Oh the irony, it burns so brightly. US President Donald Trump has embraced geothermal energy under the protective mantle of his “American Energy Dominance” plan, perhaps assuming that the nation’s renewable geothermal resources are somewhat limited in scope, posing little or no threat to his pals in the fossil energy industry. Guess again…
Enhanced Geothermal Energy Systems Are Coming For Your Fossil Fuels
To be fair, it is easy to underestimate the future role of geothermal energy in the US. Only a handful of geothermal power plants are in operation today, all located west of the Rocky Mountains in spots where the ideal combination of heat, rock, and water exists by circumstance of Mother Nature.
The great moment of derp has arrived, however. The US Department of Energy has been supporting innovators working on enhanced geothermal systems that are more flexible as to location. The general idea is to create human-made geothermal reservoirs within rock formations, deploying technology borrowed from the oil and gas industry (see more enhanced geothermal background here).
Don’t get too excited just yet. The enhanced geothermal field is just beginning to shift gears from the R&D phase into marketable power generation systems. Still, they are getting closer. The all-important drilling time factor has been compressed to cut costs, and the US Air Force is among those investing in demonstration projects to kick the activity up a notch.
The Nevada Geothermal Bonanza
That brings us to the news about Nevada. The US Geological Survey, which never makes headlines, grabbed some media attention last week when it posted a provisional assessment of geothermal energy potential in the Great Basin region, which covers most of Nevada. According to USGS, the upper six kilometers (about 3. 7 miles) of the Earth’s crust within the Great Basin could yield 135 gigawatts of geothermal-sourced electricity, equivalent to about 10% of the nation’s current generating capacity.
That’s quite a turnaround from the current status of geothermal energy, which currently accounts for less than 1% of the nation’s generating capacity. “This estimate is a potential substantial increase of the installed geothermal electricity-generating capacity from <1 to 10 percent of current total U.S. power production capacity,” USGS emphasizes.
Before you get too excited — again — the key words are “estimate” and “provisional.” USGS also advises that the survey zeroed in on high temperature, low-permeability rock formations. Reading between the lines, those are not ideal conditions for conventional geothermal power plants.
“If sufficient technological advances to commercialize enhanced geothermal systems occur, then a current best provisional estimate for electric-power generation capacity of 135 gigawatts electric are available from the upper 6 kilometers of the Earth’s crust,” USGS affirmed, reminding everyone that the enhanced geothermal field still has some R&D work to do.
Science Strikes Again
If you’re wondering why nobody ever knew about this before, that’s a good question. USGS targeted the Great Basin for analysis because they already knew that some promising geothermal resources were down there, somewhere. They just didn’t know how much. For the new analysis, they leveraged new underground mapping technology along with AI and machine learning, which did not exist back in the 1870s when USGS was formed with the task of spotting energy and energy-related resources, including critical minerals as well as geothermal energy resources and groundwater.
In a press release explaining the report, USGS appeared optimistic about the prospects for commercial-level enhanced geothermal systems to emerge, but they re-emphasized that the technology is not ready for prime time yet, at least not on a mass adoption scale.
“The new assessment … depends on widespread commercial-scale development and continued successful application of evolving and emerging technologies, many of which have been developed over the past several decades in the geothermal and oil and gas industries,” USGS explained.
Geothermal Energy To Hydropower: Hold My Beer
Geothermal energy is not the only renewable resource that made its way into the “American Energy Dominance” plan. Biomass and hydropower are also included. Sure enough, the Trump administration eventually greenlit an Energy Department loan guarantee for a new sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) operation in Montana that had been issued during former President Biden’s final weeks in office.
Opportunities to expand hydropower are limited by the number of suitable waterways in the US. Though, pumped storage projects and upgrades to existing dams are two possibilities. As for brand new hydropower dams, industry stakeholders will have to balance the cost and timeline of major new water infrastructure projects against the risk of drought and other uncertainties in the age of climate change.
Geothermal energy is both insulated from climate risks and amenable to a wider range of locations, and the USGS has just barely begun to explore the possibilities. The Great Basin analysis is just the first among a whole series of assessments planned by USGS deploying the latest mapping technology.
“The Energy Act of 2020 directed the USGS to assess the entire nation’s potential for geothermal energy. To conduct the assessment the USGS and partners created new heat flow maps, new underground temperature maps, and new methods to estimate energy extraction efficiency and conversion of heat to electricity,” USGS explains.
The Geothermal Energy Boom Is All Trump’s Fault
Speaking of irony, the Energy Act of 2020 was signed into law by President Trump himself. “Congress passed the Energy Act of 2020 as part of the fiscal year 2021 omnibus appropriations bill which President Trump signed into law on Dec. 27,” notes a handy explainer from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“Overall, the bill prioritizes research, development, and demonstration across a broad spectrum of energy technologies within the Department of Energy (DOE),” NCSL recapped, adding that “the Department of Interior is directed to procure at least 25 gigawatts of solar, wind, and geothermal production on public lands by 2025.”
In an interesting turn of events, for his second term in office, Trump chose Chris Wright, the CEO of the leading oilfield services firm Liberty Energy, to helm the Energy Department. Liberty was scouting new opportunities to apply its drilling know-how to the enhanced geothermal energy field during Wright’s tenure there.
Back in 2022, Liberty invested $10 million in the enhanced geothermal energy startup Fervo Energy, which went on to nail down an additional stake of $224 million earlier this year from other investors, including another leading oilfield firm, Devon Energy.
Whatever happened to the Energy Policy Act of 2020? Isn’t it still there? If you have any thoughts about that, drop a note in the comment thread. Better yet, find your representatives in Congress and let them know what you think.
Meanwhile, USGS is soldiering on. Now that they have finished the preliminary work on the Great Basin, they are heading off to North Dakota to see what the Williston Basin has to offer.
Image (screenshot): A Massive trove of untapped geothermal energy lies below the surface of the US, within reach of new drilling technologies borrowed from the oil and gas industry (courtesy of USGS).
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