I worked on geothermal control systems a decade or so back. There are some less obvious applications for geothermal that reduce electric use (as opposed to generating electricity).
The systems I worked on were for cooling larger structures like commercial greenhouses, gov installations and mansions. 64° degree water would be pumped up from 400' down, run thru a series of chillers (for a/c) and then returned underground - about 20° or 25° warmer.
I always thought this method could be used to provide a/c for neighborhoods, operated as a neighborhood utility. I've not seen it done tho. I've seen neighborhood owned water supplies and sewer systems; it tells me the ownership part seems feasible.
In the nordics it is common to have ground source heat pumps (brine in closed circuit pipe or bore hole) that are run backwards in summer to cool the house while actually assisting in storing heat back in the ground to extract in the winter. It’s a bit like regenerative breaking on electric cars.
There was a new in 1988 house in Champaign, Illinois, USA that used the same system, and i mention that because it was a normal modern house, and it's the only one i've heard of with that system.
Shallow geothermal works fine for heating. And you can use the ground as a heat sink. But if you want to generate power, you need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most oil wells. Fervo Energy claims to have found 270C at 3350 meters well depth. That's progress.
I think this looks interesting, but still very early stage. The “150 GW revolution” sounds more like theoretical potential, not something we will see soon in real deployment.
Main problems: drilling is still expensive, managing induced seismic activity is not trivial, permitting can take long time, and you also need transmission infrastructure. Also not yet proven that companies like Fervo can scale this in reliable and low-cost way.
I don't know how economical that is, but just as an anecdote - the town I'm from in Poland has district heating to all single family homes, town of about 20k people. And coincidentally, I now live in the UK and a new estate near me has district heating to all the houses they are building, not apartment blocks. So it must make some sense to someone, or they wouldn't be outfitting 100+ houses this way.
Here is an article that is a bit old but discusses the start of things [1]. It would be a bit ironic if fracking tech helped get us further from using natural gas. I think the reality will be if this gets established we will see rapid improvement as scale comes on line so if it is remotely economical now it will be massively better in 5-10 years. Of course the 'if' applies.
Oh, Fervo Energy again. They're trying to IPO, hence the hype.
Wikipedia's warning: This article reads like a press release or a news article and may be largely based on routine coverage. (February 2026)
This article may have been created or edited in return for undisclosed payments, a violation of Wikipedia's terms of use. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view.
This isn’t really an evaluation of the company, just explaining how they had to use different financing approaches as they grew and derisked their technology (which makes sense).
Compared to some other new approaches for getting clean base load power, it seems like they’ve been pretty grounded and methodical.
It really is off-brand for this administration. They are only interested in energy sources you pull out of the ground, burn, and turn into CO2/pollution.
Pretty sure they’re interested in collapsing the cost of domestic energy production in a way that’s resilient to adversarial supply chain risk since energy production is the base of the economic pyramid - energy availability is upstream of nearly all economic output.
When you have a supply chain failure on solar or wind power, you stop adding capacity. When you have a supply chain failure on oil and gas, you stop generating power. These are not the same problem.
We can build capacity to manufacturer renewable power domestically. But I suspect this administration is more interested in protecting the business interest of those that gave them the largest campaign donations than they are in long term energy sustainability.
They have spent immense effort blocking huge amounts of domestic solar and wind production, even paying off developers to simply not build planned power plants.
Didn’t know there were significant domestic supply chains for wind, solar, and battery tech. Thought a lions share of that was ultimately coming from China.
There aren't, and there certainly won't be if we keep blocking the industry at every turn. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point but I don't see how this is relevant. Blocking a developer that wants to buy wind turbines from another country and install them in the US does not make domestic energy cheaper or make domestic supply chains more resilient. It's a one-time import, once it's installed the wind is domestic and free, the most reliable possible supply chain, much more than domestic oil or gas.
I'm also confused, I thought the US was the leader in basically everything, so much so that they were constantly accusing other countries of stealing technology. now, basic manufacturing is a mysterious unknowable box for which we'd need to depend on foreign suppliers.
Seems fairly measured to say that it’s not in the interest of the U.S. to build its economic foundation (energy production) on top of a technology it’s incapable of producing without the assistance of a country that’s been fairly open about its plans to take kinetic action against the US sometime in the next 48 months.
Really a couple of key points. The first is that the US isn't "incapable" of producing renewable energy infrastructure, we've just largely chosen not to for various reasons and are certainly capable of doing so if there was a good reason to.
But the second and more important point is that relying on another country to produce renewable energy technology is not analogous to relying on another country to supply your actual energy. If I bought solar panels from China and tomorrow a US-China war started, my solar panels keep producing energy just fine. I might have imported the panels from China, but that's not where the actual energy is coming from. Sure, eventually I'll need to replace them, but that's not for decades. Assuming a conflict with China lasts long enough to prevent me from ever buying Chinese solar panels again, that's plenty of time to develop US capacity to produce them. And in the meantime, my solar panels keep importing energy from the Sun, which I'm told is very hard to blockade, embargo, or tariff.
Renewable energy tech actually has another major advantage over fossil fuels in a conflict situation. As the current Middle Eastern unpleasantness has demonstrated, fossil fuels are a global commodity and their price everywhere is impacted by restriction on their trade anywhere. Sufficient domestic production of fossil fuels may prevent a country from literally running out in a war, but that's unlikely to actually keep the country's economy healthy. China obviously isn't sitting on top of a fossil fuel producing region the way Iran is, but it seems pretty obvious a US-China war will dramatically impact fossil fuel energy prices given that blockading fossil fuel trade will be an obvious weapon in such a conflict.
When it comes to the impact conflicts have on the price of your energy, you might be better off relying on your Chinese solar panels than American oil. Especially if you can replace them with American solar panels when the time comes. China clearly understands the strategic value of renewable energy, which is why they've invested so much in becoming the major source of that technology.
Just wanted to say thanks for this. You connected two trains of thought I had never put together.
Don’t have a rebuttal.
I’m long on last mile energy production. Solar/battery for domestic, nuclear for industrial, etc. It creates resilience through decentralization. It also is likely to happen organically (no central planning necessary, markets will likely naturally converge here as competition drives down prices).
Haven’t spent much time reconciling that with my stance _against_ centralized wind/solar/battery in critical infrastructure in the U.S.
I saw an amusing analysis which said that Trump will go down in history as the clean energy president. No administration will ever do so much to prove the necessity of having renewable energy.
When one leader can cause a global energy crisis, seems obvious the world will go running towards any solution which can mitigate this in the future.
So if something goes wrong between the US and China, the US has 10 years to develop it's own supply. It's not like existing panels and batteries are going to suddenly stop working.
If you install solar panels, you have 10 years or more of lifetime to develop your domestic supply chain for replacements. This doesn't sound like a problem.
The IRA had enormous incentives to develop on shore renewable manufacturing. All of that was gutted in the BBB. Many of those burgeoning companies may have died in the interim as they saw that funding dry up, and realized they were working in an uphill regulatory environment.
It has exclusivity which might be enough, you can't own the sun (modulo Simpsons episode) but you might be able to "own" geological hotspots for this purpose, the same way you can "own" a coal mine or an oil well. Remember the goal here is to create poverty. I mean, obviously you say you want to create "wealth" but only in a relative sense.
You know how the United Arab Emirates are known as the Emirates, how the United Mexican Sates are known as Mexico and how the United States of America is known as America? Are you unfamiliar with what synecdoche is?
I worked on geothermal control systems a decade or so back. There are some less obvious applications for geothermal that reduce electric use (as opposed to generating electricity).
The systems I worked on were for cooling larger structures like commercial greenhouses, gov installations and mansions. 64° degree water would be pumped up from 400' down, run thru a series of chillers (for a/c) and then returned underground - about 20° or 25° warmer.
I always thought this method could be used to provide a/c for neighborhoods, operated as a neighborhood utility. I've not seen it done tho. I've seen neighborhood owned water supplies and sewer systems; it tells me the ownership part seems feasible.
In the nordics it is common to have ground source heat pumps (brine in closed circuit pipe or bore hole) that are run backwards in summer to cool the house while actually assisting in storing heat back in the ground to extract in the winter. It’s a bit like regenerative breaking on electric cars.
There was a new in 1988 house in Champaign, Illinois, USA that used the same system, and i mention that because it was a normal modern house, and it's the only one i've heard of with that system.
It seems so smart.
Shallow geothermal works fine for heating. And you can use the ground as a heat sink. But if you want to generate power, you need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most oil wells. Fervo Energy claims to have found 270C at 3350 meters well depth. That's progress.
I think this looks interesting, but still very early stage. The “150 GW revolution” sounds more like theoretical potential, not something we will see soon in real deployment.
Main problems: drilling is still expensive, managing induced seismic activity is not trivial, permitting can take long time, and you also need transmission infrastructure. Also not yet proven that companies like Fervo can scale this in reliable and low-cost way.
> if you want to generate power, you need to get down to where temperatures can boil water. That's deeper than most oil wells.
That’s going to be very dependant on location.
Here in NZ there are regions where water is boiling at surface level.
According to the below, 18% of our power is produced with it.
https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/energy-in-new-zealand/rene...
Framingham, MA has a geothermal system using ground source heat pumps like what you are describing
https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/first-networked-geother...
I think you're describing what is known as "district energy" systems.
District heating and chilled water is uneconomical for single-family homes. It does work well in medium to high density areas.
I don't know how economical that is, but just as an anecdote - the town I'm from in Poland has district heating to all single family homes, town of about 20k people. And coincidentally, I now live in the UK and a new estate near me has district heating to all the houses they are building, not apartment blocks. So it must make some sense to someone, or they wouldn't be outfitting 100+ houses this way.
Isn't that similar to how neighborhood heat pumps work?
https://www.araner.com/blog/district-heating-in-sweden-effic...
Here is an article that is a bit old but discusses the start of things [1]. It would be a bit ironic if fracking tech helped get us further from using natural gas. I think the reality will be if this gets established we will see rapid improvement as scale comes on line so if it is remotely economical now it will be massively better in 5-10 years. Of course the 'if' applies.
[1] (2023) https://time.com/6302342/fervo-fracking-technology-geotherma...
Oh, Fervo Energy again. They're trying to IPO, hence the hype. Wikipedia's warning: This article reads like a press release or a news article and may be largely based on routine coverage. (February 2026) This article may have been created or edited in return for undisclosed payments, a violation of Wikipedia's terms of use. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view.
Here's a more realistic evaluation of Fervo.[1]
[1] https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/what-fervos-approach-says...
This isn’t really an evaluation of the company, just explaining how they had to use different financing approaches as they grew and derisked their technology (which makes sense).
Compared to some other new approaches for getting clean base load power, it seems like they’ve been pretty grounded and methodical.
There's one of those sites near where I live. The numbers would be amazing if true, but feel a lot like "to good to be true" to me
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/06/super-hot-rocks-geoth...
> Trump has shown support for geothermal energy projects in his second term in office, unlike for other renewable energy sources,
He heard there was drilling involved
You might be joking, but he might just be that simple. Today he seemed to conflate capital punishment with crimes committed in a capital city.
It really is off-brand for this administration. They are only interested in energy sources you pull out of the ground, burn, and turn into CO2/pollution.
Pretty sure they’re interested in collapsing the cost of domestic energy production in a way that’s resilient to adversarial supply chain risk since energy production is the base of the economic pyramid - energy availability is upstream of nearly all economic output.
When you have a supply chain failure on solar or wind power, you stop adding capacity. When you have a supply chain failure on oil and gas, you stop generating power. These are not the same problem.
We can build capacity to manufacturer renewable power domestically. But I suspect this administration is more interested in protecting the business interest of those that gave them the largest campaign donations than they are in long term energy sustainability.
They have spent immense effort blocking huge amounts of domestic solar and wind production, even paying off developers to simply not build planned power plants.
Didn’t know there were significant domestic supply chains for wind, solar, and battery tech. Thought a lions share of that was ultimately coming from China.
Have any sources I can learn from?
There aren't, and there certainly won't be if we keep blocking the industry at every turn. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point but I don't see how this is relevant. Blocking a developer that wants to buy wind turbines from another country and install them in the US does not make domestic energy cheaper or make domestic supply chains more resilient. It's a one-time import, once it's installed the wind is domestic and free, the most reliable possible supply chain, much more than domestic oil or gas.
I'm also confused, I thought the US was the leader in basically everything, so much so that they were constantly accusing other countries of stealing technology. now, basic manufacturing is a mysterious unknowable box for which we'd need to depend on foreign suppliers.
Seems fairly measured to say that it’s not in the interest of the U.S. to build its economic foundation (energy production) on top of a technology it’s incapable of producing without the assistance of a country that’s been fairly open about its plans to take kinetic action against the US sometime in the next 48 months.
Help me understand.
Really a couple of key points. The first is that the US isn't "incapable" of producing renewable energy infrastructure, we've just largely chosen not to for various reasons and are certainly capable of doing so if there was a good reason to.
But the second and more important point is that relying on another country to produce renewable energy technology is not analogous to relying on another country to supply your actual energy. If I bought solar panels from China and tomorrow a US-China war started, my solar panels keep producing energy just fine. I might have imported the panels from China, but that's not where the actual energy is coming from. Sure, eventually I'll need to replace them, but that's not for decades. Assuming a conflict with China lasts long enough to prevent me from ever buying Chinese solar panels again, that's plenty of time to develop US capacity to produce them. And in the meantime, my solar panels keep importing energy from the Sun, which I'm told is very hard to blockade, embargo, or tariff.
Renewable energy tech actually has another major advantage over fossil fuels in a conflict situation. As the current Middle Eastern unpleasantness has demonstrated, fossil fuels are a global commodity and their price everywhere is impacted by restriction on their trade anywhere. Sufficient domestic production of fossil fuels may prevent a country from literally running out in a war, but that's unlikely to actually keep the country's economy healthy. China obviously isn't sitting on top of a fossil fuel producing region the way Iran is, but it seems pretty obvious a US-China war will dramatically impact fossil fuel energy prices given that blockading fossil fuel trade will be an obvious weapon in such a conflict.
When it comes to the impact conflicts have on the price of your energy, you might be better off relying on your Chinese solar panels than American oil. Especially if you can replace them with American solar panels when the time comes. China clearly understands the strategic value of renewable energy, which is why they've invested so much in becoming the major source of that technology.
Just wanted to say thanks for this. You connected two trains of thought I had never put together.
Don’t have a rebuttal.
I’m long on last mile energy production. Solar/battery for domestic, nuclear for industrial, etc. It creates resilience through decentralization. It also is likely to happen organically (no central planning necessary, markets will likely naturally converge here as competition drives down prices).
Haven’t spent much time reconciling that with my stance _against_ centralized wind/solar/battery in critical infrastructure in the U.S.
Will think about this for a while, thanks!
I saw an amusing analysis which said that Trump will go down in history as the clean energy president. No administration will ever do so much to prove the necessity of having renewable energy.
When one leader can cause a global energy crisis, seems obvious the world will go running towards any solution which can mitigate this in the future.
So if something goes wrong between the US and China, the US has 10 years to develop it's own supply. It's not like existing panels and batteries are going to suddenly stop working.
Fair point. But, simultaneously:
* I’m skeptical of the U.S. being able to develop domestic supply chains for this under current conditions
* “Kinetic action” does imply large swaths of U.S. infrastructure will in fact “suddenly stop working” and need to be rebuilt to maintain capacity
If you install solar panels, you have 10 years or more of lifetime to develop your domestic supply chain for replacements. This doesn't sound like a problem.
The IRA had enormous incentives to develop on shore renewable manufacturing. All of that was gutted in the BBB. Many of those burgeoning companies may have died in the interim as they saw that funding dry up, and realized they were working in an uphill regulatory environment.
It has exclusivity which might be enough, you can't own the sun (modulo Simpsons episode) but you might be able to "own" geological hotspots for this purpose, the same way you can "own" a coal mine or an oil well. Remember the goal here is to create poverty. I mean, obviously you say you want to create "wealth" but only in a relative sense.
They're pretty friendly to nuclear which comes out of the ground.
Seriously, I wonder about why it's supported. Maybe the drillers are from the fossil fuel extraction industry.
> Seriously, I wonder about why it's supported.
$$$.
The whole continent of America made a breakthrough?
Yes. North America.
United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (formerly NAFTA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Mexico%E...
https://www.ghy.com/trade-compliance/guidance-on-us-energy-i...
https://www.heritage.org/trade/report/analysis-the-united-st...
You know how the United Arab Emirates are known as the Emirates, how the United Mexican Sates are known as Mexico and how the United States of America is known as America? Are you unfamiliar with what synecdoche is?