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Geothermal energy is undergoing a renaissance, thanks in large part to a crop of buzzy startups that aim to adapt fracking technology to generate power from hot rocks virtually anywhere.
Meanwhile, the conventional wisdom on conventional geothermal — the incumbent technology that has existed for more than a century to tap into the energy of volcanically heated underground reservoirs — is that all the good resources have already been mapped and tapped out.
Zanskar is setting itself apart from the roughly one dozen geothermal startups currently gathering steam by making a contrarian bet on conventional resources. Instead of gambling on new drilling technologies, the Salt Lake City–based company uses modern prospecting methods and artificial intelligence to help identify more conventional resources that can be tapped and turned into power plants using time-tested technology.
On Thursday, Zanskar unveiled its biggest proof point yet.
The company announced the discovery of Big Blind, a naturally occurring geothermal system in western Nevada with the potential to produce more than 100 megawatts of electricity. It’s the first “blind” geothermal system — meaning that the underground reservoir has no visible signs, such as vents or geysers, and no data history from past exploration — identified for commercial use in more than 30 years.
In total, the United States currently has an installed capacity of roughly 4 gigawatts of conventional geothermal, most of which is in California. That makes the U.S. the world’s No. 1 user of geothermal power, even though the energy source accounts for less than half a percentage point of the country’s total electricity output.
The project is set to go into development, with a target of coming online in three to five years. Once complete, it will be the nation’s first new conventional geothermal plant on a previously undeveloped site in nearly a decade, though it may come online later than some next-generation projects.
“We plan to build a power plant there, and that means interconnection, permitting, construction, and drilling out the rest of the well field and the power plant itself. But that’s all pretty standard, almost cookie-cutter,” said Carl Hoiland, Zanskar’s cofounder and chief executive. “We know how to build power plants as an industry. We’ve just not been able to find the resources in the past.”
Prospecting is where Zanskar stands out. While surveying, the company’s geologists found a “geothermal anomaly” indicating the site’s “exceptionally high heat flow,” according to a press release. The team then ran the prospecting data through the company’s AI software to predict viable locations to drill wells in order to test the temperature and permeability of the system.
Zanskar drilled two test wells this summer. Roughly 2,700 feet down, the drills hit a porous layer of the resource with temperatures of approximately 250 degrees Fahrenheit. The company said those “conditions exceed minimum thresholds for utility-scale geothermal power” and “contrast greatly” with other areas in the region, which would require digging as far down as 10,000 feet — potentially viable for the next-generation technologies Zanskar’s rivals are pitching.
The firm’s announcement comes as the U.S. clamors for more electricity, in large part because of shockingly high forecasts of power demand from data centers. Many of the tech companies developing data centers, like Google and Meta, are eager to pay big for “clean, firm” power — electricity that is carbon-free and available 24/7. Geothermal, whether advanced or conventional, is a tantalizing option for meeting those standards, and tech giants already anchor some next-generation projects.
Ultimately, Zanskar thinks it can convince data centers to colocate near where it finds resources.
If it’s able to find additional untapped resources that are suitable for conventional technology, Zanskar could deliver new geothermal power faster and cheaper than the flashier startups on the scene can. Those firms, including Fervo Energy and XGS Energy, are making significant progress in bringing down the cost of their drilling techniques, but they are still using new technologies that remain more expensive than the traditional approach, which has been refined over time.
“The core reason we started the company is we came to believe that the Department of Energy’s estimates of hydrothermal potential were just orders of magnitude too low and were all based on studies that are over 20 years old,” Hoiland said. “We think that there’s 10 times more out there than they thought, and that every one of those sites can be 10 times more productive in terms of the number of megawatts they can generate.”
Among the notable cheerleaders of this same theory? The chief executive of the leading next-generation geothermal company. Responding to a post on X from Zanskar cofounder and chief technology officer Joel Edwards describing how much more conventional geothermal remains untapped, Fervo CEO Tim Latimer wrote, “Joel makes a great point about geothermal that you see all the time in resource development: when technology improves, turns out there’s a lot more of something than we thought.”
This story was first published by Inside Climate News.
The U.S. Department of Energy has approved an $8.6 million grant that will allow the nation’s first utility-led geothermal heating and cooling network to double in size.
Gas and electric utility Eversource Energy completed the first phase of its geothermal network in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 2024. Eversource is a corecipient of the award along with the city of Framingham and HEET, a Boston-based nonprofit that focuses on geothermal energy and is the lead recipient of the funding.
Geothermal networks are widely considered among the most energy-efficient ways to heat and cool buildings. The federal money will allow Eversource to add approximately 140 new customers to the Framingham network and fund research to monitor the system’s performance.
The federal funding was first announced in December 2024 under the Biden administration. However, the contract between HEET and the Department of Energy was not finalized until Sept. 30 and was just announced Wednesday. The agreement, which allows construction to move forward, comes as the Trump administration is clawing back billions of dollars in clean energy funding, including hundreds of millions of dollars in Massachusetts.
“This award is an opportunity and a responsibility to clearly demonstrate and quantify the growth potential of geothermal network technology,” Zeyneb Magavi, HEET’s executive director, wrote in a statement.
The existing system provides heating and cooling to approximately 140 residential and commercial customers in the western suburb of Boston. The network taps low-temperature thermal energy from dozens of boreholes drilled several hundred feet below ground, where temperatures remain steady at 55 degrees Fahrenheit. A network of pipes circulates water through the boreholes to each building, enabling electric heat pumps to provide additional heating or cooling as needed.
“By harnessing the natural heat from the earth, we are taking a significant step toward increasing our energy independence and promoting abundant local energy sources,” Charlie Sisitsky, Framingham’s mayor, wrote.
Progress on the project is a further indicator that despite their opposition to wind and solar, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress appear to back geothermal energy.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office declaring an energy emergency that expressed support for a limited mix of energy resources, including fossil fuels, nuclear power, biofuels, hydropower, and geothermal energy.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Republicans and signed by Trump in July, quickly phases out tax credits for wind, solar, and electric vehicles. However, the bill left geothermal heating and cooling tax credits approved under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 largely intact.
A reorganization of the Department of Energy announced last month eliminated the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy but kept the office for geothermal energy as part of the newly created Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office.
“The fact that geothermal is on this administration’s agenda is pretty impactful,” said Nikki Bruno, vice president for thermal solutions and operational services at Eversource. “It means they believe in it. It’s a bipartisan technology.”
Plans for the expansion project call for roughly doubling Framingham’s geothermal network capacity at approximately half the cost of the initial buildout. Part of the estimated cost savings will come from using existing equipment rather than duplicating it.
“You’ve already got all the pumping and control infrastructure installed, so you don’t need to build a new pump house,” said Eric Bosworth, a geothermal expert who runs the consultancy Thermal Energy Insights. Bosworth oversaw the construction of the initial geothermal network in Framingham while working for Eversource.
The network’s efficiency is anticipated to increase as it grows, requiring fewer boreholes to expand. That improvement is due to the different heating and cooling needs of individual buildings, which increasingly balance each other out as the network expands, Magavi said.
The project still awaits approval from state regulators, with Eversource aiming to start construction by the end of 2026, Bruno said.
“What we’re witnessing is the birth of a new utility,” Magavi said. Geothermal networks “can help us address energy security, affordability and so many other challenges.”
New Haven, Connecticut, has broken ground on an ambitious geothermal energy network that will provide low-emission heating and cooling to the city’s bustling, historic Union Station and a new public housing complex across the street.
The project will play a crucial role in the city’s attempt to decarbonize all municipal buildings and transportation by the end of 2030. As one of Connecticut’s first geothermal energy networks, it will also serve as a case study of how well the technology can both lower energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the state considers promoting wider adoption of these systems.
“At the end of the day, you’re going to have the most efficient heating and cooling system available for our historic train station as well as roughly 1,000 units of housing,” said Steven Winter, New Haven’s executive director of climate and sustainability. “Anything we can help do to improve health outcomes and reduce climate change–causing emissions is really valuable.”
In climate-conscious states across the country, thermal energy networks are emerging as a promising way to reduce reliance on fossil fuels for heating, lower utility bills, and create a pathway for the gas industry to transition its business model for a cleaner-energy future. These neighborhood-scale systems use ground-source heat pumps and a web of underground pipes to deliver heating and cooling to connected buildings.
The thermal energy for heating can come from a variety of sources, including geothermal systems, industrial waste heat, and surface water. Because no fossil fuels are directly burned to produce heat, the only emissions are those created generating the electricity to run the network. At the same time, the systems insulate customers from volatile and rising natural gas prices.
“There’s a lot of excitement around networked geothermal because it actually offers solutions to a lot of problems,” said Samantha Dynowski, state director of Sierra Club’s Connecticut chapter. “It can be a more equitable solution for a whole neighborhood, a whole community — not just a single home.”
The practice of deploying such systems as a neighborhood loop is relatively new, but the component parts are well established: Geothermal heat pumps have been around for more than 100 years, and the pipe networks are very similar to those used for natural gas delivery.
“The backbone technology is the same kind of pipe you use in the gas system,” said Jessica Silber-Byrne, thermal energy networks research and communications manager for the nonprofit Building Decarbonization Coalition. “They’re not experimental. This isn’t an immature technology that still needs to be proved out.”
There are a handful of networked geothermal systems around the United States, owned by municipalities, private organizations, and universities. A couple of miles away from the Union Station project, at Yale University, development is underway on a geothermal loop serving several science buildings.
But the idea is catching on among gas utilities, too. The nation’s first utility-owned geothermal network came online in Framingham, Massachusetts, in June 2024, and just received an $8.6 million federal grant that will allow it to double in size. Across the country, 26 utility thermal energy network pilots are underway, and 13 states have passed some form of legislation exploring or supporting the approach, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition.
In Connecticut, a comprehensive energy bill that passed earlier this year established a grant and loan program to support the development of thermal energy networks. Advocates are now pushing Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, to issue the bonds needed to fund the new initiative.
The New Haven network could provide a concrete example of the opportunities offered by such systems.
The plan began when the federal government was seeking applications for its Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program, an initiative created by President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Union Station seemed like an excellent property to retrofit because of its age, its size, and its prominent role in the city: Nearly a million travelers pass through the station each year, making it one of Amtrak’s busiest stops and an excellent platform for demonstrating the potential of geothermal networks.
“We thought it would be a powerful message to send for this beautiful landmark building that’s also the gateway to the city,” Winter said.
In July 2024, the federal program awarded the proposal just under $9.5 million; though there were questions earlier in the year about whether the Trump administration would attempt to block the money, the grant program ultimately proceeded. Planners expect federal tax credits and state incentives to cover the remaining $7 million in the project budget.
The network will use as many as 200 geothermal boreholes. Fluid will circulate through pipes in each of these wells, picking up thermal energy stored within the earth; in hotter weather, when cooling is needed, the systems will transfer energy back into the ground.
The city began drilling the first test boreholes in November. The results were promising: One test hole was able to extend down 1,200 feet, significantly farther than the 850 feet projected, Winter said. If more boreholes can be drilled that deep, it could mean fewer holes are needed overall — and thus less materials — making the project more efficient, he said.
Construction of the network is still in the early stages. The test boreholes should be completed this month, and the design of the ground heat exchanger — the underground portion of the system in which the thermal energy is transferred — is about halfway done, Winter said. The city is also preparing to accept proposals for the retrofit of the heating and cooling systems in the station itself.
The goal is to have the system up and running in the latter half of 2028. The apartment units, which are still in the design phase, will be connected to the system as they are built.
Even as the initial plan comes together, New Haven is already considering the possibility of expanding the nascent network to include more buildings, such as other apartment units under development nearby, existing buildings in the neighborhood, and a police station around the corner, Winter said.
“Ideally, we end up with a municipally owned thermal utility that can help decarbonize this corner of the city and provide affordable, clean heating and cooling,” he said.
In the early 2000s, the owners of the Mammoth Pacific geothermal station proposed expanding the plant into an area just east of California’s Yosemite National Park. The project boasted on its website in 2004 that the potential new wells, which would be located in one of the state’s richest heat resources, had been “carefully chosen to reduce or avoid potential environmental impacts.”
By 2009, the company had produced a study on how the development could impact plant life. The power station had been running since the 1980s, so the decades of data on its safe operation seemed to bode well for a swift approval at a moment when, much like today, rising electricity demand and concern over climate change were converging to bolster development of carbon-free power. The prospects looked so good that, in 2010, geothermal giant Ormat Technologies bought the company that owned Mammoth. In 2013 — a decade after the expansion was first conceived — federal regulators gave the project the green light.
Yet that was just the start of Mammoth Pacific’s permitting saga.
An environmental group and local opponents quickly accused regulators of failing to properly consider how the geothermal project could release organic gases into the atmosphere and groundwater, and filed a lawsuit under the California Environmental Quality Act. The litigation took years to resolve. By the time Ormat finally completed the expansion in 2022, the so-called Casa Diablo IV project had been in the works for nearly two decades.
“People in the industry know it took 17 years to expand an existing facility,” said Joel Edwards, the cofounder and chief technology officer at the geothermal startup Zanskar. “And that’s the last facility that’s been built in California.”
Building a new geothermal plant from scratch on an undeveloped site, he said, would presumably “be an even bigger lift.”
A bill that California lawmakers passed almost unanimously last month promised to change that calculus for the geothermal industry. AB 527 would have provided geothermal developers with categorical exemptions to CEQA reviews, clearing the way for companies to carry out the most expensive part of the process — drilling wells to identify viable hot-rock resources — without the costly burden of lawsuits and ecological assessments the state’s landmark environmental law imposes. A companion bill, known as AB 531, gives geothermal energy projects the same special “environmental leadership” status as solar, wind, energy storage, and hydrogen facilities.
But, in a move that has mystified the industry, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed AB 527. In his letter explaining the rejection, Newsom said the legislation would have required state regulators to “substantially increase fees on geothermal operators to implement the new requirements imposed by the bill.”
Of more than half a dozen industry executives and analysts that Canary Media spoke to, however, none believed that argument.
“Something doesn’t add up,” said Samuel Roland, a research fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation who has tracked the bill. “It was a political play for him.” The foundation is a right-leaning think tank that advocates for speeding up energy deployments.
While Roland said it’s difficult to determine exactly which groups may have persuaded the governor to block the legislation, “the only people who were objecting were environmentalists,” a dynamic that echoes the fight against Mammoth Pacific’s expansion.
“It does seem like it was a giveaway to environmental groups,” Roland said.
Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, declined to comment. “The Governor’s veto message speaks for itself,” he wrote in an email to Canary Media.
California’s unique geology has made it the destination for the geothermal industry for decades. The Western Hemisphere’s first commercial geothermal power station opened in California in 1960. That plant — The Geysers geothermal complex, located in a valley of the Mayacamas Mountains north of the San Francisco Bay Area — remains the world’s largest electrical station powered by the planet’s heat.
The state has enormous untapped potential — and a growing need for electricity. California has shut down all but one of its nuclear power plants over the past few decades. In recent years, persistent drought has made the state’s hydroelectric stations less dependable. Solar generation has soared, and a growing fleet of batteries has helped steady the supply when sun-soaked days threaten to overwhelm the grid with electrons and dark nights send panels’ production plummeting. But the state remains reliant on natural gas and power imports from neighboring states to meet surging demand. To achieve its carbon-cutting goals and bring down electricity rates that are more than double that of nearby states, California needs to increase its supply of clean, firm generation.
Burning biomass, such as dry wood cleared from California’s forests to help prevent wildfires, could provide one option — but that still generates carbon dioxide, and the demand for wood might encourage logging of healthy trees. Despite the state’s reversal of its plan to shut down Diablo Canyon, its final atomic station, building new nuclear reactors is still banned in California. Hydropower is dogged by water scarcity. That makes geothermal a particularly attractive choice.
It’s not without some drawbacks. Conventional geothermal, which involves drilling down into underground reservoirs warmed by volcanic heat, is limited to easily accessible areas and comes with the challenge of maintaining the subterranean water source over time. Next-generation geothermal companies are rapidly advancing drilling techniques that the oil and gas industry perfected in recent years to go deeper and harvest heat from dry, hot rocks, vastly expanding the locations with potential to generate energy. In a seismically active state, that carries some risk since the version of next-generation geothermal that uses hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, technology to drill could trigger earthquakes.
But every energy source comes with challenges, and neighboring states such as Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico are aggressively pursuing next-generation geothermal projects.
In theory, the best place to develop those first-of-a-kind plants would be California, with its energy-affordability woes and status as a major global economy.
“Utah has low prices, and geothermal is still expensive,” said Thomas Hochman, director of infrastructure and energy policy at the Foundation for American Innovation. “If you want to bring geothermal down to cost parity with other technologies, you have to sell it to Californians. As a result, geothermal scaling runs through California.”
For the most part, however, developers are steering clear of the Golden State. Companies such as Fervo Energy, XGS Energy, and Sage Geosystems — three of the biggest next-generation startups — are based in Houston and are pursuing debut projects in Utah, New Mexico, and Texas itself. Zanskar, a developer using modern prospecting methods to tap conventional geothermal resources, is headquartered in Salt Lake City. States such as Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon are “really exciting” as potential next areas for development, Edwards said.
“If California ever fixes CEQA,” he added, “it could be huge.”
The regulatory hurdles represent “the only real barrier” to geothermal taking off in the Golden State, said Wilson Ricks, a Princeton University researcher who focuses on geothermal.
“You can find projects pretty much all across the Western states but very few, if any, in California, despite it being the biggest potential market,” Ricks said.
“It’s stark. People are exploring projects in Texas, which has far, far worse-quality resources than the ones in California,” he added. “That’s because of the regulatory environment there. So the fact that regulatory barriers are going to remain in place doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that California’s going to be leaping ahead on geothermal anytime soon.”
In response to emailed questions, Fervo said it maintains leases near the Salton Sea region, an area with vast geothermal potential. But those parcels aren’t currently under development since the state’s permitting regime makes investing in drilling too risky.
“With the right legislative and permitting reforms, similar to those that were proposed in AB 527, the state could better position in-state resources for development and unlock the enormous economic benefits that come with local clean energy development,” said Sarah Harper, Fervo’s senior policy and regulatory affairs associate.
Not everyone is so bearish. Ormat, the nation’s largest geothermal operator of conventional sites, said the fact that the vetoed bill passed in the Legislature without a single no vote, just a handful of abstentions, shows there’s political support for geothermal “like we haven’t seen in the past.”
“It’s like a revolution for geothermal,” said Marisol Collons, Ormat’s manager of communications and government affairs. “We’re still highly optimistic about the future and ready to kickstart all our next legislative sessions across the country.”
While Fervo lamented that a small number of green groups fought the bill, the company said the fact that there were “more environmental groups in favor than there were ones opposed, or even neutral,” left it feeling hopeful about the possibility of future legislation.
For XGS, a next-generation company whose technology forgoes fracking and minimizes its water usage by keeping the fluid for its operations contained in a closed tube, California remains “the highest-priority market.”
“We feel that California provides a unique combination from both a resource perspective and a market perspective,” said Lucy Darago, chief commercial officer at XGS. “It’s a high-demand market that really needs the attributes that geothermal brings.”
The company backed the bill and said categorical exemptions from CEQA permitting for drilling would have shaved anywhere from six months to two years off its development efforts.
“It’s disappointing, but I’m optimistic that a future iteration of the bill will pass,” Darago said.
The key, she said, is time. Geothermal will grow in California no matter what — of that, Darago said, she’s certain. The question is whether that happens in time to stave off blackouts and slash emissions on the trajectory the state has set for its electrical system.
“The industry is going to happen. It will get there,” she said. “But if it’s going to get there on a timeline that’s meaningful for California’s resource-adequacy challenges and climate goals, we’ll need some of these changes.”
Eavor, an advanced-geothermal startup, says it has significantly reduced drilling times and improved technologies at its nearly online project in Germany — milestones that should help it drive down the costs of harnessing clean energy from the ground.
On Tuesday, the Canadian company released results from two years of drilling activity at its flagship operation in Geretsried, Germany, giving Canary Media an exclusive early look. Eavor said the data validates its initial efforts to deploy novel “closed-loop” geothermal systems in hotter and deeper locations than conventional projects can access.
“Much like wind and solar have come down the cost curve, much like unconventional shale [oil and gas] have come down the cost curve, we now have a technical proof-point that we’ve done that in Europe,” Jeanine Vany, a cofounder and executive vice president of corporate affairs at Eavor, said from the Geothermal Rising conference in Reno, Nevada.
Eavor is part of a fast-growing effort to expand geothermal energy projects beyond traditional hot spots like California’s Salton Sea region or Iceland’s lava fields. The company and other firms — including Fervo Energy, Sage Geosystems, and XGS Energy — are adapting tools and techniques from the oil and gas industry to be able to withstand the harsh conditions found deep underground.
The industry wants to produce abundant amounts of clean electricity and heat virtually anywhere in the world, and it could serve as an ideal, around-the-clock pairing to solar and wind power. But geothermal companies are only just starting to put their novel technologies to the test.
Eavor began drilling in Geretsried in July 2023, shortly after winning a $107 million grant from the European Union’s Innovation Fund. For its first “loop,” the company drilled two vertical wells reaching nearly 2.8 miles below the surface, then created a dozen horizontal wells — like tines of a fork — that each stretch 1.8 miles long. Once in place, the wells are connected underground and sealed off so that they operate like radiators: As water circulates within the system, it collects heat from the rocks and brings it to the surface.
Operations on the first of four loops are nearly complete, and the startup plans begin construction on its second loop in March 2026. All told, the system will supply 8.2 megawatts of electricity to the regional grid and 64 MW of district heating to nearby towns, operating flexibly to provide more heat during chilly winter months and produce more electricity in summer.
In its new paper, Eavor said it encountered significant challenges in drilling its first eight of twelve lateral wells, which took over 100 days to complete — a major expense in an industry where drilling rigs can cost about $100,000 a day to run. But the company said it improved its techniques and adapted its equipment in ways that reduced the drilling time for the remaining four wells by 50%.
For example, Eavor said it successfully deployed an insulated drill pipe technology, which can actively cool drilling tools even as they encounter increasingly hotter conditions underground and helps to increase drilling speed. The adjustments also enabled Eavor to triple the length of time its drill bit could run before wearing out, further reducing downtime during the operation.
On top of cutting drilling time and costs, these improvements should also pave a path to boosting Eavor’s thermal-energy output per loop by about 35%, Vany said.
The Germany project will be the first commercial system of its kind when it starts producing power later this year. But other next-generation approaches — like the enhanced geothermal systems that Fervo is building in Utah and operating in Nevada — are also scaling up.
Enhanced geothermal involves fracturing rocks and pumping down liquids to create artificial reservoirs. The hot rocks directly heat the liquids, which return to the surface to make steam. This approach is relatively more efficient at extracting heat from the ground, but it can also raise the risk of inducing earthquakes or affecting groundwater — though experts say that’s unlikely to happen in well-managed projects. In places that ban fracking, like Germany, closed-loop systems can still move forward.
But the closed-loop design has trade-offs of its own, said Jeff Tester, a professor of sustainable energy systems at Cornell University and the principal scientist for Cornell’s Earth Source Heat project. Namely, the pipes can limit the transfer of heat from the underground rocks to the fluids inside the pipe, which in turn limits how much energy a system can produce.
“While companies developing closed-loop systems can make them work, the main challenge they face is for fluid temperatures and flow rates to be high enough to pay off economically,” Tester said. “You can get energy out of the ground; it’s just, how much can you sustainably and affordably produce from a single closed-loop well connection?”
Vany said that Eavor’s modeling shows its technology is already in line with the “levelized cost of heat” in Europe, which estimates the average cost of providing a unit of heat over the lifetime of the project. That figure can fluctuate between $50 and $100 per megawatt-hour thermal in the region’s volatile energy market, she said.
“After we’ve drilled those first four loops, we will be at the bottom of the learning curve,” Vany added. “And that’s the purpose of the Geretsried project.”
When Matt Cooper found out in 2020 that the northwest Colorado coal mine where he works would close by the end of the decade, he was pissed.
Questions raced through his mind: Why didn’t the mine’s leaders fight harder to keep it open? And why was the coal industry being singled out? “Is it political?” he wondered.
But coal has been declining in the U.S. for over 20 years, outcompeted by cheap fossil gas and, more recently, even cheaper renewables. Cooper eventually accepted there was nothing he could do — except plan for what’s next.
Now the coal-fired Craig Station is set to shutter in 2028, and the Colowyo mine that feeds it is halting production by the end of the year. For his part, Cooper is choosing to dig for a different kind of energy: geothermal, the renewable heat beneath our feet.
“It works wonderfully well,” said Cooper, a longtime Hamilton, Colorado, resident with a snowy-white goatee and a strong Western accent. Geothermal energy from the shallow earth can be tapped to superefficiently heat and cool individual buildings or even entire neighborhoods. Leveraging his ample experience operating heavy equipment at the mine, Cooper has started a new business, High Altitude Geothermal, to drill for the resource. With the startup’s first projects underway, he’s working alongside his wife, daughter, and two sons, both of whom are also coal miners.
Others in the fossil-fuel industry could follow, finding a foothold in geothermal as clean energy takes off. Colorado plans to decarbonize its economy by 2050, and its remaining six coal plants are shutting down by the end of the decade. The Centennial State’s six active coal mines, which employed roughly 900 workers as of July, will likely shut down along with them.
The northwest corner of the state is the epicenter of the transition. And affected communities stand to lose not only jobs, but big chunks of their tax base. Moffat County, where Cooper lives, will be the hardest hit; Craig Station made up a third of its property taxes in 2022.
In 2019, Colorado created the Office of Just Transition, the first state-level office in the nation dedicated to providing personalized support to coal workers and their families, as well as funding to their communities.
“Small towns have this tendency to be dependent on one or two large employers,” said Wade Buchanan, director at the just-transition office, which helped the Coopers connect to state agencies as they worked on their business concept. “You want to help communities find a way to be more diversified, so that their fortunes are not subject to the fortunes of any single employer.”
Buchanan said he’s thrilled by the Coopers’ venture into geothermal, a tech that the state and federal government are backing with incentives. “They’re trailblazers showing the way for a lot of other people that opportunities exist.”
Cooper still isn’t happy that Colorado’s coal industry is sunsetting. “We produce some of the cleanest coal in the nation,” even if it is a fossil fuel, said Cooper, who plans to keep doing shift work at the coal mine until it closes. President Donald Trump also dubs coal clean, and Cooper reports feeling more aligned with Republicans than Democrats.
He’s clear-eyed that change is inevitable, though, like it or not. “I can’t save the coal industry,” Cooper said.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has undertaken the Sisyphean task of resuscitating coal in the U.S. by, among other tactics, forcing uneconomic coal plants to keep running past their planned closure dates.
Cooper, who worked at a heat- and power-generating plant when he was in the military, isn’t a fan of most forms of renewable energy. “Windmills are ugly things to me,” he said — a view shared by the U.S. president. He finds batteries unpalatable. And solar panels send jobs overseas, he said.
“When you’re buying solar panels from China, I don’t think that’s the right way to go. If you’re going to buy the things, they ought to be built here,” Cooper said. (Though perhaps not a well-publicized statistic, domestic solar manufacturing employed about 34,000 workers in 2024.)
Geothermal is an up-and-coming energy source Cooper can get behind. Hooked up to heat pumps, it’s the most efficient way to warm and cool buildings.
In a geothermal system, loops of flexible pipe are installed ten to hundreds of feet deep into the ground. At these depths, the earth is a fairly stable 45 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, funneling a ready source of heat in cold weather to a building’s electrically powered geothermal heat pump. In the summer, the appliances provide air conditioning by dumping a building’s extra warmth underground.
Geothermal heat pumps are extremely efficient. They can deliver the same amount of heating as a fossil-fueled or electric-resistance system using just a fourth or even a sixth of the energy.
“In northwest Colorado, you can pay $700 a month for propane to heat your house, or $400 for natural gas,” said Cooper. “That’s a chunk of change, because our winter up here lasts about five to six months — about half a year where you’re going to be heating your home.” And the cold cuts like a knife: Cooper recalls winters in the area with lows in the minus 50s and 60s Fahrenheit.
Plus, a geothermal heat pump actually “helps the grid out,” Cooper said. The appliances are not only superefficient but also provide warmth steadily, rather than in bursts. That reduces peaks in power demand, keeping electricity more affordable for everyone.
Geothermal systems aren’t yet widespread. Most people don’t know the tech exists, and the up-front cost to install them is typically two to three times the price tag of an air-source heat pump or gas furnace plus a central air conditioner.
But the higher costs in northwest Colorado are partly due to far-flung geothermal drillers having to haul their equipment across the Rocky Mountains, said Cooper, who’s been spinning up the startup in his off-time. “I think I can keep my costs of mobilization down, and so that makes the product more affordable.”
His geothermal drilling business will be the first in Moffat County and neighboring Routt and Rio Blanco counties — a region home to more than three-quarters of the roughly 1,700 workers that make up Colorado’s coal industry and its supply chain. The state is backing High Altitude Geothermal, providing four years of tax relief and a $40,000 grant for operations through the economic development program Rural Jump-Start.
For now, the startup consists of Cooper and his family members. His wife, Kristine, is helping with administrative work. His daughter, Anna, handles operations. His sons, Matthew and Nathan, are drilling alongside him. Anna is also certified to do that work, so she can step in when the need arises. But as business picks up, Cooper aims to expand to a second crew and hire more people — especially other miners in the area.
“Hiring displaced coal workers was part of Matt’s ‘why’ for starting this business,” Kristine said. “He wanted to be part of the solution for the employment of these individuals.”
Going into geothermal energy “felt so right,” Anna said. “It’s a wonderful resource that everyone has access to. It’s there all the time.” And it’s a boost to the local economy. “It’s really exciting … when you have something that’s so powerful.”
High Altitude Geothermal has already secured its first contracts: retrofits of two homes in Moffat County. The Coopers are also bidding on two large-scale commercial projects in the municipalities of Steamboat Springs and Gunnison. They’re building a future with geothermal energy, regardless of the federal push for coal.
“There’s some people that are holding out that somehow Trump will be able to make coal viable again and make the power plants stay open,” Cooper said. “Maybe they’ll be right. … I have no idea. But my intuition is that this ball is rolling, and I don’t see it stopping.”
“So you better just try to figure out what’s next for you.”
XGS Energy, an advanced-geothermal startup, says it has completed crucial testing that proves its novel technology can operate reliably at commercial scale — without losing a drop of water in the process.
The milestone, announced on Tuesday, will allow Houston-based XGS to begin financing and building its first next-generation geothermal energy project, according to the company. XGS is partnering with Meta and the utility PNM to develop 150 megawatts of around-the-clock clean electricity in New Mexico that will supply the tech giant’s data centers.
“We’re really off to the races now,” said Josh Prueher, the CEO of XGS. The startup is slated to deploy the project’s first 5 MW by around 2027 and bring the remaining megawatts online by 2029, he added.
XGS is part of a fast-growing industry that’s working to harness the world’s abundant geothermal resources to meet soaring electricity demand. Dozens of U.S. companies are developing cutting-edge technologies that promise to access Earth’s heat in drier, deeper, and hotter conditions than is technically or economically feasible for conventional geothermal plants. Another of these firms, Sage Geosystems, is also partnering with Meta to build its own 150-MW geothermal facility somewhere east of the Rocky Mountains.
Today, geothermal energy represents about 0.4% of total U.S. electricity generation, and most facilities are concentrated around geysers and hot springs in Northern California and Nevada.
The next-generation geothermal projects that are currently in development fall into one of three buckets. Enhanced geothermal systems, like the ones that Sage and Fervo Energy are building, involve fracturing rocks and pumping them full of water to create artificial reservoirs far below the earth’s surface. Superhot geothermal, which scientists are studying in Iceland, aims to tap into extreme resources like magma chambers to extract gargantuan amounts of heat.
XGS’s approach falls into the third bucket: closed-loop systems, which entail placing pipes deep underground and sealing them off so that they operate like radiators. As water circulates within the system, it collects heat from the hot rocks below and brings it to the surface, where the heat produces steam that drives electric turbines.
What sets XGS apart from its closed-loop competitors, such as Canadian startup Eavor, is the “thermally conductive” cement alternative that the company places between the hot rock and pipe system. XGS claims its proprietary material, which includes a naturally occurring mineral, can increase the total amount of heat it pulls from the subsurface by 30% to 50%, allowing the company to use simpler and cheaper well designs to access hotter rocks with existing drilling technologies.
XGS completed its first pilot project in late 2024 with a 100-meter-deep well in central Texas. Earlier this year, the startup began operating a full-scale prototype using an idled well at the Coso geothermal field in the Western Mojave Desert region of California. The well runs more than 1,000 meters deep — a standard depth for commercial geothermal wells — and reaches subsurface temperatures of around 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit).
For 3,000 hours, or 125 days, XGS continuously ran its closed-loop system while adjusting key variables, such as the rate at which liquid flows and the amount of heat extracted at the surface. The idea was to simulate how the technology performs in different operating conditions, in order to prove it can withstand various types of stress while also demonstrating the company can accurately predict the system’s performance.
The startup claims the prototype’s actual performance fell within 2% of its predictions, results that XGS later verified with independent engineers, Prueher said. Being able to accurately predict how a project will perform — and for how long — is an essential step for the company to be able to raise the many millions of dollars in debt financing it needs to build its first geothermal power plants, he added.
“This unlocks a huge commercial pipeline that has been accumulating in parallel,” Prueher said of the test results. Along with the 150 MW it’s developing with Meta, the startup has lined up over 3 gigawatts of projects “mostly in the Western United States, where water sensitivity is a huge issue, and where there’s a strong demand signal from data centers and other types of clean energy consumers to build this as quickly as we can.”
XGS has raised $55 million so far from private investors to develop its heat-harvesting technology. One of its biggest backers is VoLo Earth Ventures, which focuses on early-stage climatetech companies.
Joe Goodman, a managing partner for VoLo, said his firm identified XGS “as one of the leading geothermal solutions” about a year and a half ago after reviewing its experimental lab data, and Goodman later joined XGS’s board of directors.
By boosting the system’s overall energy output, XGS’s thermally conductive materials could be the key to making closed-loop geothermal more economically viable, he said, adding that the technology also sidesteps the concerns around water-supply constraints facing enhanced geothermal systems.
“We’re quite optimistic about what we’ve seen,” Goodman said.
Two of the leading startups working on advanced geothermal energy just struck deals with established industrial giants — moves that will help the companies accelerate their efforts to harness the potentially abundant source of carbon-free energy from underground.
Last week, Fervo Energy said it had picked oilfield services giant Baker Hughes to provide crucial equipment for the startup’s Cape Station geothermal plant in Utah, a selection that brings the 500-megawatt project closer to its 2028 completion goal. Baker Hughes will design and deliver equipment for five power-generating units totaling 300 MW in capacity, which will operate with Fervo’s fracking-based “enhanced geothermal system.”
The news followed an Aug. 28 announcement that startup Sage Geosystems is partnering with Ormat Technologies, a major global developer of conventional geothermal plants. The agreement will enable Sage to deploy its next-generation technology at one of Ormat’s existing sites in Nevada or Utah.
Teaming up with Ormat accelerates Sage’s timeline to build its first commercial power-generation facility by about two years. It’s now targeting to bring the plant online by late 2026 or early 2027, said Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage.
“For us, the ability to scale faster with Ormat is huge,” Taff told Canary Media. “But it’s also a great opportunity for Ormat to reach a deeper [geothermal] resource than what they’re targeting now.”
Geothermal energy represents only about 0.4% of total U.S. electricity generation — largely because existing technology is constrained by geography. Today’s geothermal plants rely on naturally occurring reservoirs of hot water and steam, found only in places like Northern California and Nevada, to spin their turbines and generate power.
Technological advances are making it possible to deploy geothermal in less obvious areas, breathing fresh life into the decades-old industry. In recent years, the carbon-free energy source has seen a surge of investment and bipartisan policy support amid soaring demand for electricity from data centers, factories, and electric vehicles.
Fervo and Sage, both based in Houston, have previously inked deals to supply the tech giants Google and Meta, respectively, with hundreds of megawatts of clean, around-the-clock power for their sprawling U.S. operations.
Next-generation geothermal also benefits from the fact that it shares the same workforce and supply chain as oil and gas companies, an industry now heavily favored in Washington, D.C. The sweeping budget law that President Donald Trump signed in July largely preserves key tax credits for geothermal power plants — despite slashing incentives for wind and solar — and the Trump administration is pushing to fast-track environmental reviews for all types of geothermal projects.
“Geothermal has always enjoyed support from both sides of the aisle,” said Taff, who was previously a vice president at fossil fuel company Shell. “But now there’s a lot of momentum for the industry.”
Sage’s approach to geothermal energy involves tapping into both heat and pressure from hot, dry rocks found deep underground. To start, the company drills wells and fractures rocks to create artificial reservoirs that it pumps full of water. Sage cycles the water in and out of the fracture — like inflating and deflating a balloon — and can jettison the liquid to the surface to drive turbines and produce electricity.
The startup’s partnership with Reno, Nevada-based Ormat will allow Sage to access land and power-plant equipment and to connect to the grid far more quickly than if the startup set up a new site on its own. The companies are looking to install the next-generation system at a facility where Ormat’s older conventional wells are declining in capacity.
“In general, plants may operate below capacity due to a combination of factors, such as changes in the geothermal resource over time,” said Smadar Lavi, Ormat’s vice president and head of investor relations and ESG planning and reporting. “These sites are well-suited for piloting Sage’s technology, as it offers the potential to unlock additional production from existing assets.”
Terra Rogers of the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force said that Ormat’s decision to expand beyond its traditional hydrothermal resources and into next-generation tech represents “an important step, and we’ve all been waiting for it.” Rogers, who leads the advocacy group’s superhot rock geothermal program, called Ormat the “grandparents of geothermal,” given that the company has been around for 60 years and operates more than 190 geothermal plants globally.
As part of the agreement, Ormat can license Sage’s technologies for power generation as well as energy storage. The startup uses a similar setup to store excess grid energy. But instead of drilling deep into high-temperature rocks, Sage pumps water into shallower formations that aren’t as hot, since heat isn’t needed for storage. Pressure builds up underground and can be released later, when power demand spikes, to spin a pinwheel-like Pelton turbine and send electricity back to the grid.
“The idea that [Ormat] chose Sage specifically, with their storage technology, is also very telling for the needs of the grid in the West,” Rogers said, adding that it “complements existing or intermittent forms of renewables” like wind and solar.
Sage recently finished building its first commercial storage project on the site of a coal plant owned by San Miguel Electric Cooperative in Christine, Texas. The facility, which is expected to connect to the Texas grid in December, will be able to discharge 3 MW for four to six hours at a time, according to Taff.
The startup plans to perform a demonstration of its electricity-generating tech in the first quarter of 2026 in Starr County, Texas, in partnership with the U.S. Air Force. Sage is also evaluating potential sites east of the Rocky Mountains to develop its 150-MW project with Meta.
Fervo, meanwhile, continues drilling away at its Cape Station project in Beaver County, Utah, which has been under construction for almost two years.
The eight-year-old company said an initial 100-MW installation is poised to start delivering power to the grid in 2026. An additional 400 MW is slated to come online in 2028, a portion of which will use the new equipment from Baker Hughes. The startup’s recent supply deal comes just months after Fervo said it secured $206 million in new financing for the Cape Station project.
“Fervo designed Cape Station to be a flagship development that’s scalable, repeatable, and a proof point that geothermal is ready to become a major source of reliable, carbon-free power in the U.S.,” Tim Latimer, Fervo’s CEO and cofounder, said in a Sept. 2 statement.
Geothermal energy was spared in President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending law, which made deep cuts to incentives for other forms of clean energy. But developers of the resurgent energy source may still face difficulties ahead due to complex stipulations folded into the new law, among other Trump administration policies.
The “big, beautiful” Republican legislation largely preserves investment and production tax credits for geothermal power plants — as well as battery storage, nuclear, and hydropower projects — established by the Inflation Reduction Act. Incentives for wind and solar, however, are sharply curtailed, and subsidies for residential clean energy projects will abruptly end after this year.
Geothermal advocates celebrated the outcome for their industry, which they say will be vital to scaling the resource in the United States to meet the nation’s soaring power demand. The sector has attracted a lot of attention in recent years because it can provide carbon-free power around the clock — something solar and wind can’t do — and technological advances are making it possible to deploy geothermal in places that conventional plants can’t go.
This “policy milestone highlights the geothermal industry’s role in fortifying grid resilience and national security,” Vanessa Robertson, director of policy and education for Geothermal Rising, an industry association, said in a statement. “With certainty in place, we look forward to seeing projects advance and innovative partnerships flourish.”
Still, the industry isn’t immune to the broader market challenges created by Trump’s policies, despite its more favorable treatment from Congress.
New tariffs on things like steel and aluminum have increased the cost of drilling equipment, heat exchangers, and other key components. A provision in the budget bill aimed at restricting Chinese companies and individuals from accessing tax credits will make it harder for developers to prove compliance, increasing the risk for investors who finance clean energy projects.
“We’re making an ugly layered cake of barriers to quick and clean project development,” said Advait Arun, a senior associate for energy finance at the Center for Public Enterprise, a nonprofit think tank.
Geothermal plants, which harness Earth’s heat to generate power, have for decades represented less than 1% of the U.S. electricity mix. That’s because conventional plants tend to be viable only when located near natural formations like hot springs, where the heat is easier to reach, but which only occur in a handful of places in the United States.
New tools and techniques are emerging that make it possible to put geothermal plants in more parts of the country.
The startup Fervo Energy completed America’s first “enhanced geothermal system” in late 2023 — a 3.5-megawatt pilot plant in Nevada backed by Google. Now, the Houston-based company is building the world’s first large-scale enhanced geothermal plant in Utah’s high desert. Fervo has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to drill dozens of wells for the 500-megawatt Cape Station, with the first 100 MW slated to start delivering power to the grid in 2026.
In June, the startup XGS Energy announced plans to build a 150-MW next-generation geothermal project in New Mexico by 2030 to support Meta’s data center operations. Meta, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, signed a similar agreement last year with Sage Geosystems to build 150 MW of geothermal power at an unspecified site east of the Rocky Mountains. The first phase of that project is set to come online in 2027.
Geothermal has long drawn bipartisan support and has so far dodged Trump’s broader attacks on renewable energy. It helps that the new geothermal wave has considerable overlap with the oil and gas industry, sharing the same drilling equipment, workforce, and investors. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, previously the CEO of a fracking company that invested in Fervo, played an active role during budget negotiations to shield geothermal from sweeping cuts to Inflation Reduction Act incentives.
Under the new law, geothermal and other baseload clean power sources can qualify for the full 48E investment tax credit or the 45Y production tax credit if they begin construction by 2033, after which point the credits will gradually decrease to zero in 2036. The concrete phase-out schedule differs from the IRA, which allowed more flexibility and could’ve kept the incentives in place for several more years, according to Geothermal Rising.
Wind and solar facilities, meanwhile, must either start operating before the end of 2027 or begin construction by next summer to obtain credits. Geothermal heat pumps, which heat and cool buildings, will lose access to residential tax credits after 2025.
For next-generation geothermal firms, the tax incentives are crucial to getting the first slate of projects up and running. Developers use the promise of future tax credits as collateral to raise the many millions in financing they need to explore suitable project sites and deploy novel drilling technologies. The credits also help to attract major customers, including tech giants that are looking for a variety of baseload power sources to run their sprawling data centers.
“They help the market to develop,” said Mehdi Yusifov, the director of data centers and AI at Project InnerSpace, a geothermal advocacy group. “Tax credits of this kind can … help get infrastructure built on a mega scale.”
Yusifov and Nico Enriquez, a principal at Future Ventures, studied the potential cost of serving a “hyperscale” data center with power from a 1-gigawatt enhanced geothermal project in a place like the Western U.S. In a new analysis, they found this novel project could achieve a levelized cost of energy of $119 per megawatt-hour without the investment tax credit — significantly better than estimated costs for nuclear power. With the tax credit, the hypothetical geothermal system could achieve $88 per megawatt-hour, which is competitive with the upper range for a fossil-gas power plant.
“It seems like there’s a dam that would break if it could be proven that [geothermal] can produce power anywhere in the range below Three Mile Island,” said Enriquez, referring to the shuttered nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that is expected to restart to serve Microsoft’s growing energy appetite.
“That’s another reason why this investment tax credit is so important, because it makes it possible to have the dam break,” he added. “And suddenly you can flood the market with these projects that are giving us critical infrastructure.”
It’s unclear whether the budget bill will undermine some next-generation projects due to the anti-China provisions attached to these key incentives. The rules, known as “foreign entity of concern” restrictions, will require companies to scrutinize their supply chains to an unprecedented degree, with potentially onerous and costly legal implications that make it harder for projects to claim incentives.
“It remains to be seen how developers of these really innovative technologies can navigate this, because it’s not going to be the easiest process from here on out,” said Arun of the Center for Public Enterprise.
Even as the headwinds swirl, geothermal developers continue to make significant strides to improve their technologies. Both Fervo and the federal Utah Forge initiative have said they’ve dramatically increased drilling speeds and efficiencies in just a handful of years, with Fervo reducing its per-well costs by millions of dollars. For startups, access to tax incentives allows them to get to work to make such advances in the field, Enriquez said.
“There’s an amount we save long-term if we invest upfront in these tax credits, because of the learning curve,” he said. “If we can maintain [the momentum] for the next five years, I think this industry will be one of the key power sources for the U.S.”
This story was originally co-published by Floodlight and The Texas Tribune.
Whisper Valley is a peek into what the future could look like.
The sweeping community in the Austin, Texas, suburb of Manor is filled with modern homes, small manicured lawns, quiet streets, and rooftops outfitted with solar panels. Hidden beneath it is a network of pipes and man-made reservoirs that heat and cool hundreds of households via geothermal technology — a source that currently provides less than 1% of the U.S. electrical demand.
When completed, Whisper Valley will consist of approximately 7,500 owner-occupied and rental homes and multifamily units ranging in price from $350,000 to $750,000; three schools; 2 million square feet of commercial space; and 700 acres of park and outdoor community spaces. Habitat for Humanity is set to build affordable housing, which will hook up to the geothermal network.
Zac Turov, business development manager for EcoSmart Solutions, which runs the community’s geothermal system, says savings on utility bills for residents here with geothermal-powered heat pumps that cool and heat buildings can run up to $2,000 a year — based on a third-party-verified Home Energy Rating System.
Michael Wilt has lived in the community for six years, moving into his three-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot house during the first phase of Whisper Valley’s development.
He says he’s never had utility costs higher than $70 during the summer months or $45 a month during the winter. That doesn’t count the $60 monthly fee he pays to EcoSmart in operation fees.
“It absolutely works better than the HVAC system I had in the house that I was renting before purchasing the house,” Wilt, 47, said.
“The geothermal system was definitely part of the appeal, but really it was kind of the entire ‘agrihood’ feeling of the whole development,” he added, referring to places that are “intentional” about incorporating green infrastructure into the neighborhood and individual homes.
Developer Michael Thurman has built 30 of the more than 600 homes in this massive mixed-use development. And his company, Thurman Homes, is set to build up to 50 more.
The developer calls geothermal a commonsense way to preserve the planet by cutting the use of fossil fuels to power the homes and businesses here. Heating, cooling, and providing electricity to residential and commercial buildings accounts for about 30% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The community sits 15 miles northeast of Austin. It’s an area home to multiple tech companies, including Google, Tesla, Dell, Samsung, and Applied Materials.
But not all of the developers building in Whisper Valley tap into its geothermal system.
The reason, said Thurman, is money. It costs approximately $40,000 per home to install the heat pumps and hook up to the geothermal network.
“We can’t keep doing the same things,” Thurman said, referring to the imperative to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “This isn’t tough to do, but you have to have core values that make you want to do it.”
Geothermal is more expensive than other forms of renewable energy, including wind and solar, according to new estimates from the consulting firm Lazard.
“The goal is for all the developers who build here to use geothermal,” Turov said. “But it’s still a tough sale.”
Drilling advancements have expanded how and where geothermal technology can be used for heating and cooling individual buildings — and broader power generation.
“The thing is: It is hot everywhere underground,” said Drew Nelson, vice president of programs, policy, and strategy at the Houston-based, geothermal-focused nonprofit Project Innerspace. “Today, with the advances in modern drilling, we are now able to tap into that heat almost anywhere.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates there is enough next-generation geothermal potential to power the world 140 times over. And Nelson says the United States has the most potential to be a leader in the industry, with countries including China and India also having the resources to generate geothermal power.
“As more projects are implemented, costs will continue to come down,” Nelson said, noting the IEA analysis also predicts geothermal in coming years will be “competitive with solar and wind paired with battery storage.”
Using underground water reservoirs for heating and cooling or to generate electricity isn’t new. But until recently it was mostly confined to specific regions where it was easier to drill into hot water reservoirs — like in Iceland or California.
As of 2021, geothermal was concentrated in Western states, with California and Nevada accounting for more than 90% of the country’s geothermal power production, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Geothermal is one of the cleanest ways to produce electricity. And it is the only renewable energy technology that has largely stayed out of the crosshairs of President Donald Trump, who has slashed federal support for renewable and clean energy, including wind and solar.
“One of the reasons President Trump really likes geothermal right now is that it’s all American,” said Bryant Jones, executive director of Geothermal Rising, a California-based nonprofit that advocates for the industry internationally. “It’s local. It’s a way to help rural America figure out their own economies as they transition from one technology to another.”
Geothermal tax credits — for both developers and for homeowners who install heat pumps — helped Whisper Valley thrive in its infancy.
However, industry insiders are ringing the alarms and pressuring the U.S. Congress to not eliminate clean energy tax credits and incentives included in former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. If those tax credits are phased out, insiders say it would cripple the industry before it has a chance to get on its feet.
While billions in federal funding for wind, solar, and other clean energy technology are on the chopping block, the budget bill mulled by Senate Republicans currently would retain tax credits for geothermal, nuclear, and hydropower projects that begin construction by 2033.
The U.S. Department of Energy did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether it would continue to support geothermal through federal funding and tax incentives, as it did under the previous administration.
“We do need the tax credits for geothermal energy to be maintained,” Jones said. “Geothermal doesn’t have a technology problem, it has a policy problem. [It’s] been around for over 100 years, [but] it hasn’t had the policy support the way the oil and gas industry has, or the nuclear industry, and most recently, the solar and wind industry.”
Traditionally, geothermal was limited to places with naturally occurring underground hot reservoirs, usually near tectonic plates or in volcanic areas.
But evolutions in geothermal have opened the door for developers to utilize oil and gas drilling technologies which help lower costs and allow them to create their own reservoirs almost anywhere. The models fall in two categories: enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS, and closed-loop geothermal systems like the one in Whisper Valley.
With EGS systems, developers create artificial underground reservoirs through hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” and then inject water or other fluids into a well. The water is heated as it moves through hot rocks and is then pumped up into a separate production well to generate energy.
Closed-loop systems use an underground network of sealed wells where water or fluid is pumped and heated without ever coming in direct contact with rocks. It is then piped into the homes and buildings connected to the system. These systems also cool buildings by drawing out heat during warm weather.
“The more that people learn about geothermal,” Jones said, “the more obsessed they become.”
He says geothermal’s appeal includes a low carbon footprint, reliability, and established drilling technology pioneered by the oil and gas industry. Unlike batteries and wind power, geothermal does not rely on critical minerals whose supply can be disrupted by geopolitical events.
It’s also among the more expensive energy sources because it requires specialized drilling, installation equipment, and skilled workers trained to build it all. Supporters say the industry will continue to need federal tax credits and funding to grow, especially in communities where utility bills are already unaffordable.
While many geothermal units serve just a single household, systems that serve many buildings are more affordable.
“A way to address that is through thermal energy networks, or geothermal district networks,” Jones said, referring to connecting multiple homes and buildings, which means “the cost goes down for everybody.“
He cites Framingham, Massachusetts, where one utility, Eversource, is providing geothermal energy for roughly 140 residential and commercial customers in one neighborhood. After the two-year pilot project ends, customers can return to natural gas, also known as methane, or continue using geothermal, the company says.
“We are still collecting data as we enter the start of the cooling season, but over the winter we saw strong system performance even during the January and February cold snaps,” said Olessa Stepanova, spokesperson for Eversource.
Stepanova says the company expects to have insight into energy savings from the project within a year from when each customer is connected to the geothermal system. And the utility is in final negotiations with the DOE and state to expand the network.
“This would not only demonstrate the scalability of networked geothermal systems,” she added, “but also how they become more cost-effective as they are expanded.”
Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies Office awarded a total of $37.7 million to five cities to install district-scale geothermal heating and cooling systems.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, was awarded the most money, $10 million, which the city is using to build and operate a community geothermal system. It is projected to provide heating and cooling to 262 homes, a local elementary school, and community center in the Bryant neighborhood. The predominantly minority, lower-income area seeks to become the most sustainable neighborhood in the United States.
“It’s a neighborhood that has been disinvested in, and as we were working on our climate goals to be carbon neutral, we wanted to do that in a just and equitable way,” said Missy Stults, director of the city’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations.
Stults says some households in the community shell out up to 30% of their income on utility bills.
“We started to think about what’s a sustainable source of heating that we could look at that helps maintain affordability for everyone [and] that’s clean,” Stults said. “And so geothermal was one thing that came up, and the residents were really interested in it.”
Stults says it’ll likely be a year before the city starts drilling — and that’s only if Congress or the Trump administration keeps the federal funding in place. The city has been “sort of treading water” since Trump announced freezes on various renewable energy program spending. As of June, Stults says the grant had not been terminated, but the funding still hadn’t been allocated to move their project forward.
“Our hope is that [the project] will align with the administration’s goals,” she said. “This is American-made energy. It’s our grounds, our soil. It’s pretty powerful.”
As a selling point, Thurman uses the utility bills for his model home in Whisper Valley and compares them with other homes of the same size he built with traditional HVAC systems.
For the three-bedroom,1,800-square-foot home he built in Whisper Valley, utility bills in June and August 2023 were $42.16 and $74.54, respectively. A home the same size he built using an HVAC system had bills in those same two months of $233 and $326, respectively.
Turov says some developers have opted to build homes in Whisper Valley that use traditional HVAC systems instead of geothermal.
“Developers are reluctant to innovate, usually because it costs more, even though there are great benefits from using the technology,” he said. “We might have to make it work without [federal] subsidies, which will be a challenge but could be good for the long-term viability of the technology in the United States.”
EcoSmart Solutions successfully lobbied Texas state lawmakers for changes in state law and initiatives that can help geothermal grow there — with or without federal subsidies. They include measures that cut drilling regulations for geothermal projects, allow such systems to be added to the electric grid and pave the way for financing through bonds and “special purpose” taxing districts.
Turov explains that such districts allow developers to install infrastructure such as lights, roads, and water systems, the cost of which is then repaid by owners on their property tax bills.
“I think right now, we’re in the first adopter stage,” Turov said. “And that’ll probably still be the case for the next few years. And then I think more and more people will adopt it.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government, and statewide issues.
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