support behind a geothermal boom. So did Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), whose district includes much of the Permian. Introducing Wright at a geothermal event, Pfluger portrayed geothermal as the logical continuation of the fracking boom. For the Permian, he said, 'it's going to be the same people, the same firms, the same technology that is going to help scale geothermal.' Pfluger was referring to the host of new technologies that have made it possible over the past decade for firms to extract oil and gas reliably and efficiently: fiber optics, monitoring driven by artificial intelligence (AI), fracking and horizontal drilling. These technologies have also played a key role in the recent resurgence of geothermal through 'enhanced geothermal' startups like Fervo, Sage, Eavor, Bedrock and XGS. Such startups use oil and gas-based technologies to create the precise underground conditions needed to tap the heat beneath the region's surface — either for electricity, industrial power or heating and cooling. That heat has long served as an obstacle to oil extraction, particularly in the hot rock of the Eagle Ford, where Sage was drilling. But Fervo founder Tim Latimer, a former engineer for mining company BHP, realized while working on oil production in the region in the early 2010s that it was also a source of untapped power. The realization prompted him to quit oil, go to business school and launch the Houston-based geothermal company, which had secured nearly $700 million in funding as of December. Fervo and the companies that followed it are working to expand the reach of geothermal to the entire country. Traditional geothermal or 'hydrothermal' companies have sought naturally circulating hot water systems, which they have exploited using drills similar to those for excavating water wells. This works well for regions that have such resources, like California, Iceland or South Korea, but easily accessible superheated water is rare. Enhanced geothermal startups, meanwhile, have broken new ground in the ways they're using technology to create what amount to their own underground geyser systems. The enhanced geothermal industry has secured some support from major oil and gas firms, including large independents like Chesapeake and and some majors like Chevron — who see in the technology a potential bulwark against the wild swings of oil and gas prices. Collaborations between fossil fuels and geothermal came as part of a broader high-tech turn in the industry that saw oil and gas companies increasingly wire their oil wells with fiber optic cables that allowed surface crews to visualize the underground world in unprecedented detail. That turn would ultimately squeeze out oil and gas workers as wells became more efficient and needed fewer people — a process that accelerated as oil companies merged, creating fewer clients for drilling companies, which also consolidated in a cascade of lost jobs. Aguilera, the former Chesapeake director, suddenly found himself having to call hundreds of workers to lay them off. For the new wave of geothermal startups, however, it opened up the possibility of using fracking, fiber optics and increasingly precise forms of underground drilling to create artificial, highly efficient underground energy systems to generate power on the surface. That possibility represents an opportunity in the eyes of the new generation of geothermal entrepreneurs, most of whom have backgrounds in oil and gas, not just to build out America's clean infrastructure, but to revitalize drilling itself. Aguilera now runs field operations for Bedrock Energy, a company that drills geothermal wells to heat or cool commercial buildings. Unlike in oil and gas, where there were too many staff and rigs for the available work, 'we have the opposite problem in geothermal. We have more jobs that we can take on,' he said. Geothermal offers a chance 'to do the shale revolution all over again,' Sage CEO and former Shell Vice President Cindy Taff told The Hill. Her company is looking to use the drilling technology not only to produce geothermal power, but also to store energy. Sage's south Texas project aims to frack a cavity 8,000 feet underground, then pump in water when wind and solar power are plentiful. Later, when that supply declines or energy demand spikes, Sage would release the trapped pressure to spin a turbine — like a set of lungs, Taff said, breathing in and out underground. In this way, the project would store power from excess wind or solar — pumped in the form of hot or cold water — in the earth to be released on demand like a giant underground battery. That would add a new on-demand tool to the grid alongside hydropower dams, lithium ion or thermal batteries, and nuclear and gas plants. Some clients find this storage idea more exciting than geothermal itself. The prospect of on-demand clean power is particularly attractive to data centers, which have extensive commitments to zero-carbon energy. Fervo sold 125 megawatts to Nevada's grid as part of a deal with Google, then 320 megawatts to Southern California Edison. Sage signed 150 megawatts for an on-site power deal with Meta. More deals are pending, including one by Sage that could bring geothermal onto Texas's grid for the first time. Another Houston-based geothermal company, Quaise Energy, plans to use a microwave beam to vaporize hot, dry rock. If that method works, it could open much of the country to deeper geothermal drilling and be used to tap heat even beneath dense Northeastern cities, where usable heat had long been thought to be too far underground to capture in an economically viable way. The International Energy Agency has estimated global geothermal resources could produce enough energy to cover 140 times the current electricity demand, using 80 percent of the same jobs found in the existing oil and gas workforce. And once enough companies are drilling, they can begin to cross-pollinate, said Ghazal Izadi, the chief operating officer at geothermal company XGS Energy, which recruits heavily from oil field service companies like Baker Hughes and Schlumberger. During the shale boom, for example, Izadi said that drillers 'shared experience between 3000 operators — sharing every day about the length of the well, how long it takes, what they fracked, well spacing, frack spacing, how many problems they had, how much fluid they used.' Over a decade, that synergy let shale exploration companies cut the time needed to drill, case and frack a well by a factor of 12, she said. To some of geothermal's proponents, the technology represents a chance to transform the energy industry and eliminate its toxic byproducts — moving away from the type of production long dominant in the Permian Basin, where oil and gas manufacture takes place on an industrial scale across entire landscapes, producing poisonous gas and towers of fire, and toward something more like that seen in Iceland, where waste heat from geothermal electric plants powers fish farms, hot tubs and greenhouses. Large-scale geothermal would trade the Permian Basin's ''Mordor vibe' for a cooler, shinier, more tidy vibe,' said Jamie Beard, founder of geothermal advocacy group Project InnerSpace. The Permian, she argued, is 'a huge mess out there, like driving through hell — thousands of flares, fire everywhere, pump jacks and all that. None of that is present in geothermal production because you're not producing oil and gas.' Shifting away from oil and gas production could also reduce exposure to volatile, DNA-wrecking organic compounds — like benzene and toluene — that are often present in the fossil fuels. Those dangers are lower for geothermal: The fracking fluid used by Sage, for example, is a nontoxic barite solution, as opposed to the thousands of novel and often toxic chemicals used in oil and gas. Geothermal isn't risk free. A rushed drilling job in India's Himalayas, for instance, caused a blowout that dumped hot water and clay into local water supplies. The greater concern hanging over the geothermal industry, however, is that the data centers it hopes will be at the center of a growing market for its energy will instead stick to gas. The risk, Beard said, is that geothermal could lose that AI-driven energy market to fossil fuels unless it proves itself right now. So far, the industry is choosing gas. Current data centers demand 24/7 power, which geothermal promises but only fossil fuels can currently supply. Gas demand has flatlined in recent years, but that dynamic is projected to drive it up by another 6 billion cubic feet per day by decade's end, per S&P Global. Much of this growth is poised to occur in Texas, where in mid-February a new central Texas data center announced plans to connect to a new gas pipeline that would generate 1.2 gigawatts of power — enough to power about a million homes. Though geothermal might be able to meet that demand in a few years, Beard worries it is at a significant disadvantage now, when decisions are being made that will shape the future of the American grid for decades. 'If it has to be built fast, it's going to be natural gas,' she said. She argued that creates an urgent imperative for geothermal to find ways to colocate with gas development — in effect rerunning the mid-2010s Eagle Ford playbook in which geothermal technology helped extract hot gas and bought itself a long-term seat at the table. 'If geothermal doesn't prove itself in this massive build-out to address data center demand, I worry that geothermal may never get off the ground,' Beard said. But supply chain bottlenecks mean that new gas plants must often wait years for parts — which XGS's Izadi argued gives geothermal 'a good opportunity to win the race. We need to win it.' To do that, she said, geothermal would have to develop at a far greater pace. The industry had moved past the need for more research and test wells, she said. 'Geothermal is not moving with one or two wells or three wells per year' — each company, ultimately, needs to reach a point where it is drilling hundreds or thousands of wells per year. To move forward, she said, 'We just need to drill.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
